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COMMENTARY 



ON THE 

GOSPELS OF MATTHEW AM) MARK, 

CRITICAL, DOCTRINAL, ANT) HOMILETIOAL, 

EMBODYING FOR POPULAR USE AND EDIFICATION 

THE RESULTS OF GERMAN AND ENGLISH EXEGETICAL LITERATURE, AND DESIGNED TO MEET 
THE DIFFICULTIES OF MODERN SKEPTICISM. 

WITH 

A GENERAL INTRODUCTION, 

TREATING OF THE 

GENUINENESS, AUTHENTICITY, HISTORIC VERITY, AND INSPIRATION OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS, 
AND OF THE HARMONY AND CHRONOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 



BY WILLIAM NAST, D. D. 



i 



CINCINNATI: 
PUBLISHED BY POE & HITCHCOCK, 

CORNER OF MAIN AND EIGHTH STREETS. 



R. P. THOMPSON, PRINTER. 
1864. 



5* 



^rf 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, 

BY POE & HITCHCOCK, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. 



1^2^3 



TO THE 





lm 9 1 



UNDER WHOSE MINISTRY THE AUTHOR WAS BROUGHT INTO 
THE LIBERTY OP THE GOSPEL, 



lo 



WHO PROPOSED HIM TO THE OHIO ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE METHODIST 

EPISCOPAL CHURCH AS ITS FIRST MISSIONARY AMONG THE 

GERMAN POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES, 



!18 i 



E&» 



IS DEDICATED AS A. TOKEN OF GRATEFUL AFFECTION AND ESTEEM. 



PREFACE. 



When the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in 1852, expressed 
a desire that I should prepare a Commentary on the New Testament in the German lan- 
guage, I hesitated for several years to undertake so responsible a work. An evangelical 
Commentary of an unsectarian character — embodying in a popular form the results of those 
exegetical works which were written exclusively for the theological scholar, and designed 
to meet the attacks of the destructive criticism of the rationalistic schools — I knew, indeed, 
to be a generally and deeply felt want of German Protestants. But the attempt to supply 
what is needed was a task from which I shrank for six years, partly because of the press- 
ure of other duties, partly in the hope that an abler hand would be induced to undertake 
it. This hope not being realized, and the demand for such a work becoming more and 
more urgent from different quarters, I was at last induced to make the attempt, and about 
^/fwo years ago I finished the first volume, comprising a General Introduction to the study 
of the New Testament and an Exposition of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. The 
work met with much favor from the religious press of Germany as well as of this country, 
and several eminent American divines, who examined it, advised its publication in the 
English language. 

To this encouraging call I have yielded, from the following considerations: First, I 
have been deeply impressed that a popular Commentary should enter thoroughly into the 
solution of important critical difficulties, and bring out of the text the doctrines taught 
by Christ and his apostles as fully as is done in the works of systematic divinity. Very 
much of theology that ought to be known, and is actually craved both by ministers who 
have not had the advantage of a classical and theological training, and by laymen in gen- 
eral, is never read by them, because the information sought is scattered over works not 
within their reach, or written exclusively for the classical scholar. Moreover, it is time 
that we habituate ourselves, more generally, to learn theology in the order in which it has 
pleased God to teach it in his written Word, and to examine each doctrine in the light 
of the context in which it stands in the Inspired Volume. But this is not done when we 
base our system of belief primarily and chiefly upon the Church creed, and turn to the 
Scriptures only in quest of proof texts. A second consideration is the growing need of 
a more intimate acquaintance with the theological works of Germany. English and Ger- 
man theology have their peculiar merits and defects. Each can improve and enrich the 
other. It is true that the national character of the English and German people and 
their Church-developments are so different that mere translations of the theological works 
of the one can never satisfy the wants of the other. But for this very reason there is 
the more need of efforts to assimilate the theological thought of the prominent standard- 
bearers of Evangelical Protestantism. By these means only can be produced that life- 

5 



6 PREFACE. 






communion which will work out a theology leading to greater unity of faith among the 
different evangelical denominations. Moreover, the conflict with infidelity and skepticism 
is far from being ended. The rejecters of Divine Revelation have changed their method 
of attack. To meet them on their new ground we must not disdain the weapons afforded 
by the rich arsenal of the evangelical theology of Germany, which has grappled with this 
new phase of unbelief, and achieved the most decisive victory. To prepare, therefore, a 
Commentary especially designed to meet the attacks of rationalistic criticism — giving on 
the one hand the results of the exegetical researches and philosophic discipline of the 
Germans, and on the other, the practical character and logical clearness which distinguish 
the Christian mind of England and America — appeared to me to be a work needed just 
now by the English as well as by the German Churches of this country. 

So much for the reasons which induced me to add another Commentary to those 
already in existence. In the attempt to reproduce the German original in English, I 
encountered far greater difficulties than I had anticipated; and hence the delay of the 
English edition, which was to leave the press early last Summer. The translation, which, 
from lack of time and a fear of not being equal to the task, I had engaged to be made, 
failed to do justice to the German original to such an extent that I felt myself compelled 
to think the whole work over in English, and endeavor to preserve, as far as possible, the 
strength and beauty of those passages that I quoted from Stier and Lange, whose style 
I confess myself to have found often too difficult to reproduce in good English.* I dis- 
covered also that the comments of Trench on the Parables and Miracles, of which I gave 
a digest in German, would lose too much by re-translation, and I therefore judged it bet- 
ter to quote them directly and more fully. Moreover, points that needed much consider- 
ation in German, I became convinced would be of less interest to the English reader; and 
so different is the mode of thought in the two nationalities and the genius of their respect- 
ive languages that one and the same argument, to make the proper impression, requires 
often to be stated in a different form or from a different stand-point. In addition to this, 
the work in English has the advantage of such emendations as a revision generally calls 
forth, and of additions arising from the consultation of works which I had not at hand, 
when writing the German original.f The greatest modification in the English edition 
will be found in the General Introduction. In German it is an Introduction to the whole 
New Testament. But as it is of a prominently apologetical character, I judged it better 
in the English edition to give only an Introduction to the Gospel records, these being the 
foundation upon which our faith rests, and against which the attacks of modern criticism 
are chiefly directed. 

Some remarks may be expected on the manner in which the author has drawn upon 
the labors of others. To write in our day a Commentary on the Holy Scriptures is 
a widely different task from that of the older commentators. When Biblical literature 
was yet in its infancy, a Commentary was, to a great extent, the original work of one 

* The quotations that aro mado from Stier's Words of the Lord Jesus, after the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, 
the reader will find more direct and more full than those in the forepart of the work. This is owing to my not 
having heen in possession, before that time, of Rev. William B. Pope's translation of that work, published at 
Edinburgh. 

f It gives me pleasure here to acknowledge my great indebtedness to the Rev. Dr. G. E. Day, of the Lane The- 
ological Seminary, for his kind loan, both from the Seminary Library and from his own private collection, of im- 
portant English and German works, without the help of which I should have been greatly embarrassed. 



PREFACE. 



man, but this is in our day no more the case. In the last three centuries the critical 
study of the Holy Scriptures has been cultivated by scholars of every land and every 
denomination, each succeeding writer using, with more or less additions, corrections, and 
modifications, the labors of his predecessors, so that exegetical research has not only 
reached a high degree of perfection, but its results — being made up by so many contri- 
butions as to lose to a great extent their originality — have become the common property 
of the Church. This last remark, however, does not apply to the exegetical labors of the 
present school of evangelical divines of Germany which originated with Dr. Olshausen, 
and whose brightest star appears to us to be the recently-departed Dr. Rudolph Stier, 
a man of unsurpassed spirituality, raised up by Divine Providence to expound the 
Scriptures for the unlearned as well as the learned. His immortal work, " The "Words 
of the Lord Jesus," has, indeed, been translated in England, and deserves to be studied 
by every theological student who has the means to procure it; but forming eight volumes 
large octavo, and containing much that moves in modes of thought exclusively German, 
and that will, therefore, neither interest nor profit the American mind, this precious work 
will find its way to the study of but few American pastors. And yet it contains doc- 
trinal truths, practical suggestions, and spiritual unfoldings of incalculable value, which, 
instead of being appreciated only by a few theological scholars, ought to be made the 
common property of the Church. The deep conviction of this need was, indeed, my first 
and strongest inducement to undertake this work. But to return to the question of the 
comparative amount of originality in our modern English Commentaries, we beg leave to 
say that even Alford, the professed object of whose Commentary on the Greek New Testa- 
ment is to enrich exegetical literature with new researches and results, is for the greatest 
portion of his notes indebted to German works, even where he does not quote them ; and a 
comparison of the modern popular Commentaries, so far at least as the Gospels are con- 
cerned — with perhaps only one exception, that of Dr. Joseph Addison Alexander — will 
show that their authors have considered it their privilege to abridge, amplify, or modify 
the researches of their predecessors or cotemporaries. Of the same privilege I have 
availed myself, though to a larger extent and in a somewhat different mode. Where I 
found an author, as for instance Trench on the Parables and Miracles, to have said the 
very best that in my opinion could be said, I have taken the liberty, if no copy-right was 
infringed thereby, to appropriate his whole comment, giving him proper credit. Never- 
theless, I do not think the work deserves on that account to be called a compilation. 
My aim, at least, has been not simply to select by critical examination, and for a distinct 
scope, what appeared to me the best in the exegetical works within my reach, but to 
mold, with a unity of design, the variegated materials into an organic whole. Nor have 
I confined myself in the most difficult passages to what others have said, but ventured 
to give my own opinions and to strike out a new path ; as, for instance, in the exposition 
of the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew. It should also be borne in mind that the 
amount of quotations is in proportion to the specific aim of this Commentary to com- 
bine — to a greater extent than has been attempted before — the edifying element with the 
discussion of critical, apologetical, and theological questions, and to make these questions 
intelligible and interesting to the general reader. Had I designed the work only, either 
for the theological student or for the layman, it would have been reduced to half its size. 
The largest quotations, taken from other authors, I have made in the Introduction. My 



8 PREFACE. 



object was to preserve, for the instruction and edification of the Church, those portions 
of the different works on the genuineness, authenticity, and historic verity of the Gospel 
records, which after accurate comparison I found to contain the very best that has been 
written on one or the other point — and to bring the different testimonies within one focus 
and into a new relation to each other. Such a preservation and combination of argu- 
ments — incapable of material improvement — I judge to be far preferable to any attempt 
to bring out the old arguments in a new dress merely for the sake of imparting to them 
the appearance of originality. The authors quoted, I am confident, will not complain, 
because what is quoted from them is only a very small portion of the subject they treat 
of, and Avill induce those readers that have the leisure to pursue their studies further, to 
procure those works as far as their means may permit. Besides, the large quotations in 
the Introduction — with the exception of some extracts from Dr. Schaff's works and from 
Norton's "Credibility of the Gospels" — are taken from foreign authors, whose works 
have for the most part not even been republished in this country. 

Though the materials of the Introduction have been borrowed to a large extent, I 
claim to have used them in such a manner as to build up a new and entirely-original 
argument, and one which I think is imperatively demanded by the change of base on the 
part of the rejecters of Divine revelation. With regard to the prominently-apologetical 
character of the Introduction, I beg leave to make a few remarks. Minute and extended 
as it is, some readers may be disappointed in not finding some of the strongest evidences 
of the Divine character of the Christian religion. But it must be borne in mind that the 
Introduction treats only of the documents of revelation, not of revelation itself, and that, 
for this reason, only so much of the General Evidences of Christianity, as stands in a close 
connection with the documents themselves, could consistently find a place here. Know- 
ing from my own inward experience that the Sacred Scriptures prove their Divine char- 
acter to every devout and earnest seeker of truth, and that a living faith in Jesus Christ 
and his Holy Word is not the work of a logical demonstration to the understanding, but 
that of an attestation of the Holy Ghost to the conscience and heart, it was for some 
time a matter of grave and anxious doubt, whether it would be proper and profitable in 
a work, written for the laity as much as for the ministry, to state in full the various and 
subtile objections which modern criticism has raised; but on mature reflection I became 
satisfied that the spirit of the age and the scope of the Commentary required a thoroughly 
apologetical introduction to the Gospel records- We live in a period when men of inquir- 
ing minds are compelled to follow one of three courses — either the rash and skeptical one 
of renouncing every thing which is not perfectly understood, or the equally easy one of 
yielding themselves up to blind credence, or, undaunted by the undeniable difficulties 
which revelation presents, not to rest short of a satisfactory solution. It is not sufficient 
in our day to state, in general, something like this : " Copies of the Gospels and Epistles 
were preserved in the Christian Churches. When the author produced his book it was 
immediately transcribed, and copies were put in circulation among purchasers; others 
were deposited in the archives of the various Churches. The multiplied copies were 
checks upon each other's correctness. Of the Gospels and Epistles numerous copies were 
circulated in Europe, Asia, and Africa within a century after their publication. It was, 
therefore, impossible that any counterfeit, or any great alteration should come into exist- 
ence. The very perfect agreement — with the exception of slight mistakes in copying— 



PREFACE. 9 



of all manuscript copies throughout the world, places beyond all doubt the genuineness 
of all the four Gospels." This is, indeed, a very complete and reliable summary of the 
argument. Nevertheless, almost every item of it has been impugned by infidel writers, 
and their objections are widely disseminated among the masses. Ought not, therefore, 
the refutation of these objections to be made generally accessible, instead of being locked 
up in learned works on the " Canon," which no layman and but few ministers possess ? 
Would not the information they contain be eagerly and generally read, if embodied in a 
popular Commentary? And would not the simple Christian thus be enabled to answer 
satisfactorily the cavils of skeptics by which he is often embarrassed? 

Having satisfied my mind on this point, I entered upon the argument with the con- 
viction that in order to make it answer the wants of our day it must be strictly historical, 
free from all dogmatical premises, compelling the opponent, by facts which he admits, to 
confess the unreasonableness of his doubts ; in short, changing the defense of the record 
of revelation into an attack upon its rejecters by requiring the skeptic to account for the 
historical facts of Divine revelation, and especially for the personality of Jesus Christ — a 
problem which no human ingenuity or learning is able to solve on any known natural 
principle. (See General Introduction, §§ 28, 29.) On this point Dr. Ullmann, in the 
introductory chapter to his celebrated work, " The Sinlessness of Jesus — an Evidence for 
Christianity," observes: "In modern times it has become more and more obvious how 
incalculably important for the proof of historical Christianity is a clear and positive 
knowledge of the character of its Founder. For the life and character of Jesus is the 
central point of the whole Christian system. From this all rays of light and all opera- 
tions of moral power proceed ; and to it all must be traced back, so long as Christianity 
shall have, on the one hand, a sure historical basis, and on the other, an inward moral ex- 
cellence The position that we occupy, in an age in which doubt and disbelief so 

greatly prevail, is such that in the vindication of Christianity we must go far beneath the 
surface, and lay the foundation in what appears self-evident and is in need of no external 
proof. This deepest foundation we find only in the person of the Founder of Christian- 
ity." Thus, in apologetics as well as in systematic theology and Christian experience, 
Christ is all and in all. While the Gospels, if examined by the acknowledged laws of 
historical criticism, are proved to be trustworthy historical records, the Christ described 
by the Evangelists could not possibly have been conceived by them, if they had not seen 
and heard what they record of him ; and if so, his personality is historically proved, as 
no other is, and it necessarily involves the fundamental fact of the Christian religion, 
that He was God manifest in the flesh. Being such, his testimony of the Old Testament 
and his commission to the apostles impress a Divine stamp upon the facts of revelation, 
recorded both in the Old and in the New Testament. 

With regard to the plan of the Commentary, we beg leave to point out its peculiarities : 
1. As the present division into chapters is unauthorized and arbitrary, the text has 
been arranged in sections, each of which forms a coherent whole by itself, be it a narra- 
tive or a discourse. Where a discourse is too extended to form conveniently one unin- 
terrupted section, the section has its logical subdivisions. Likewise, where different short 
narratives — none of them large enough to form a section by itself — succeed each other, 
as in Mark, so many of them as can be brought under one appropriate head, with proper 
subdivisions, form one section, of course, without altering in any way their succession in 



10 PREFACE. 



the text. This arrangement will aid the reader much in understanding the connection 
existing between the successive portions of a Gospel, like that of Mark, and in perceiv- 
ing the design of the Evangelist. 

2. Wherever it is necessary, the text of a section is preceded by general remarks, 
the object of which is to clear up peculiar critical or chronological difficulties, or to 
give explanations which could not be attached to any particular part of the text. 

3. The merely linguistical and archaeological notes, parallel passages, and different 
readings, not affecting the doctrinal exposition of the text, are printed in smaller type 
at the bottom of the page, in order to leave the exegesis proper uninterrupted. 

4. The exegetical notes proper follow the text, the different points to be commented 
upon being marked by the verse, etc. 

5. My design, with regard to the Homiletical Suggestions, in the German edition has 
been partly to aid young ministers in their preparations for the pulpit, partly to enable 
those who may not go through the exegetical process to make a practical improvement 
of the text. They are on this account, in German, added to the exegetical notes in all 
cases, except where the exegesis and the practical application of a section naturally coin- 
cide_, as, for instance, in our Lord's Sermon on the Mount and in the Parables. But in 
the English edition I have retained but a small portion, partly because I considered them 
neither needed by, nor adapted to, the American public, and because they would lose too 
much in the translation; partly because in the second half of the Gospel of Matthew I 
found the exegesis to be too much interwoven with practical application, and too exten- 
sive to make the addition of separate practical reflections convenient. In place of the 
German Homiletical Suggestions I substituted, where I could, condensed sketches from 
the Homilist, a work of classic character; and the lack of Homiletical Suggestions in 
Matthew I found a convenient opportunity to supply in the parallel passages of Mark. 

v One more remark. The title of the German original is: A Commentary on the New 
Testament. Vol. I. The Gospels of Matthew and Mark, with a General Introduction, etc. 
It is my intention, by Divine permission, to devote the rest of my life to the continuation 
of this work; and I shall endeavor to adapt it at once to the English as well as the Ger- 
man reader. The plan of the Commentary, however, will be, of course, modified by the 
peculiarity of each book, as will be perceived by the treatment of the Gospel of Mark. 
That the Divine blessing may rest upon this effort which has sprung from the ardent 
desire to contribute something toward promoting a more thorough study of the New 
Testament by the laity as well as by the ministry, and to lead sincere inquirers after 
truth to the Savior, is the devout prayer of 

THE AUTHOR. 

Cincinnati, April 4, 1864. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 



CONTENTS. 



PART I. 

THE GENUINENESS OR INTEGRITY OF THE SA- 
CRED TEXT. 

PAGE. 

§1. Introductory Remarks 15 

CHAPTER I. 

THE HISTORY OF THE TEXT. 

§ 2. The Change of the Original Text with regard 

to its Outward Appearance 16 

§ 3. Some General Remarks on the Existing Manu- 
scripts of the New Testament 17 

§ 4. A Consideration of the Variety of Readings 
presented by the Manuscripts of the New 
Testament 19 

CHAPTER II. 

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF SUCCESS IN AN ESSENTIAL MUTI- 
LATION OR CORRUPTION OF THE GOSPEL RECORD. 

§ 5. Argument from the Agreement of the Respect- 
ive Copies of the Four Gospels 21 

§6. Argument drawn from Other Considerations 24 



PART II. 

THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 
§7. Introductory Remarks 28 

CHAPTER I. 

THE OUTWARD HISTORICAL TESTIMONIES. 

§8. The Testimony of the Apostolical Fathers 28 

§ 9. The Testimony of the Fathers in the Sub-Apos- 
tolical Age, from A. D. 120-170 31 

§ 10. The Formation of a Canon of the Universally- 
acknowledged Books of the New Testament 
at the Close of the Second Century 36 

§11. The Early Versions of the New Testament 39 

§12. The Testimony of Heretical and Apocryphal 

Writings 41 

§13. The Testimony of Heathen Adversaries 52 

CHAPTER II. 

THE INTERNAL EVIDENCES. 

§ 14. The Peculiar Dialect of Greek in which the 

Evangelists have written 53 

§15. Some other Characteristics of the Style in which 

the Gospel3 are written 59 



§16. 
§17. 
§18. 



PAGE. 

The Frequent Allusions of the Evangelists to 
the History of their Times 60 

The Relation of the Four Gospels to Each Other 
and to the Acts of the Apostles 69 

The Authenticity of the Gospels — a Postulate 
of Reason, as it alone accounts for the Ex- 
istence of the Christian Church, and for some 
of Paul's Epistles, whose Authenticity is uni- 
versally admitted 71 

The Absurdity of the Mythical Theory 76 



PART III. 

THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 
§20. Introductory Remarks „.„ 84 

CHAPTER I. 

A CONSIDERATION OF THE OBJECTIONS THAT HAVE BEEN 

RAISED AGAINST THE CREDIBILITY OF THE 

EVANGELISTS. 

§ 21. The Alleged Discrepancies or Contradictions in 

the Four Gospels 84 

§ 22. The Assumption that Miracles are Impossible 

and Unsusceptible of Proof. 86 

§ 23. The Alleged Lack of Sufficient Testimony by 

Profane Writers 92 



CHAPTER II. 



THE CREDIBILITY OF THE EVANGELISTS. 



§24. 



§25. 



The Evangelists were in a Condition to inform 
themselves accurately and thoroughly con- 
cerning the Things which they record 94 

The Evangelists exhibit in their Narratives 
no Symptoms of Mental Derangement which 
might have made them Victims of Delusion... 94 
§ 26. The Evangelists can not be charged with hav- 
ing had any Motive or Design to impose upon 
the World a report of what, if it did not 
take place, they must have known to be false. 



95 



CHAPTER HI. 

THE DIVINE SEAL STAMPED UPON THE GOSPEL HISTORY 
BY ITS SUBJECT THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST. 

§ 27. The Verity of the Gospel History best accred- 
ited by the Personality of Jesus Christ 97 

§ 28. The admitted outer Conditions of the Life of 
Jesus — leaving its astounding Results, as well 

13 



14 



CONTENTS. 



98 



as the unlimited Scope of the Mind of Jesus 
and the perfect Symmetry of his Character, 
utterly inexplicable, without the admission 

of a Supernatural and Divine Element 

29. The Sinlossness of Jesus — the Idea of which 
could not have been conceived by the Evan- 
gelists, if they had not seen it actualized in 
his Life — incontestably proving that he was 

not a mere Man 107 

The Miracles wrought on and performed by Je- 
sus, the Natural and Necessary Outflow of 
his historically-proved Personality, and, at 
the same time, the Ground and Warrant of 
all other true Miracles preceding and suc- 
ceeding his Appearance on Earth 120 



:30 



PART IV. 

THE ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM ON THE IN- 
SPIRATION OP THE FIRST THREE GOSPELS. 

§ 31. The Relation which the Authenticity and Cred- 
ibility of the Gospel Records bear to their 
Inspiration 126 



232. 



£33. 



The Peculiar Agreement and Disagreement of 
the first three Evangelists in their Narra- 
tives, and the Various Explanations of this 
Singular Phenomenon 12V 

A Consideration of the Inspired Character of 
the Synoptical Gospels on the Ground of 
their being chiefly the Result of the Oral 
Teaching of the Apostles 134 



PART V. 

PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON THE GOSPEL 
HISTORY. 

ji 34. The Condition of the World, Jewish, Greek, 

and Roman, at the Advent of Christ 142 

\ 35. The Chronology and Harmony; of the Gospel 

Narratives 147 

A. The Date of the Birth of Christ 148 

B. The Duration of our Lord's Ministry and 

the Date of his Death 150 

C. A Synoptical Table of the Gospel History.. 152 

D. A Table for finding any Passage in the 

Synopsis of the Gospel History 173 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION 



TO THE 



GOSPEL EECOEDS 



PART I . 

THE GENUINENESS OR INTEGRITY OF THE SACRED TEXT. 
§1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

It is to be regretted that nearly all English writers on the Evidences are in the 
habit of using the words "genuine" and "authentic" as synonyms, and sometimes even 
of attaching to the word "authentic" the popular sense of "true" or "credible," by 
which the whole argumentation is obscured. A book is to be called genuine, if it has 
remained in all material points the same- as it was when it proceeded from its author. 
It is authentic, if it has proceeded at all from the person whose name it bears, or, where 
the name of the author was not assigned with certainty at the time of its origin, if it 
originated at the time and under the circumstances it professes to have done. A book 
may be genuine and authentic, and yet its contents may lack credibility. 

"We propose, in the order named, to inquire into the genuineness, the authenticity, 
and the credibility of the Gospel records, and then to consider their inspired char- 
acter. The object of this chapter is to show that the text of the four canonical Gospels 
has been preserved in its integrity — is genuine or uncorrupted. "What we have to 
say on this point applies to all the books of the New Testament, and will, therefore, 
not be repeated in the special Introductions to the other books. The investigation 
into the genuineness or integrity of the inspired writings is legitimate and of great 
importance. For though we may have the most satisfactory proofs that they proceeded 
at first from the apostles or evangelists whose names they bear, they may have been 
so altered since that time as to convey to us very false information with regard to their 
original contents. It is admitted on all hands that the original manuscripts disappeared 
at a very early time, owing to the frailty of the material on which the apostles wrote, 
and to the frequent use which was made of them by being read in the Churches and 
constantly transcribed, and that, in common with all other ancient writings, the original 
text of the New Testament has been exposed to the accidents to which all works 
preserved by transcription are liable. "We will, therefore, consider, first, the history 
of the text, as the German writers call it — that is, the changes to which the original 
was unavoidably subjected in the process of transcription — and then prove that all 
these changes have not impaired the integrity of the original. 

15 



16 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



OHAPTEE I. 

THE HISTORY OF THE TEXT. 
§ 2. The Change op the Original Text with regard to its Outward Appearance. 

Inasmuch as our present mode of publishing books is very different from that of 
ancient times, we can not but expect that the outward appearance of the original 
text underwent great changes by being transcribed from century to century, and a con- 
sideration of these external changes claims our attention first. The following points are 
of general interest: 

1. The authors of the New Testament used the charta — 6 ^apr-qr;, 2 John, 12 — paper 
made of layers of the papyrus, a plant that was very common in Egypt. Of this paper 
there Avere, in the apostles' times, several kinds in use, differing from each other in 
strength and durability. Of the existing manuscripts, however, none are written on 
papyrus, but on vellum or on paper of later origin. Yellum was the most durable, but 
also the most costly material. Not more than six manuscript fragments on vellum are 
known to be extant. All manuscripts on paper are of a much later date, those on cotton 
paper being posterior to the seventh century, and those on linen still later. 

2. As to the external form of the manuscripts, the ancients made use of rolls in their 
writings ; yet as this form was unhandy in several respects, the custom arose to write on 
large sheets, which were folded up like maps in an atlas, four, five, six, or eight fold, 
of different sizes. This is the form of all manuscripts extant. 

3. The Greek manuscripts were mostly written without division of words, in capital 
letters — which, in the time of Jerome, were called uncials — till the ninth century, when 
the so-called cursive handwriting — that is, writing with small letters, and capitals only 
at the head of certain words — came into use, as requiring less space and being better 
adapted for fast writing. The separation of words from each other by a point or empty 
space did not become general before the ninth century. 

4. Punctuation marks were seldom used by the ancients. The numerous mistakes 
of the fathers, or their uncertainty, how particular passages were to be read and under- 
stood, clearly prove that there was no regular or accustomed system of punctuation in 
use in the fourth century. Toward the middle of the fifth century Euthalius, of Alex- 
andria, wrote the Pauline epistles, and afterward the Gospels, stichometrically ; that is, 
in lines regulated by the sense, so that each terminated where some pause was to be 
made; when the line was not filled, the remainder was, at first, left empty, but after- 
ward, in order to save space, it was filled up, and a point was made to indicate the 
pause. The lines of the books were generally numbered and the number marked at the 
end. Although some full points are to be found in the Codex Alexandrinus, the Codex 
Vaticanus, and the Codex Bezae — as they also are in inscriptions four hundred years 
before the Christian era — yet there is abundant evidence that our present system of 
Greek punctuation was not fully adopted before the ninth century. 

5. The same remarks apply to the accents, spiritus — breathings— and the so-called 
iota subscriptum. The accents were gradually introduced. Some of the oldest man- 
uscripts have them, others not, and it is only toward the end of the tenth century that 
they became general. The rough breathing — spiritus asper — -was anciently a full letter 
in the form of the Latin H, and so it is found on monuments — e. gr., Hoi=6c. Afterward 
the first half of the letter (F) was used for the rough breathing, and the other half (J) 
for the smooth breathing, and from these two signs the modern form of breakings ( c> ) 
arose. According to the oldest manuscripts, it seems that the writers of the New Test- 
ament did not use these two signs, at least not uniformly. The iota subscriptum was 



THE GENUINENESS OF THE SACRED TEXT. 17 



anciently written as a letter in the line — iota postscriptum — afterward entirely omitted, 
but came into general use as iota subscriptum with the introduction of the cursive char- 
acters. Whether a word was originally meant for duzfj, aurrj, or aS-nj, must be determined 
by the context alone. 

6. Our present division of the sacred text into chapters and verses is of still more 
recent date. The first general division was made in the thirteenth century, in all prob- 
ability, by the Cardinal Hugo Carensis, and the latter by Eobert Stephanus in 1551, 
after a variety of other divisions had been in partial use before. Tertullian already 
speaks of capitula in portions of the New Testament Scriptures. But this division did 
neither extend over all the books of the New Testament, nor was it in general use, as 
far as it went. In early use was the division into zswdlata, portions much smaller than 
our chapters and larger than our verses. The Gospel of Matthew had 355 such xswdlaia. 
that of Mark 234, that of Luke 342, that of John 231, altogether 1,162. This division 
was introduced by Ammonius, of Alexandria, in his Gospel Harmony — to Sid -saGdpwv 
iuayylhov — and afterward completed by Eusebius. A later division was that into rirXoi — - 
tituli— -introduced in the fifth century. The Gospel of Matthew was divided into 68, 
that of Mark into 48, that of Luke into 83, and that of John into 18 such tituli. Our 
present division has, of course, no claims whatever to the authority of the text, and 
being, in a number of instances, certainly faulty, the reader must take care not to be 
misled by it; yet, as it is in universal use, and is of great advantage for the purpose 
of reference, it is not expedient to make a change. Besides the older divisions, which 
we have named, selections of the New Testament Scriptures — pericopai — were made for 
the public reading on each Sunday in the ecclesiastical year. The time and manner 
of their introduction are uncertain. Those from the Acts and the Epistles were prob- 
ably first introduced by Euthalius; but those from the Gospels were undoubtedly earlier, 
at least in the Latin Church. These selections were often bound up separately, in their 
regular order, and are also of moment in Biblical criticism. 

7. The inscriptions or titles of the various books of the New Testament, it is gener- 
ally admitted, were not originally written by the apostles, but were subsequently added 
as the seal which the Church stamped upon them in settling the canon. The subscrip- 
tions annexed to some of the Epistles are manifestly spurious. They are altogether 
wanting in some ancient manuscripts of the best note, and in others they are greatly 
varied. Some contain false assertions. 

§ 3. Some General Remarks on the Existing Manuscripts. 

1. The autographs — manuscripts of the New Testament, which were written either by 
the apostles themselves or by amanuenses under their immediate inspection, (Rom. xvi, 
22 ; Gal. vi, 11 ; 2 Thess. iii, 17 ; 1 Cor. xvi, 21,) have long since perished, and we have no 
information whatever concerning their history. It has been thought that Ignatius and 
Tertullian appealed to them. Ignatius in his letter to the Philadelphians says, that he 
heard some say : " If I do not find it h zoiq dpyainiz, I do not believe it in the Gospel ;" 
but zd dpyaia can here mean only the Old Testament writings, since the context shows, 
that the objection quoted came from Judaizers, who were unwilling to believe any thing 
in the Gospels that was not contained in the Old Testament. Tertullian appeals to the 
autenticai literal of the apostles as being read at his time in the Churches at Corinth, 
Philippi, Ephesus, etc. Prom this passage it might seem as if the autographs were 
referred to ; but from another passage in the same author it plainly appears, that not 
autographs, but correct copies of them, in the original language, made and preserved by 
the respective Churches, were meant. If the autographs had existed at that time, the 
Church fathers would certainly have appealed to them in their controversies with the 
heretics on the genuineness of disputed passages. 

2 



18 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



2. No existing manuscript of the New Testament can be traced higher than the fourth 
century. The number of manuscripts that have thus far become known is about seven 
hundred. They belong to different centuries, from the fifth, perhaps the fourth, down to 
the sixteenth, and are accordingly written in different characters, the oldest in uncials, by 
far the most in cursive letters, partly without, partly with divisions into words and sec- 
tions, with or without accents, and with punctuation marks of different kinds. These 
very points, the shape of the letters, the material, and orthography furnish the principal 
data for determining the time and country, when and where the manuscripts were made. 
Sometimes other internal data are furnished by the manuscripts, giving, in a few 
instances, the name of the copyist and the year when the manuscript was made, or 
containing menologies, in which the festival days of the saints are mentioned, on which 
certain portions of Scripture are to be read in the Churches. As these menologies often 
designate such days as were celebrated in honor of certain saints from otherwise known 
dates, in certain countries, they furnish important data for determining the time and 
place when and where the manuscript was made. 

3. Yery few manuscripts contain the whole either of the Old or of the New Testa- 
ment. By far the greater part — five hundred — have only the four Gospels, because they 
were most frequently read in the Churches ; two hundred the Acts and catholic epistles ; 
three hundred the Pauline epistles, and one hundred the Apocalypse. Almost all of 
them, especially the more ancient manuscripts, are imperfect, either from the injuries of 
time or from neglect. All manuscripts, the most ancient not excepted, have erasures and 
corrections ; which, however, were not always effected so dextrously, but that the orig- 
inal writing may sometimes be seen. 

4. Before the invention of paper, the great scarcity of parchment in different 
places induced many persons to obliterate the works of ancient writers, in order to 
write in their place another work. Such manuscripts are termed Codices Palimpsesti or 
Rescripti. In general, a Codex Eescriptus is easily known, as it rarely happens that the 
former writing is so completely erased as not to exhibit some traces ; in a few instances 
both writings are legible. Yery valuable discoveries have been made in these rewritten 
manuscripts. 

5. Besides the manuscripts which contain the whole New Testament, or certain books 
of it in full, there are others which contain only the selections or pericopce ; they are 
called Codices Ecclesiastici or Lectionaria. These selections were often prefaced with 
some remarks respecting the day on which they were to be read, and such remarks have, 
in some instances, crept into the text. 

6. Some manuscripts have not only the Greek text, but are accompanied with a ver- 
sion, which is either interlined or in a parallel column ; these are called Codices Bilingues. 
The greatest number is in Greek and Latin ; and the Latin version is, in general, one 
of those which existed before the time of Jerome. 

7. A comparative description of the different manuscripts, and an account of the 
various critical methods adopted to arrange them in certain classes or families, can be 
of interest and profit only to the professional scholar, but does not lie within our scope, 
and is to be sought in the special works on Biblical Text Criticism. Yet a few words 
of explanation may be expected by the general reader on the critical references of vari- 
ous readings, which he will find in the foot-notes of the text in the author's Commentary. 
The manuscripts in uncials have, since Yfetstein, been designated with the capital letters 
of the Latin alphabet, and where these do not suffice, with the Greek capitals ; those in 
cursive characters — minuscles — with the common Arabic ciphers. But as the manu- 
scripts of both kinds — the uncial and cursive — are divided into four classes, namely, 
into codices, containing the Gospels, the Acts and catholic epistles, the Pauline epistles, 
and the Apocalypse, both the capital letters and ciphers commence in them four times 
anew. Thus, a codex, that contains the whole New Testament, comes up in the four 



THE GENUINENESS OF THE SACRED TEXT. 19 

classes with the capital or cipher peculiar to each class. As these tvro marks, capitals 
and ciphers, often vary in the different classes in the same manuscripts, and as new 
documents are constantly coming into the lists, it is necessary to notice, when they are 
simply quoted with their capitals or ciphers, to which book of the New Testament the 
quotations refer, in order to find them in the lists of the codices. 

§ 4. A Consideration op the Variety op Readings presented by the Manu- 
scripts of the New Testament. 

Alarming as it may appear to the simple, pious Christian, to he told of fifty thousand 
up to one hundred and fifty thousand different readings, as they have been variously 
estimated, in the books of the New Testament, and much as infidels have boasted of this 
discovery, a slight examination of the matter will not only completely remove all appre- 
hensions, but furnish us with the most conclusive proof that Divine Providence has 
provided the very best security for the integrity of the documents, upon which our 
faith rests. 

In the first place, the number of various readings, great as it appears, is really less, in 
proportion, than that of the various readings extant in most classic authors, when com- 
pared with the quantity of text examined, and the number of manuscripts and other 
authorities collated in each particular case. Nineteen out of twenty, at least, are to be 
dismissed at once from consideration, because they are found in so few authorities, and 
their origin is so easily explained, that no critic would regard them as having any claim 
to be inserted in the text. Of those which remain, a very great majority are entirely 
unimportant. They consist in transpositions or omissions of letters, the use of different 
grammatical forms, the exchange of synonymous words and transpositions of words in 
sentences; and a very small number affects the sense at all. Only six passages have been 
discovered where a vital doctrine is affected by the different readings; but even in these 
instances the doctrine itself is not periled, because it is plainly taught in other passages. 

The great value of the immense amount of labor, which has been expended for nearly 
a century upon the received text of the New Testament, consists not so much in the 
emendations of that text, as in establishing the fact, that the original text has been 
transmitted to us with remarkable integrity, that far the greater part of the variations 
among different copies are of no authority or of no importance, and that some of them 
are so trifling as not to admit of being made apparent in a translation. 

The condition of the text, then, is such as we ha - ^ to expect from the human agents 
through whom the documents were transmitted to posterity. The copyist was naturally 
exposed to mistakes of the eye by the unbroken current uncials — capitals ; thus letters 
of similar form were interchanged, some words were omitted, others written twice, 
others transposed, and sometimes whole sentences were erroneously divided. Those 
who copied from dictation — a common practice — were liable to errors by confounding 
sounds. Mistakes were also made, at a later period, by writing out abbreviations. 
Again, some words had been left out, and then were set as glosses in the margin; the 
copyist wishing to restore the original text, inserted the gloss or glosses in the text, 
but often in the wrong place. Errors of this kind are more frequent in the manuscripts 
of the New Testament than in those of other ancient writings, because the former were 
more frequently copied than the latter, and there were, therefore, more intermediate links 
between the autographs and the later copies. Other corruptions of the text arose from 
the efforts to correct it or make it plainer by removing the peculiarities of the New 
Testament diction, or by the reception of glosses into the text, which had at first been 
Written in the margin to explain a difficulty, especially in the synoptical Gospels. The 
higher the authority of these writings rose, the more natural became the desire of the 
later copyist to amend a supposed error of an earlier one. 



20 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



To have prevented such variations of the original text would have required such a 
continuous miracle on the part of God, as would not have been in accordance with God's 
dealings with man, nor consistent with the freedom of human agency. "They," says 
Dr. Hill, in his Lectures on Divinity, "who seem to think that the all-ruling providence 
of God should have preserved every copy of the original from any kind of vitiation, 
forget the extent of the miracle which they ask, when they demand, that all who ever 
were employed in copying the New Testament should at all times have been effectually 
guarded by the Spirit of God from negligence, and their works kept safe from the injuries 
of time. They forget, moreover, that the very circumstance to which they object has, in 
the wisdom of God, been highly favorable to the cause of truth. The infidel has enjoyed 
his triumph and has exposed his ignorance. Men of erudition have been encouraged to 
apply their talents to a subject which opens so large a field for their exercise. Their 
research and their discoveries have demonstrated the futility of the objection, and have 
shown that the great body of the people in every country, who are incapable of such 
research, may safely rest in the Scriptures as they are, and that the most scrupulous 
critics, by the inexhaustible sources of correction which lie open to them, may attain 
nearer to an absolute certainty with regard to the true reading of the books of the New 
Testament, than of any other ancient book in any language. If they require more, their 
demand is unreasonable ; for the religion of Jesus does not profess to satisfy the careless, 
or to overpower the obstinate, but rests its pretensions upon evidence sufficient to bring 
conviction to those who with honest hearts inquire after the truth, and are willing to 
exercise their reason in attempting to discover it." 

The Church was at all times enabled to ascertain, in all essential points, the true text 
of the New Testament writings, by means of the great number of old manuscripts of the 
very ancient versions, which were made from copies much nearer the original manu- 
scripts than any that we have, and of the many quotations with which the works of the 
Christian fathers and other early writers abound. For a full description of these means, 
as well as for the rules in using them, the canons of criticism, which have been investi- 
gated and digested by many learned men, we must again refer the reader to the elaborate 
works that have been written on this subject. We will only add, that it may please 
Divine Providence to bring to light ancient documents, not yet discovered, an instance of 
which we have had but a few years ago in the discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus, by 
Tischendorf. However that may be, with the apparatus and the clearly-ascertained 
principles of criticism which we possess now, we may confidently indulge the hope of 
recovering the original purity of the text, where it is yet obscured. With regard to the 
duty of the critical examination of the correctness of the received text, the eminent En- 
glish commentator, Dr. Ellicott, makes, in the recently-published "Aids to Faith," the 
following remarks, which must commend themselves to every candid mind: "Let the 
interpreter be seduced by no timidity or prejudices from ascertaining the true text. Let 
him not fall back upon the too often repeated statement, that, as readings affect no great 
points of doctrine, the subject may be left in abeyance. It is, indeed, most true, that dif- 
ferent readings of such a character as 1 Tim. iii, 16, or interpolations such as 1 John v, 7, 
are few and exceptional. It is, indeed, a cause for devout thankfulness, that out of the 
vast number of various readings so few affect vital questions ; still it is indisputably a 
fact, that but few pages of the New Testament can be turned over without our finding- 
points of the greatest interest affected by very trivial variations of reading. On the 
presence or absence of an article in John v, 1, the whole chronology of our Lord's minis- 
terial life may be said almost entirely to depend. A very slight alteration in Mark vii, 31, 
would indicate a fact of deep historical interest, and is of very great significance in refer- 
ence alike to commands subsequently given to the apostles to preach the Gospel, and to 
former prohibitions. (Matt, x, 5.) The absence of two words in Eph. i — now rendered 
somewhat more probable by the testimony of the Codex Sinaiticus — gives a fresh aspect 



THE GENUINENESS OF THE SACRED TEXT. 21 

to an important Epistle, disposes at once of several prima facie difficulties, and, further, 
must be taken greatly into account in the adjustment of some subordinate, but inter- 
esting questions with which the Epistle has been thought to stand in connection. (Col. 
iv, 16.) The presence or absence of a few words in Matt, xxviii, 9, affects considerably 
our ability to remove one of the many seeming discrepancies in the narratives of the first 
hours of the morn of the resurrection. We could multiply such examples; but perhaps 
enough has been said. There are, indeed, several grounds for thinking that there is an 
improved feeling on the whole subject; and there seem some reasons for hoping that, 
though no authoritative revision is likely to take place, nor, at present, perhaps, even to 
be desired, yet that the time is coming when there will be a considerable agreement on 
many of the results of modern criticism." 



CHAPTER II. 

IMPOSSIBILITY OF SUCCESS IN AN ESSENTIAL MUTILATION OR COR- 
RUPTION OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 

We have seen that there is nothing in the various readings to shake our faith in the 
integrity of the sacred text. On the contrary, the very disagreement of the manuscripts 
shows that there could have been no collusion ; but that the manuscripts were written, 
independently of each other, by persons separated by distance of time, remoteness of 
place, and diversity of opinion. This extensive independency of manuscripts on each 
other is the effectual check of Avillful alteration ; which, whenever attempted, must have 
been immediately corrected by the agreement of copies from various and distant regions 
out of the reach of the interpolator. We are aware that we here enter upon an argu- 
mentation, where the question of genuineness coincides with that of authenticity. This, 
however, does not militate against the distinction which we have made between the two 
terms. We may use an argument for the genuineness of the Gospel records, though it 
may also apply to their authenticity, and in doing so we furnish the reader with a natu- 
ral transition and proper introduction to Part II. 

The arguments which prove the Gospel records to have remained un corrupted have 
been set forth with peculiar force and clearness by Prof. A. Norton, in his " Evidences 
of the Genuineness of the Gospels," a work truly classic, but so learned and expensive 
as to be found only in the library of the professional scholar, and unadapted for general 
circulation in the orthodox Churches on account of the theological stand-point which the 
author occupies as a Unitarian. Yet the manner in which he presents the arguments 
on the uncorrupted preservation of the Gospel records is unsurpassed, and we can do our 
readers no better service than to give them in his own language, though in a condensed 
form and separated from those arguments that bear only on the authenticity of the 
records, which the author does not sufficiently distinguish from genuineness in the strict 
sense in which we have defined this word. 

§ 5. Argument from the Agreement of the Respective Copies of the Four 

Gospels. 

That the Gospels have not been corrupted, but have remained essentially the same as 
they were originally composed, appears, in the first place, from the agreement among 
our present manuscript copies. These were written in different countries, and at differ- 
ent periods. They have been found in places widely remote from each other ; in Asia, 



22 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



in Africa, and from one extremity of Europe to the other. Besides these manuscripts 
of the Greek text there are many manuscripts of ancient versions of the Gospels in 
different languages of each of the three great divisions of the world just mentioned. 
There are, likewise, many manuscripts of the works of the Christian Fathers abounding 
in quotations from the Gospels; and especially manuscripts of ancient commentaries on 
the Gospels, such as those of Origen, who lWed in the third century, and of Chrysostom, 
who lived in the fourth ; in which we find the sacred text quoted, as the different por- 
tions of it are successively the subjects of remark. 

Now, all these different copies of the Gospels, or parts of the Gospels, so numerous 
so various in their character, so unconnected, offering themselves to notice in parts of 
the world so remote from each other, concur in giving us essentially the same text. 
They vary, indeed, more or less from each other ; but their variations have arisen from 
the common accidents of transcription ; or, as regards the versions, partly from errors 
of translation ; or in respect to the quotations by the Fathers, from the circumstance, that 
in ancient as in modern times the language of Scripture was often cited without regard 
to verbal accuracy, in cases where no particular verbal accuracy was required. The 
agreement among the extant copies of any one of the Gospels, or of portions of it, is 
essential ; the disagreements are accidental and trifling, originating in causes which, 
from the nature of things, we know must have been in operation. The same work 
every -where appears ; and, by comparing together different copies, we are able to ascer- 
tain the original text to a great degree of exactness. But as these professed copies thus 
correspond with each other, it follows that they must all be derived from one original 
manuscript, and that such manuscript has been faithfully copied. 

Let us now consider the supposition that one transcriber, in one part of the world, 
would have made certain alterations in his copy, and inserted certain narratives which 
he had collected ; and another, in another jtlace, would have made different alterations, 
and inserted different narratives. Such copies, upon the supposition that this imagined 
license continued, would, when again transcribed, have been again changed and enlarged. 
Copies would have been continually multiplying, diverging more and more from the 
oi'iginal and from each other. ISTo generally -received text would have existed ; none, 
therefore, could have been preserved and handed down. Instead of that agreement 
among the copies of each Gospel which now exists, we should have found every-where 
manuscripts, presenting us with different collections of narratives and sayings, and 
differing, at the same time, in their arrangement of the same facts and in their general 
style of expression. The copies of these writings would have presented the same phe- 
nomena as those of some of the apocryphal books, as, for instance, that called the Gospel 
of the Infancy, which appears in several different forms, this collection of fables having 
been remodeled by one after another according to his fancy. It is, moreover, to be 
taken into consideration, that the transcriber of a manuscript, making such alterations 
as the hypothesis supposes, could by doing so not corrupt the work itself. His copy 
could have had no influence upon the ntimerous cotemporary copies in which the true 
text might be preserved, or into which different alterations might be introduced. It is 
quite otherwise since the invention of printing. Jle who now introduces a corruption 
into the printed edition of a work, introduces it into all the copies of that edition ; and 
if it be the only edition, into all the copies of that work. 

It is evident, from the preceding statements, that the existing copies of each of the 
Gospels have been derived from some common exemplar, faithfully followed by tran- 
scribers. But it may be said that this exemplar was not the original work, as it pro- 
ceeded from the hand of the Evangelist ; that the lineage of our present copies is not 
to be traced so high; but that, at some period, the course of corruption which has been 
described was arrested, and a standard text was selected and determined upon, which 
has served as an archetype for all existing copies, but that this text, thus fixed as the 



THE GENUINENESS OF THE SACRED TEXT. 23 

standard, had already suffered greatly from the corruptions of transcribers, and was very 
different from the original. According to Eichhorn, the Church selected, at the end of 
the second and the beginning of the third century, out of the many Gospels then extant, 
four, which had the greatest marks of credibility and the necessary completeness for 
common use, and labored to procure their general reception among Christians, with the 
suppression of all other Gospels. In order properly to judge of this supposition, let us 
first inquire whether, at the time named, "the Church" had the power to do what is 
ascribed to her. There was no single ecclesiastical government which extended over 
Christians, or over a majority of Christians, or over any considerable portion of their 
number. They had no regular modes of acting in concert, nor any effectual means 
whatever of combining together for a common purpose. Neither the whole body, nor 
a majority of Christians, ever met by delegation to devise common measures. Such an 
event did not take place till a hundred and twenty years after the end of the second 
century, when Christianity had become the established religion of the Eoman Empire, 
and the first general council, that of Nice, was called together by the Emperor Constan- 
tine. At the time of which we are speaking, the Christians were disturbed and unset- 
tled by frequent cruel persecutions. Exclusively of those generally considered as her- 
etics, they were alienated from each other by differences of religious opinion; for it was 
before the end of the second century that Yictor, Bishop of Eome, had excommunicated 
the Eastern Churches. This was the state of the Church at the end of the second cen- 
tury, and yet it is supposed that she came to an agreement to select four out of the 
many manuscript Gospels then in existence, all of which had been exposed to the license 
of transcribers. Of these four no traces are said to be discovered before that time ; but 
it was determined to adopt them for common use, to the prejudice, it would seem, of 
others longer known. There was, as it is supposed, a universal and silent compliance 
with this proposal. Copies of the four new manuscripts and translations of them were 
at once circulated through the world. All others ceased to be transcribed, and suddenly 
disappeared from common notice. Copyers were at the same time checked in their 
former practice of licentious alteration. Thus a revolution was effected in regard to the 
most important sacred books of the Christians, and at the same time better habits were 
introduced among the transcribers of those books. 

Now, who can suppose that any such series of events took place at the end of the 
second century? It is intrinsically incredible. Let us consider for a moment what an 
effort would be required and what resistance must be overcome in order to bring into 
general use among a single nation of Christians at the present day, not other Gospels, 
but simply a nefr and better translation of our present Gospels. In the case under 
consideration, allowing the supposed change to have been possible, it must have met 
with great opposition ; it must have provoked much discussion ; there must have been 
a great deal written about it at the time ; it must have been often referred to afterward, 
especially in the religious controversies which took place; it would have been one of the 
most important events in the history of Christians, and the account of the transaction 
must have been preserved. That there are no traces of it whatever is alone conclusive 
evidence that it never took place. 

Lastly: our present Gospels, it is conceded, were in common use among Christians 
about the end of the second century. The number of manuscripts then in existence 
bore some propoi'tion to the number of Christians. The number of Christians can be 
safely set down at three millions. As few possessions could have been valued by a 
Christian so highly as a copy of the records of that Gospel, for which he was exposing 
himself to the severest sacrifices, and as a common copy of the Gospels could not have 
been very expensive, to judge from a remark of Juvenal respecting the cost of books in 
ancient times, there can be little doubt that copies of the Gospels were owned by a large 
portion of Christians; and, in supposing one copy for every fifty Christians, the estimate 



24 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



is probably much within the truth. This proportion would give us sixty thousand copies 
of the Gospels for three millions of Christians. But whether more or less, if there had 
been important discrepancies among the large number of copies, in common use and 
dispersed over the world, no series of events could either have destroyed the evidence 
of these discrepancies or could have produced the present agreement among existing 
copies, derived, as they are, from those in use at the period in question. The agreement, 
then, at the end of the second century, among the numerous copies of the respective 
Gospels, proves that an archetype of each Gospel had been faithfully followed by the 
transcribers. This archetype, as we have seen, there is no ground for imagining to have 
been any other than the original work of the author of that Gospel. It follows, there- 
fore, that in the interval between the composition of these works and the end of the 
second century, their text did not suffer, as has been fancied, from the licentiousness 
of transcribers. 

§ 6. Arguments Drawn from Other Considerations. 

1. It would have been inconsistent with the common sentiments and practice of 
mankind for transcribers to make such alterations and additions as have been imagined 
in the sacred books which they were copying. Such license has never been attributed 
to the transcribers of the ancient classics, and what we apprehend so little concerning 
other writings, is still less to be apprehended concerning the Gospels, on account of 
their sacred character. Let us adduce a few testimonies in proof of this fact and in 
refutation of the assertion made by Eichhorn, that, " before the invention of printing, 
in transcribing a manuscript, the most arbitrary alterations were considered as allow- 
able, since they affected only an article of private property, written for the use of an 
individual." 

Justin Martyr, in the dialogue which he represents himself as having held with 
Trypho, an unbelieving Jew, charges the Jews with having expunged certain passages 
of the Old Testament relating to Christ. To this Trypho answers that the charge seems 
to him incredible. Justin replies, " It does seem incredible ; for to mutilate the Scrij)- 
tures would be a more fearful crime than the worship of the golden calf, or than the 
sacrifice of children to demons, or than slaying the prophets themselves." Is it credible 
that, when such sentiments existed with regard to the heinousness of attempting an 
adulteration of the Old Testament writings, the Christian Churches would suffer a tam- 
pering with their own sacred books? 

Some of the heretics in the second century made, or were charged with making, alter- 
ations in the Christian Scriptures, in order to accommodate them to their own opinions. 
Of such corruptions of Scripture Dionysius, who was Bishop of Corinth about the year 
170, thus speaks : " I have written epistles at the desire of the brethren. But the 
apostles of the devil have filled them with darnel, taking out some things and adding 
others. Against such a woe is denounced. It is not wonderful, therefore, that some 
have undertaken to corrupt the Scriptures of the Lord, since they have corrupted writ- 
ings not to be compared with them." The meaning of Dionysius is, that the persons 
spoken of having shown their readiness to commit such a crime, it was not strange that 
they should even corrupt the Scriptures, these being works of much higher authority 
than his epistles, and from the falsification of which more advantage was to be gained. 
From the manner in which Dionysius denounces the guilt of some "apostles of the 
devil," in corrupting the Scriptures, we may confidently infer that the Christian 
Churches were not guilty of such a practice. And yet this very passage of Dionysius is 
quoted by Eichhorn in support of his supposition. Equally groundless is his appeal to 
a saying of Celsus. " Celsus," says he, "objects to the Christians that they had changed 
their Gospels three and four times and oftener, as if they were deprived of their senses." 



THE GENUINENESS OF THE SACRED TEXT. 25 

If the charge of Celsus were correctly represented, the first obvious answer would be, 
that such a charge is as little to be credited, upon the mere assertion of Celsus, as vari- 
ous other calumnies of that writer against the Christians, which no one at the present 
day believes. But Celsus does not say what he is represented as saying. He does not 
bring the charge against the Christians generally, but against some Christians. His 
words are preserved in the work composed by Origen, in reply to Celsus ; and, correctly 
rendered, are as follows : " Afterward Celsus says, that some believers, like men driven 
by drunkenness to commit violence on themselves, have altered the Gospel history, since 
its first composition, three times, four times, and oftener, and have refashioned it, so as 
to be able to deny the objections made against it." To this the whole reply of Origen 
is as follows : " I know of none who have altered the Gospel history, except the followers 
of Marcion, of Valentinus, and I think also those of Lucan. But this affords no ground 
for reproach against the religion itself, but against those who have dared to corrupt the 
Gospels. And as it is no reproach against philosophy that there are Sophists, or Epicu- 
reans, or Peripatetics, or any others, who hold false opinions, so also it is no reproach 
against true Christianity that there are those who have altered the Gospels and intro- 
duced heresies foreign from the teaching of Jesus." It is evident that Origen regarded 
the words of Celsus not as a grave charge against the whole body of Christians, but as a 
mere declamatory accusation, which he was not called upon to repel by any elaborate 
reply. Celsus compares the conduct of those whom he charges with altering the Gos- 
pels to that of men impelled by drunkenness to commit violence on themselves. To this 
comparison no objection is to be made ; for the question, whether the early Christians 
altered the Gospels, really resolves itself into the question, Avhether they acted like men 
intoxicated to the evident ruin of their cause. 

To return, then, to the positive testimonies against the supposition of a corruption 
of the Gospel records having been suffered by the Christian Churches, "we have not 
received," says Irenaeus, (contra Haer., 1. ii, c. 1,) "the knowledge of the way of our 
salvation by any others than those through whom the Gospel has come down to us, which 
Gospel they first preached, and afterward, by the will of God, transmitted to us in writ- 
ing, that it might be the foundation and pillar of our faith." He immediately proceeds 
to speak particularly of the composition of the four Gospels, referring them to the authors 
to whom they are commonly ascribed. These books he afterward represents as the most 
important books of Scripture, (lb., 1. iii, c. 11, § 8,) and the Scriptures he calls "oracles of 
God." (lb., 1. i, c. 8, §1.) He says, "We know that the Scriptures are perfect, as dic- 
tated by the Logos of God and his Spirit." (lb., 1. ii, e. 28, § 2.) 

Clement, of Alexandria, also calls the Scriptures divinely inspired, and speaks of the 
four Gospels, in contradistinction from all other accounts of Christ, as having been 
handed down to the Christians of his age. (Stromat., 1. iii, § 13.) Tertullian manifests the 
same reverence for the Scriptures, and especially for the Gospels, as his cotemporaries, 
Irenaeus and Clement. He, like them, quotes the Gospels as works of decisive authority, 
in the same manner as any modern theologian might do. He wrote much against the 
heretic Marcion, whom he charges with having rejected the other Gospels, and having 
mutilated the Gospel of Luke, to conform it to his system. This leads him to make some 
statements which have a direct bearing on the present subject. "I affirm," says Ter- 
tullian, "that not only in the. Churches founded by apostles, but in all which have 
fellowship with them, that Gospel of Luke, which we so steadfastly defend, has been 
received from its first publication." "The same authority," he adds, "of the apostolical 
Churches will support the other Gospels, which, in like manner, Ave have from them, 
conformably to their copies." (Adv. Marcion, 1. iv, §5.) "They," he says, "who were 
resolved to teach otherwise than the truth, were under a necessity of new modeling the 
records of the doctrine." "As they could not have succeeded in corrupting the doctrine 
without corrupting its records, so we could not have preserved and transmitted the 



26 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



doctrine in its integrity, but by preserving the integrity of its records." (De Praescr. 
Haeret., § 28.) 

The passages quoted show the state of opinion and feeling among Christians during 
the first two centuries, and it is clear that those who entertained these sentiments wo aid 
neither make nor permit intentional alterations in the Gospels. 

2. About the close of the second century, different Christian writers express strong 
censure of the mutilations and changes which they charge some heretics, particularly 
Marcion, with having made in the Gospels and other books of the New Testament. 
Some passages to this effect have been quoted; it is unnecessary to adduce others, because 
the fact is well known and universally admitted. But if our Gospels had not existed in 
their present form till the close of the second century, if before that time their text had 
been fluctuating, and assuming in different copies a different form, such as transcribers 
might choose to give it, those by whom they were used could not have ventured to speak 
with such confidence of the alterations of the heretics. 

3. We happen to have, in the words of a single writer, decisive evidence that no such 
differences as would imply a mutilation or corruption of the text ever existed in the 
manuscripts of the canonical Gospels. Origen was born A. D. 185, and flourished during 
the first half of the third century. He was particularly skilled in the criticism of the 
Scriptures. He had the means of consulting various manuscripts of the Gospels, of which 
he made a critical use, noticing their various readings. His notices are principally found 
in his Commentaries on the Gospels. If transcribers had indulged in such licentious 
alterations as have been supposed, he could not have been ignorant of them. But the 
various readings he adduces give a convincing proof that the manuscripts of his time 
differed, to say the least, as little from each other as the manuscripts now extant, and, 
consequently, that before his time there was the same care to preserve the original text 
as there has been since. This conviction is not weakened by a passage in his writings, 
which may seem at first view to favor the opposite opinion. Origen expresses his doubts 
in the genuineness of the words, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," (Matt. 
xix, 19,) and says: "But if it were not that in many other passages there is a difference 
among copies, so that all those of the Gospel of Matthew do not agree together, and so 
also as it regards the other Gospels, it might well seem irreverent in any one to suspect 
that the precept has been inserted here without its having been mentioned by the Savior. 
But it is evident that there exists much difference among copies; partly from the care- 
lessness of some transcribers, partly from the rashness of others in altering improperly 
what they find written, and partly from those revisers who add or strike out according 
to their own judgment." (Com. in Matt., torn, xv, §14.) In this passage there is no 
reference to the intentional corruptions of the heretics, in which case another Greek 
word would have been used for "altering" and for "revisers;" it refers only to the well- 
known, common causes of error in the transcription of manuscripts. We learn from it 
that transcribers were sometimes careless ; that they sometimes improperly altered from 
conjecture a reading in the copy before them, which they fancied to be erroneous; and 
that those whose business was to revise manuscripts after transcription, for the purpose 
of correcting errors, did sometimes, in the want of proper critical apparatus, rely too 
much upon their mere judgment concerning what was probably the true text. His 
language in speaking of the difference among the manuscripts is even not as strong as 
that used by some modern critics concerning the disagreement among our present copies, 
which we know does not involve any essential mutilation or corruption. The passage of 
Origen, then, shows, on the one hand, that he did not regard the Gospels as having been 
exposed to any other causes of error than those common in the transcription of manu- 
scripts; on the other hand, that he had no disposition to keep out of view or to extenuate 
the differences among the copies extant in his time. We may, therefore, be satisfied that 
none of more importance existed than what we find noticed by him. 



THE GENUINENESS OF THE SACRED TEXT. 27 

We may reason in a similar manner from all the notices in ancient writers relating 
to the text of the Gospels. Nothing can be alleged from their writings to prove any 
greater difference among the copies extant in their time than what is found among those 
which we now possess. It may here be proper to refer to an objection which Eichhorn 
makes. He says : " Clement, of Alexandria, at the end of the second century, speaks of 
those who corrupted the Gospels, and ascribes it to them; that at Matthew v, 10, instead 
of the words, ' for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,' there was found in some manuscripts, 
1 for they shall be perfect ;' and in others, ' for they shall have a place where they shall not be 
persecuted' " This statement is erroneous. Clement does not speak of those who cor- 
rupted, but of those who paraphrased the Gospels ; nor does he give the words alleged 
by him, as various readings in manuscripts of the Gospels. Quoting the original text 
incorrectly, from memory, in these words, " Blessed are they who are persecuted for 
righteousness' sake, for they shall be called the sons of God," he adds, " or as some, who 
have paraphrased the Gospels, express it : Blessed are they who are persecuted for right- 
eousness' sake, for they shall be perfect ; and blessed are they who are persecuted for my 
sake, for they shall attain a place where they shall not be persecuted." Clement evi- 
dently expresses no indignation against those of whom he speaks, as he would have done 
if the passages quoted had assumed three such different forms in the manuscripts which 
he had seen ; for that would prove a general license of corruption in his time. 

4. If our present Gospels had been the result of successive additions, made by differ- 
ent hands to a common basis, there would have been a marked diversity of style in 
different portions of the same Gospel, so that these works would have been very unlike 
what they are now. We should have perceived clear traces of different writers, having 
greater or less command of expression, and accustomed to a different use of language. 
But Avhen we examine the Gospels, there is nothing which discovers marks of their 
having been subjected to such a process of interpolation. On the contrary, there is 
decisive evidence that each is the work of an individual, and has been preserved, as 
it was written by him. The dialect, the style, and the modes of narration in the Gospels, 
generally, have a very marked and peculiar character. Each Gospel, also, is distin- 
guished from the others by individual peculiarities in the use of language, and other 
characteristics exclusively its own. 

5. In those cases in which we have good reason to suspect an ancient writing of being 
spurious altogether, or of having received spurious additions, the fact is almost always 
betrayed by something in the character of the writing itself. Spurious works and inter- 
polations in authentic works are discovered by something not congruous to the character 
of the pretended author, by a style different from his own, by an implied reference to 
opinions or events of a later age, or by some other bearing and purpose not consistent 
with the time when they are pretended to have been written. Traces of the times when 
they were really composed are almost always apparent. This must have been the case 
with the Gospels if they had been subjected to alterations and additions from different 
editors and transcribers with different views and feelings, more or less affected by opin- 
ions and circumstances which had sprung up in their own times. But no traces of a 
later age than that which we assign for ihe'iv composition appear in the Gospels. 



28 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



PART II. 

THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 
§7. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

By the authenticity of the Gospels we understand that they were written by the men 
whose names they bear, who were partly eye-witnesses, partly persons cotemporaneous with the 
events narrated. To declare the Gospels authentic in this sense has been pronounced by 
infidels to be " an assumption originating from the titles which the Biblical books bear in 
our canon." We grant that little reliance can be placed on these titles or headings, but 
it is absurd to say that these headings originated the belief that the books were written 
by the men whose names they bear ; for before the titles were attached, the belief must 
have existed. There is not the slightest pretense for insinuating that there was ever any 
doubt as to the authorship of any one of the historical books of the New Testament ; 
which are as uniformly ascribed to the writers whose names they bear as the " Return of 
the Ten Thousand " to Xenophon, or the " Lives of the Csesars " to Suetonius. There is, 
indeed, far more and stronger testimony concerning the authenticity of the four Gospels 
than exists with respect to the works of almost any classical writer; for it is a rare 
occurrence for classical works to be distinctly quoted, or for their authors to be men- 
tioned by name within a century of the time of their publication. 



OHAPTEE I. 

THE OUTWARD HISTORICAL TESTIMONIES. 
§ 8. The Testimony oe the Apostolical Fathers. 

By the Apostolical Fathers we understand those early Christian writers who lived 
wholly or in part in the very age of the apostles, and were more or less conversant with 
them. These are : Clement, of Borne, mentioned (Phil, iv, 3) as a fellow-laborer of Paul, 
afterward Bishop of Rome ; Barnabas, of Cyprus, frequently mentioned in the New 
Testament as a co-laborer of Paul ; Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch in Syria, where he is 
said to have been ordained by Peter; Polycarp, a disciple of John, ordained by him 
Bishop of Smyrna, where he died a martyr ; Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia, 
the companion of Polycarp, (he belongs, however, rather to the sub-apostolic age, as we 
shall show at another place.) Of these Apostolical Fathers we have only a few writings 
and fragments preserved. Hermas, the author of " the Shepherd," is generally reckoned 
among the Apostolical Fathers, and assumed to have been saluted by Paul, (Rom. xvi, 
14 ;) but it is more probable that " the Shepherd " had a later origin. 

The learned Dr. Lardner has carefully collated all the passages in which these writers 
have made any allusion to the canonical books of the New Testament. Their allusions 
to the Epistles are far more numerous and direct than those to the Gospels. The latter 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 29 



have been subjected by Eichhorn and others to a very rigid scrutiny, for the purpose of 
destroying the evidence they furnish that our Gospels were known to the Apostolical 
Fathers. It is said, that " by far the greater part of them are so general in the allusions 
they are supposed to make to passages occurring in the Gospels, that no weight can be 
attached to them." To this it might be sufficient to reply, that the very peculiarity of 
these allusions, instead of invalidating the evidence, furnishes a very strong argument 
in favor of the existence of the Gospels in their day. "When does an author," says Dr. 
W. L. Alexander, in his Christ and Christianity, " feel himself at liberty to deal in gen- 
eral allusions to other writings, and, instead of formally citing them, to invigorate his 
own style, or point his own sentences, by a few words borrowed from them, or a passing 
hint at something they contain? Is it not when he may safely take for granted the 
familiarity of his readers with the authors he thus passingly lauds? and does not this fea- 
ture in the writings of any author invariably prompt the inference, that he has assumed 
the fact of such familiarity? .... What confirms this inference is, that exactly in the 
same way of general allusion and partial citation do these Apostolic Fathers frequently 
make use of the writings of the Old Testament and of the Epistles of the New." 

It is true, that with the exception of what Papias affirms concerning the authorship 
of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, and with the exception of the dii;ect appeals 
to Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians, Ephesians, and Philippians, by Clement, Ignatius, 
and Polycarp, the Apostolical Fathers bear no formal testimony of the existence of the 
canonical books of the New Testament; but their indirect testimony is sufficiently 
strong to satisfy every reasonable demand, and it is even of more value than a direct 
one would be, inasmuch as it is beyond all suspicion of design. How fully it accords 
with the very nature of their position is very clearly set forth by Westcott, in his excel- 
lent work on the Canon of the New Testament, from which we shall draw most of what 
we have to say in this whole chapter. 

"That the Aj>ostolical Fathers," he says, "do not appeal to the Apostolic Writings 
more frequently and more distinctly, springs from the very nature of their position. 
Those who had heard the living voice of apostles were unlikely to appeal to their written 
words. It is an instinct which always makes us prefer any personal connection to the 
more remote relationship of books. Thus Papias tells us that he sought to learn, from 
every quarter, the traditions of those who had conversed with the elders, thinking that 
he should not profit so much by the narratives of books as by the living and abiding 
voice of the Lord's disciples. So, again, Irenseus in earnest language tells with what 
joy he listened to the words of Polycarp, when he told of his intercourse with those who 
had seen the Lord; and how those who had been with Christ spoke of his mighty works 
and teachings." 

With regard to the references of the Fathers to the books of the New Testament, in 
general, Westcott remarks: "The words of Scripture are inwrought into the texture of 
the books, and not parceled out into formal quotations. They are not arranged with 
argumentative effect, but used as the natural expression of Christian truths. Now, this 
use of the Holy Scripture shows at least that they were even then widely known, and so 
guarded by a host of witnesses — that their language was transferred into the common 
dialect — that it was as familiar to those first Christians as to us, who use it as uncon- 
sciously as they did in writing or conversation. If the quotations of the Old Testament 
in the Apostolic Fathers were uniformly explicit and exact, this mode of argument 
would lose much of its force. With the exception of Barnabas, it does not appear that 
they have made a single reference by name to any one of the books of the Old Testa- 
ment. Clement uses the general formula, 'It is written,' or, even more frequently, 'God 
saith,' or, simply, 'One saith.' The two quotations from the Old Testament in Ignatius 
are simply preceded by 'It is written.' Exactness of quotation was foreign to the spirit 
of their writinff." 



30 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



Respecting the coincidences between the Apostolic Fathers and the canonical Gospels, 
in particular, Mr. Westcott says: "From the nature of the case, casual coincidences of 
language can not be brought forward in the same manner to prove the use of a history 
as of a letter. The same facts and words, especially if they be recent and striking, may 
be preserved in several narratives. Eeferences in the sub-apostolic age to the discourses 
or actions of our Lord, as we find them recorded in the Gospels, show that what they 
relate was then so far held to be true ; but it does not necessarily follow that they were 
already in use, and the precise source of the passage in question. On the contrary, the 
mode in which Clement refers to our Lord's teaching, 'the Lord said,' not 'saith,' seems 
to imply that he referred to tradition, and not to any written accounts, for words most 
closely resembling those which are still found in our Gospels. The testimony of the 
Apostolic Fathers is to the substance, and not to the authenticity of the Gospels. And 
in this respect they have an important work to do. They witness that the great outlines 
of the life and teachings of our Lord were familiarly known to all from the first: they 
prove that Christianity rests truly on a historic basis. The 'Gospel' which the Fathers 
announce includes all the articles of the ancient creeds. 'Christ,' we read, 'our God, the 
eternal Word, the Lord and Creator of the world, who was with the Father before time 
began, at the end humbled himself, and came down from heaven, and was manifested in 
the flesh, and was born of the Virgin Mary, of the race of David, according to the flesh; 
and a star of exceeding brightness appeared at his birth. Afterward, he was baptized 
by John, to fulfill all righteousness; and then, speaking his Father's message, he invited 
not the righteous, but sinners, to come to him. At length, under Herod and Pontius 
Pilate, he was crucified, and vinegar and gall was offered him to drink. But on the first 
day of the week he rose from the dead, the first-fruits of the grave; and many prophets 
were raised by him for whom they had Avaited. After his resurrection he ate with his 
disciples, and showed them that he was not an incorporeal spirit. And he ascended into 
heaven, and sat down on the right hand of the Father, and thence he shall come to 
judge the quick and the dead.' Such, in their own words, is the testimony of the earliest' 
Fathers to the life of the Savior. Pound these facts their doctrines are grouped; on the 
truth of the incarnation, and the passion, and the resurrection of Christ, their hopes 
were grounded." 

Mr. Westcott, in conclusion, makes the following remarks on the age of the Apostolic 
Fathers : " If the extent of the evidence of the Apostolic Fathers to the books of the New 
Testament is exactly what might be expected from men who had seen the Apostles, who 
had heard them, and who had treasured up their writings as the genuine records of their 
teaching, the character of their evidence is equally in accordance with their peculiar 
position. It will be readily seen that we can not expect to find the New Testament 
quoted in the first age as authoritative, in the same manner as the Old Testament. 
There could not, indeed, be any occasion for an appeal to the testimony of the Gospels, 
when the history of the faith was still within the memory of many; and most of the 
epistles were of little use in controversy, for the earliest heretics denied the apostleship 
of St. Paul. The Old Testament, on the contrary, was common ground; and the ancient 
system of Biblical interpretation furnished the Christian with ready arms. When these 
failed it was enough for him to appeal to the death and resurrection of Christ, which 

were at once the sum and the proof of his faith The successors of the 

apostles did not, we admit, recognize that the written histories of the Lord, and the 
scattered epistles of his first disciples, would form a sure and sufficient source and test 
of doctrine, when the current tradition had grown indistinct or corrupt. Conscious of 
a life in the Christian body, and realizing the power of its Head, as later ages can not 
do, they did not feel that the apostles were providentially charged to express once for 
all in their writings the essential forms of Christianity, even as the prophets had fore- 
shadowed them But they had certainly an indistinct sense that their work 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 31 

was essentially different from that of their predecessors. They attributed to them 
power and wisdom to which they themselves made no claim. Each one of those teach- 
ers, who stood nearest to the writers of the New Testament, plainly contrasted his writ- 
ings with theirs, and definitely placed himself on a lower level." 

The direct testimony of Papias to the authorship of the Gospels of Matthew and 
Mark is as follows: "Now, Matthew composed the oracles in Hebrew, and each one 
interpreted them as he was able. Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote 
accurately whatever he remembered, though he did not (record) in order that which was 
either said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him ; but 
subsequently, as I said, (attached himself to) Peter, who used to frame his teaching 
to meet the (immediate) wants (of his hearers); and not as making a connected narration 
of the Lord's discourses. So Mark committed no error, as he wrote down some particu- 
lars just as he recalled them to mind. For he took heed to one thing — to omit none of 
the facts that he heard, and to state nothing falsely in (his narrative of) them." (Euseb. 
H. E.) The opinions are divided on the question, whether Papias was really a disciple of 
the apostle John, or only of a certain John the Presbyter, whom he calls a disciple of our 
Lord. We shall examine this question and the testimony of Papias in the special Intro- 
duction to the Gospel of Matthew, inasmuch as it is connected with other questions, 
while the authenticity of all the four Gospels can be proved independently of the testi- 
mony of Papias. 

§ 9. The Testimony of the Fathers in the Sub-Apostolic Age, from A. D. 120-170. 

In this age the Church had to maintain its ground amid systematic persecution, 
organized heresies, and philosophic controversy. The apostolic tradition was insufficient 
to silence or condemn false teachers who had been trained in the schools of Athens or 
Alexandria, but new champions were raised up to meet the emergency; and some of 
these did not scruple to maintain the doctrines of Christianity in the garb of philoso- 
phers. As Christianity was shown to be the true completion of Judaism before the 
Church was divided from the Synagogue, so it was well that it should be clearly set forth 
as the center to which old philosophers converged before it was declared to supersede 
them. This, then, was one great work of the time, that apologists should proclaim 
Christianity to be the Divine answer to the questionings of heathendom, as well as the 
antitype to the law and to the hope of the prophets. To a great extent the task was 
independent of the direct use of Scripture. Those who discharged it had to deal not so 
much with the words as with the thoughts of the apostles, not so much with the records 
as with the facts of Christ's life. Even the later apologists abstained from quoting Scrip- 
ture in their addresses to heathens ; and the practice was still more alien from the object 
and position of the earliest. The arguments of philosophy and history were brought 
forward first, that men might be better prepared for the light of revelation. The litera- 
ture of this age included almost every form of prose composition — letters, chronicles, 
essays, apologies, visions, tales ; but although it was thus varied, the fragments of it 
which are left scarcely do more than witness to its extent. Omitting what can be gath- 
ered from the scanty fragments of the Athenian Apologists, Quadratus and Aristides, 
from the letter to Diognetus, from the Jewish Apologists, from Dionysius, Hernias, Hege- 
sippus, etc., we will confine ourselves to the all-sufficient testimony of Justin Martyr, to 
whom the first rank must be assigned among the apologetical writers of the second cen- 
tury. He was of Greek descent, but his family had been settled for two generations in 
the Eoman colony of Flavia Neapolis, near the site of the ancient Sichem, where he Avas 
born at the close of the first century. He died as martyr in the year 166. After he had, 
as a heathen, successively sought after truth in the various philosophical systems, he 
became, in the thirtieth year of his life, a convert to Christianity, which, while continu- 



32 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



ing to wear his philosopher's cloak, he enthusiastically defended by writings and 
discussions. 

Eusebius has given a list of such books of his as had come to his own knowledge. 
Of the writings which bear his name now, two, Apologies and the Dialogue with Trypho, 
are genuine beyond all doubt. They exhibit a mass of references to the Gospel narra- 
tives. The first thing that must strike any one who examines a complete collection of the 
passages in question is the general coincidence in range and contents with our Gospels. 
Nothing, for instance, furnished wider scope for apocryphal narratives than the history 
of the infancy of our Lord ; yet Justin's account of the infancy is as free from legendary 
admixture as it is full of incidents recorded by the Evangelists. He does not appear 
to have known any thing more than they knew. The style and language of the quota- 
tions which he makes from Christ's teaching agree no less exactly with those of the 
Evangelist. He quotes frequently from memory; he interweaves the words which we 
find separately given by Matthew, Mark, and Luke; he condenses, combines, trans- 
poses the language of our Lord as they have recorded it; he makes use of phrases 
characteristic of different Gospels; yet, with very few exceptions, he preserves through 
all these changes the marked peculiarities of the New Testament phraseology, without 
the admixture of any foreign element. We have observed that the quotations from the 
Gospel history in the early Fathers are almost uniformly anonymoiis; the words of 
Christ were as a living voice in the Church, apart from any written record. Justin like- 
wise habitually represents Christ as speaking, and not the Evangelist as relating, his dis- 
courses; but he is the first who distinctly refers to what he calls "The Memoirs of the 
Apostles," in which he found written "all things concerning Jesus Christ." 

The peculiar objects which he had in view in his extant writings did not suggest 
even if they did not exclude, any minute description of these records. It would have 
added nothing to the vivid picture of Christianity which he drew for the heathen to have 
quoted with exact precision the testimony of this or that apostle, even if such a mode of 
quotation had been usual. One thing they might require to know, and that he tells them 
that the words of Christ were still the text of Christian instruction, that the "Memoirs 
of the Apostles" were still read, together with the writings of the prophets, in their 
weekly services, (Ap., i, 87.) So, on the other hand, the great difficulty in a controversy 
with a Jew was to show that the humiliation and death of Christ were reconcilable with 
the Messianic prophecies. The chief facts were here confessed; and in other points it 
was enough for the apologist to assert, generally, that the Memoirs which he quoted 
rested upon apostolic authority, (Dial., c. 103.) The manner in which Justin alludes to 
the Memoirs of the Apostles in his first Apology, and in his Dialogue with Trypho, 
confirms what has just been said. If his mode of reference were not modified by the 
nature of his subject, it would surely have been the same in both. As it is, there is 
a marked difference, and exactly such as might have been expected. In the Apology, 
which contains nearly fifty allusions to the Gospel history, he speaks only twice of the 
apostolic authorship of his Memoirs, and in one other place mentions them generally, 
(Ap., i, 8G; 87; 33.) In the Dialogue, which contains about seventy allusions, he quotes 
them ten times as "the Memoirs of the Apostles," and in five other places as "the 
Memoirs." 

This difference is still more striking if examined closely. Every quotation of our 
Lord's words in the Apology is simply introduced by the phrases, "Thus Christ said," or 
"taught," or "exhorted." His words were their own witness. For the public events of 
his life Justin refers to the Em-ollment of Quirinius, and the Acts of Pilate. He quotes 
the "Gospels" only when he must speak of things beyond the range of common history. 
Standing before a Roman emperor as the apologist of the Christians, he confines himself, 
as far as possible, to common ground; and if he is compelled for illustration to quote the 
books of the Christians, he takes care to show that they were recognized by the Church, 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 



and no private documents of his own. Thus, in speaking of the Annunciation, he says: 
"And the angel of God, sent to the Virgin at that season, announced to her glad tidings, 
saying, Behold thou shalt conceive of the Holy Spirit, and bear a son, and he shall be 
called the Son of the Highest; and thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his 
people from their sins, as those who have Avritten memoirs of all things concerning our 
Savior Jesus Christ taught us, whom we believed, since also the prophetic Spirit said that 
this would come to pass." (Ap., i, 33.) So, again, when explaining the celebration of 
the Eucharist, he adds : " The apostles, in the Memoirs made by them, which are called 
Gospels, have handed down that it was thus enjoined on them." (Ap., i, 66.) And once 
more, when describing the Christian service, he notices that "the Memoirs of the Apos- 
tles, or the writings of the prophets, are read as long as the time admits." (Ap., i, 67.) 

There is no further mention of the Memoirs in the Apology. In the Dialogue the 
case was somewhat different. Trypho was himself acquainted with the Gospel, (Dial., c. 
10,) and Justin's language becomes proportionally more exact. The words of our Lord 
are still quoted very often, simply as His words, without any acknowledgment of a writ- 
ten record ; but from time to time, when reference is made to words of more special 
moment, so to speak, it is added that they are so " written in the Gospel." In one pas- 
sage the contrast between the substance of Christ's teaching and the record of it is 
brought out? very clearly. After speaking of the death of John the Baptist, Justin adds : 
"Wherefore also our Christ when on earth told those who said that Blias must come 
before Christ: 'Elias indeed will come, and will restore all things; but I say to you that 
Elias has come already, and they knew him not, but did to him whatsoever they listed.' 
And it is written, ' Then understood the disciples that he spake to them concerning John 
the Baptist.' " (Dial., c. 49 ; Matt, xvii, 13.) In another place it appears that Justin 
refers particularly to one out of the Memoirs. " The mention of the fact," he says, 
" that Christ changed the name of Peter, one of the apostles, and that the event has been 
written in his (Peter's) Memoirs, together with His having changed the name of two 
other brethren, who were sons of Zebedee, to that of Boanerges, tended to signify that 
He was the same through whom the surname Israel was given to Jacob, and Joshua to 
Hoshoa." (Dial., c. 106 ; Mark iii, 16, 17.) ISTow, the surname given to James and John is 
only found at present in one of our Gospels, and there it is mentioned in immediate con- 
nection with the change of Peter's name. That Gospel is the Gospel of Mark, which, 
by the universal voice of antiquity, was referred to the authority of Peter. That 
Justin found in his Memoirs facts at present peculiar to Luke's narrative, is equally 
clear. "And Jesus, as he gave up his spirit upon the cross," he writes, "said, Eather, 
into thy hands I commend my spirit, as I learned from the Memoirs." 

But this is not all : in his Apology, Justin speaks of the Memoirs generally as written 
by the apostles. In the Dialogue his words are more precise : " In the Memoirs, which I 
say were composed by the apostles and those who followed them, [it is written] that 
sweat as drops (of blood) streamed down (from Jesus), as He was praying and saying, 
Let this cup, if it be possible, pass away from me." The description, it will be seen, 
precedes the quotation of a passage found in Luke, the follower of an apostle, and not 
an apostle himself. Some such fact as this is needed to explain why Justin dis 
tinguishes at this particular time the authorship of the records which he used. And 
no short account would apply more exactly to our present Gospels than that which 
he gives. Two of them were written by apostles, two by their followers. There were 
many apocryphal gospels, but it is not known that any one of them bore the name 
of a follower of the apostles. The application of Justin's words to our Gospels seems 
indeed absolutely necessary when they are compared with those of Tertullian, who 
says, (Adv. Marcion, iv, 2:) "We lay down as a principle, first, that the Evangelic 
Instrument has apostles for its authors, on whom this charge of publishing the Gospel 
was imposed by the Lord himself: that if [it includes the writings of] apostolic 



Si GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



men also, still they were not alone, but [wrote] with [the help of] apostles and after 
[the teachings of] apostles In fine, John and Matthew out of the num- 
ber of the apostles implant faith in us, Luke and Mark out of the number of their 
followers refresh it." This, then, is the sum of what Justin says of the Memoirs 
of the apostles. They were many, and yet one : they were called gospels : they con- 
tained a record of all things concerning Jesus Christ : they were admitted by Christians 
generally : they were read in their public services : they were of apostolic authority, 
though not exclusively of apostolic authorship : they were composed in part by apostles, 
and in part by their followers. And further than this, we gather that they related facts 
only mentioned at present by one or other of the Evangelists : that thus they were inti- 
mately connected with each one of the synoptic Gospels: that they contained nothing, 
as far as Justin expressly quotes them, which our Gospels do not now substantially 
contain. Up to this point of our inquiry the identification of his Memoirs with our 
Gospels seems to be as reasonable as it is natural. But on the other hand, it is said that 
there are objections to this identification ; namely, that Justin no where mentions the 
Evangelists by name : that the text of his quotations differs materially from that of the 
Gospels : that he introduces apocryphal additions into his narrative. And each of these 
statements must be examined before the right weight can be assigned to these general 
coincidences between the books in subject, language, and character of which we have 
hitherto spoken. 

It has been already shown that there were peculiar circumstances in Justin's case 
which rendered any definite quotation of the Evangelists unlikely and unsuitable, even 
if such a mode of quotation had been common at the time. But in fact, when he referred 
to written records of Christ's life and words he made an advance beyond which the later 
Apologists rarely jn-oceeded. Tatian, his scholar, has several allusions to passages con- 
tained in the Gospels of Matthew and John, but they are all anonymous. Athenagoras 
quotes the words of our Lord, as they stand in Matthew, four times, and appears to 
allude to passages in Mark and John, but he no where mentions the name of an Evangel- 
ist. Theophilus, in his books to Autolycus, cites five or six precepts from "the Gospel," 
or the " Evangelic Voice," and once only mentions John as " a man moved by the Holy 
Spirit," quoting the prologue to his Gospel ; though he elsewhere classes the Evangelists 
with the prophets as all inspired by the same Spirit. In Hermias and Minucius Felix 
there appears to be no reference at all to the Gospels. The usage of Tertullian is very 
remarkable. In his other books he quotes the Gospels continually, and, though rarely, 
mentions every Evangelist by name ; but in his Apology, while he gives a general view 
of Christ's life and teaching, and speaks of the Scriptures as the food and the comfort 
of the Christian, he no where cites the Gospels, and scarcely exhibits any coincidence of 
language with them. Clement of Alexandria, as is well known, investigated the relation 
of the synoptic Gospels to that of John, and his use of the words of Scripture is constant 
and extensive ; and yet in his " Exhortation to Gentiles," while he quotes every Gospel, 
and all, except Mark, repeatedly, he only mentions John by name, and that but once. 
(Protrep., § 59.) Cyprian, in his address to Demetrian, quotes words of our Lord as "given 
by Matthew and John, but says nothing of the source from which he derived them. At a 
still later time Lactantius blamed Cyprian for quoting Scripture in a controversy with a 
heathen ; and though he shows in his Institutions an intimate acquaintance with the 
writings of the Evangelists, he mentions John only by name, quoting the beginning of his 
Gospel. Arnobius, again, makes no allusion to the Gospels ; and Eusebius, to whose zeal 
we owe most of what is known of the history of the New Testament, though he quotes 
the Gospels eighteen times in his " Introduction to Christian Evidences," (Prseparatio 
Evangelica,) yet always does so without referring to the Evangelist of whose writings he 
made use. 

It has been further objected, that Justin's citations differ considerably from the 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 35 

corresponding passages in the Gospels. But they differ simply from his having sometimes 
comhined two passages from different Gospels into one, or from his having given the 
substance of the passage rather than the exact words; for both of which practices he has 
the example of the apostle Paul in his citations from the Old Testament. Such modes of 
dealing with books are common to writers of all ages; and, as Justin exhibits the same 
practice in reference to the Old Testament, and to profane writers, it is groundless to 
urge the trifling discrepancies which exist between his quotations and the received text 
of the Evangelists as any evidence that it was not from them he quoted.* 

The last — and, if it could be substantiated, the most weighty — objection to our identi- 
fying Justin's Memoirs of the Apostles with our four Gospels is the allegation, that he 
introduced apocryphal additions into his narrative. Some of his quotations, it is said, 
exhibit coincidences with fragments of heretical gospels. That quotations made by 
memory from the written Gospels should exhibit some points of partial resemblance 
to apocryphal gospels is very natural. For these apocryphal gospels were not mere cre- 
ations of the imagination, but narratives based on the original oral Gospel, of which the 
written Gospel was the authoritative record. The same cause might, therefore, very natu- 
rally lead to the introduction of a common word, a characteristic phrase, or a supplement- 
ary trait. But it is further objected that Justin's quotations differ not only in language, 
but also in substance, from our Gospels; that he attributes sayings to our Lord which 
they do not contain, and narrates events which are either not mentioned by the Evan- 
gelists, or recorded by them with serious variations from his account. It is enough to 
answer, that he never does so when he proposes to quote the Apostolic Memoirs. Like 
other early Fathers, he was familiar by tradition with the words of our Lord which are 
not embodied in the Gospel. Like them, he may have been acquainted with details of 
His life treasured up by such as the Elder of Ephesus, who might have heard John. 
But whatever use he makes of this knowledge, he never refers to the Apostolic Memoirs 
for any thing which is not substantially found in our Gospels. 

Justin's account of the baptism, which might seem an exception to this statement, 
really confirms and explains it. It is well known that there was a belief long current, 
that the heavenly voice addressed our Lord in the words of the Psalm, which have ever 
been applied to him: "Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee." Augustine 
mentions the reading as current in his time; and the words are found at present in the 
Cambridge MS., (D,) and in the old Latin version. Justin might then have found them 
in the MS. of Luke, which he used; but the form of his reference is remarkable. When 
speaking of the temptation he says: "For the devil, of whom I just now spoke, as soon as 
he [Christ] went up from the Eiver Jordan, — when the voice had been addressed to him, 
'Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee,' — is described in the Memoirs of the 
Apostles as having come to him and tempted him, so far as to say to him, Worship me." 
The definite quotation is of that which is confessedly a part of the Evangelic text; it is 
evident, from the construction of the sentence, that Justin gives no authority for the dis- 
puted clause. 

This apparent mixture of two narratives is still more remarkable in the mode in 
which Justin introduces the famous legend of the fire kindled in Jordan when Christ 
descended into the water: "When Jesus came to the Jordan, where John was baptizing, 
when he descended to the water, both a fire was kindled in the Jordan, and the apostles 
of Christ himself recorded that the Holy (Spirit as a dove lighted upon him." Here the 
contrast is complete. The witness of the apostles is claimed for that which our Gospels 
relate; but Justin affirms, on his own authority, a fact which, however significant in the 
symbolism of the East, is yet without any support from the canonical history. 

*A11 the quotations of Justin have heen subjected to a thorough critical examination by Mr. Westcott in 
his "Canon," a work not published in this country, to which we are indebted for all our historical testimonies. 



36 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



Justin lived at the period of transition from a traditional to a written Gospel, and Lis 
testimony is exactly fitted to the position which he held. He refers to hooks, hut more 
frequently he appears to bring forward words which were currently circulated rather 
than what he had privately read. In both respects his witness to our Gospels is most 
important. For it has been shown that his definite quotations from the Memoirs are so 
exactly accordant with the text of the Synoptists, as it stands now, or as it was read at 
the close of the second century, that there can be no doubt that he was familiar with 
their writings as well as with the contents of them. And the wide and minute agree- 
ment of what he says of the life and teaching of our Lord with what they record of 
it, proves that his knowledge of the Gospel history was derived from a tradition they 
had molded and controlled, if not from the habitual and exclusive use of the books 
themselves. 

He states that the Memoirs of the Apostles were read in the weekly services of the 
Church on the same footing as the writings of the prophets ; or, in other words, that they 
enjoyed the rank of Scripture. And since he speaks of their ecclesiastical use without 
any restriction, it is natural to believe that he alludes to definite books which were 
generally held in such esteem, and had acquired a firm place in the common life of Chris- 
tians. He could not at any rate have been ignorant of the custom of the Churches of 
Italy and Asia ; and if his description were true of any it must have been true of those. 
Is it then possible to suppose, that within twenty or thirty years after his death, these 
Gospels should have been replaced by others similar and yet distinct? that he should 
speak of one set of books, as if they were permanently incorporated into the Christian 
services, and that those who might have been his scholars should speak exactly in 
the same terms of another collection, as if they had had no rivals within the orthodox 
j>ale? that the substitution should have been effected in such a manner that no record 
of it has been preserved, while smaller analogous reforms have been duly chronicled ? 
The complication of historical difficulties is overwhelming ; and the alternative is that 
which has already been justified on critical grounds, the belief that when Justin spoke 
of apostolic memoirs or gospels, he meant the Gospels which were enumerated in the 
early anonymous canon, and whose mutual relations were eloquently expounded by 
Irenasus. 

This, then, appears to be established, both by external and internal evidence, that 
Justin's "gospels" can be identified with those of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. His 
references to John are uncertain ; but this, as has been already remarked, follows from 
the character of the fourth Gospel. It was unlikely that he should quote its -peculiar 
teaching in apologetic writings addressed to Jews and heathen ; and at the same time he 
exhibits types of language and doctrine which, if not immediately drawn from John, yet 
mark the presence of his influence and the recognition of his authority. 

In addition to the Gospels, the Apocalypse is the only book of the New Testament to 
which Justin alludes by name. Even that is not quoted, but appealed to generally, as a 
proof of the existence of prophetic power in the Christian Church. But it can not be 
concluded from his silence that Justin was either unacquainted with the Acts and ~the 
Epistles, or unwilling to make use of them. His controversy against Marcion is decisive 
as to his knowledge of the greater part of the books, and various Pauline forms of ex- 
pression and teaching show that the apostle of the Gentiles had helped to mold his 
faith and words. 

§10. The Formation of a Canon of the Universally Acknowledged Books of 
the New Testament at the Close of the Second Century. 

The Latin fragment on the Canon, first published by Muratori, was discovered in the 
Ambrosian Library at Milan in a MS. of great antiquity, which purported to contain 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORD. 



the writings of Chrysostom. It is mutilated both at the beginning and end ; and is dis- 
figured throughout by gross inaccuracies and barbarisms, due in part to the ignorance 
of the transcriber, and in part to the translator of the original text; for there can 
be little doubt that it is a version from the Greek. But, notwithstanding these defects, 
it is of the greatest interest and importance. It claims to have been written by a 
cotemporary of Pius, and can not, on that supposition, be placed much later than 
170 A. D. Internal evidence fully confirms its claims to this high antiquity ; and it may 
be regarded, on the whole, as a summary of the opinion of the Western Church on the 
canon shortly after the middle of the second century. The fragment commences with 
the last words of a sentence which evidently referred to the Gospel of Mark. The 
Gospel of Luke, it is then said, stands third in order, (in the Christian canon,) having 
been written by " Luke the physician," the companion of Paul, who, not being an eye- 
witness, based his narrative on such information as he could obtain, beginning from the 
birth of John. The fourth place is given to the Gospel of John. Though there is no 
trace of any reference to Matthew, it is impossible not to believe that it occupied the first 
place among the four Gospels of the anonymous Avriter. Assuming this, it is of import- 
ance to notice that he regards our canonical Gospels as essentially one in purpose, con- 
tents, and inspiration. He draws no distinction between those which were written from 
personal knowledge, and those which rested on the teaching of others. He alludes to no 
doubt as to their authority, no limit as to their reception, no difference as to their useful- 
ness. " Though various points are taught in each of the Gospels, it makes no difference 
to the faith of believers, since, in all of them, all things are declared by one informing 
Spirit concerning the nativity, the passion, the resurrection, the conversation [of our 
Lord] with his disciples, and His double advent, at first in humility, and afterward in 
royal power as He will yet appear." This first recognition of the distinctness and unity 
of the Gospels, of their origin from human care and Divine guidance, is as complete as 
any later testimony. The Fragment lends no support to the theory which supposes that 
they were gradually separated from the mass of similar books. Their peculiar position 
is clear and marked ; and there is not the slightest hint that it was gained after a doubt- 
ful struggle or only at a late date. Admit that our Gospels were regarded from the first 
as authoritative, records of Christ's life, and then this new testimony explains and con- 
firms the fragmentary notices which alone witness to the earlier belief; deny it, and the 
language of one who had probably conversed with Polycarp at Eome becomes an unin- 
telligible riddle. 

Irenseus was the disciple of Polycarp. About the year 177 he succeeded Photinus, who 
suffered martyrdom in his ninetieth year, in the bishopric of Lyons. He himself died 
as a martyr about 202 A. D. In his old age he recalled the teaching of Polycarp. the 
disciple of John, and his treatise against heresies contains several references to others 
who were closely connected with the apostolic age. He says: "jSTow, Matthew published 
his treatise on the Gospel among the Hebrews, in their own dialect, while Peter and 
Paul were preaching in Eome, and founding the Church there. But after their death, 
Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also wrote 'down what Peter had preached, 
and delivered it to us. And Luke also, the follower of Paul, wrote out in a book the 
Gospel which was preached by that apostle. Afterward John, the disciple of the Lord, 
who also leaned upon his breast, he, too, published a Gospel while he was living at 
Ephesus, in Asia." (Adv. Hseres., iii,l.) And again: "These things are in accordance 
with the Gospels, in which Christ is enshrined. For that of John relates his princely 
birth and glorious lineage from the Father, saying, 'In the beginning was the Word,' etc. 
And that of Luke, as being more of a sacerdotal character, begins with the priest Zach- 

arias burning incense to God Matthew declares his human birth, saying, 

' The book of the generation of Jesus Christ,' etc. Mark, as partaking more of the 
prophetic spirit, begins by saying, ' The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ,' " etc. 



38 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



(lb., iii, 11, § 11.) He speaks of the Scriptures as a whole, without distinction of the Old 
or New Testaments, as " perfect, inasmuch as they were uttered by the Word of God and 
his Spirit." (Adv. Hajr., ii, 28, 2.) Though he has not given us a professed catalogue of 
the books of the New Testament, we learn from his treatise that he received, as authentic 
and canonical Scriptures, not only the four Gospels, but also the Acts of the Apostles, 
the Epistle to the Eomans, the Epistles to the Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and 
Colossians, the First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians, the two Epistles to Timo- 
thy, the Epistle to Titus, the two Epistles of Peter, and the First and Second Epistles 
of John. Can it be supposed, with reason, that forgeries came into use in the time of 
Irenseus, which he must have been able to detect by his own knowledge? that they were 
received without suspicion or reserve in the Church over which he presided ? Is it pos- 
sible that he decided otherwise than his first master, when he speaks of the tradition of 
the apostles by which the canon of the Scripture was determined ? (Adv. Hser., iv, 33, 8.) 
He appeals to the known succession of teachers in the churches of Rome, Smyrna, and 
Ephesus, who held fast, up to his own time, the doctrine which they had received from 
the first age ; and is it possible that he used writings, as authentic and authoritative, 
which were not recognized by those who must have had unquestionable means of decid- 
ing on their apostolic origin ? 

A cotemporary of Irenteus was Clement of Alexandria; he was trained in the school 
of Pantamus, who was personally connected with some immediate disciples of the apos- 
tles. He distinguishes the Gospel from the other writings of the New Testament, which 
he calls 6 a-oarokoi;, and sometimes aTtoaroXut, but combines them "as Scriptures of the 
Lord," with the Law and the Prophets, and as "ratified by the authority of one 
Almighty Power." 

Tertullian, a presbyter of the Church of Carthage, was born 160, and died about the 
year 220. He became a Montanist about the year 200. But his testimony to the 
authority of the canonical Scriptures is exactly the same before and after he embraced 
the tenets of Montanus. He uniformly recognizes the four Gospels as written by the 
Evangelists to whom we ascribe them; distinguishing Matthew and John as apostles, 
and Mark and Luke as apostolical men, and asserting the authority of their writings as 
inspired books, acknowledged by the Christian Church from their original date. (Adv. 
Marcion, I, c. iv, 2.) He notices particularly the introduction of the word Testament for 
the earlier word "Instrument" as applied to the dispensation and the record, (Adv. Marc. 
IV, 1,) and appeals to the New Testament, as made up of "the Gospels" and "Apostles." 
(Adv. Prax., 15.) This comprehensive testimony extends to the four Gospels, the Acts, 
1 Peter, 1 John, thirteen Epi sties of Paul, and the Apocalypse. 

All the Fathers, at the close of the second century, from opposite quarters of Chris- 
tendom, agree in appealing to the testimony of antiquity as proving the authenticity of 
the Gospels, and other books which they iised as Christian Scriptures. The appeal was 
made at a time when it was easy to try its worth. The links which connected them 
with the apostolic age were few and well known ; and, if they had not been continuous, 
it would have been easy to expose the break. But their appeal was never gainsayed. 
We need, therefore, not descend to later testimonies. 

Let us, in conclusion, bear in mind that the admitted universal reception of the Gos- 
pels, toward the close of the second century, conveys to us the testimony of a communion 
not only fully qualified to arrive at a sound judgment on the authenticity of the Gospels, 
but also deeply interested in ascertaining the truth upon the question at issue, inasmuch 
as the early Christians, by believing the Gospels to be the authentic productions of the 
men whose names they bear, exposed themselves to the fiercest persecutions — from 
which it follows that they must have come to them with an evidence of their authen- 
ticity such as could not be gainsayed. 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 39 



§ 11. The Eakly Versions of the New Testament. 

Two versions only claim to be noticed in this first period — the original versions of 
the East and West— the Peshito, and the old Latin, which, though variously revised, 
remain, after sixteen centuries, the authorized liturgical versions of the Syrian and 
Boman Churches. 

THE PESHITO. 

Almost universal opinion assigns the Peshito, or "simple" Syriac, (Aramaic,) version 
to the most remote Christian antiquity. The Syriac Christians of Malabar even now 
claim for it the right to be considered as an Eastern original of the New Testament; and 
though their tradition is wholly unsupported by external evidence, it is not, to a certain 
extent, without all plausibility. The dialect of the Peshito, even as it stands now, repre- 
sents in part, at least, that form of Aramaic which was current in Palestine. In this 
respect it is bike the Latin Tulgate, which, though revised, is marked by the provincial- 
isms of Africa. Both versions appear to have had their origin in districts where their 
languages were spoken in impure dialects, and afterward to have been corrected and 
brought nearer to the classical standard. In the absence of an adequate supply of critical 
materials it is impossible to construct the history of these recensions in the Syriac; the 
analogy of the Latin is at present our only guide. But if a conjecture be allowed, I 
think that the various facts of the case are adequately explained by supposing that ver- 
sions of separate books of the New Testament were first made and used in Palestine, 
perhaps within the apostolic age, and that shortly afterward these were collected, revised, 
and completed at Edessa. Many circumstances combine to give support to this belief. 
The early condition of the Syrian Church, its wide extent and active vigor, lead us to 
expect that a version of the Holy Scriptures into the common dialect could not have 
been long deferred ; and the existence of an Aramaic Gospel was in itself likely to suggest 
the work. Differences of style, no less than the very nature of the case, point to sepa- 
rate translations of different books; and, at the same time, a certain general uniformity 
of character bespeaks some subsequent revision. Whatever may be thought of the 
alleged intercourse of Abgarus with our blessed Lord, Edessa itself is signalized in early 
Church history by many remarkable facts. It was called the "holy" and "blessed" city, 
(Horse Syriaca?;) its inhabitants were said to have been brought over by Thaddeus, in a 
marvelous manner, to the Christian faith; and, "from that time forth," Eusebius adds, 
(Euseb., H. E., ii, 1,) "the whole people of Edessa has continued to be devoted to 
the name of Christ, exhibiting no ordinary instance of the goodness of the Savior;" in 
the second century it became the center of an important Christian school, and long after- 
ward retained its pre-eminence among the cities of this province. As might be expected, 
tradition fixes on Edessa as the place whence the Peshito took its rise. Gregory Bar 
Hebrseus, one of the most learned and accurate of Syrian writers, relates that the New 
Testament Peshito Avas "made in the time of Thaddeus, and Abgarus, King of Edessa;" 
when, according to the universal opinion of ancient writers, the apostle went to proclaim 
Christianity in Mesopotamia. No other direct historical evidence remains to determine 
the date of the Peshito; and it is impossible to supply the deficiency by the help of 
quotations occurring in early Syrian writers. No Syrian works of a very early period 
exist. Still it is known that books were soon translated from Syriac into Greek, and 
while such an intercourse existed it is scarcely possible that the Scriptures remained 
untranslated. Again, the controversial writings of Bardesanes necessarily imply the 
existence of a Syriac version of the Bible. Tertullian's example may show that he could 
hardly have refuted Marcion without the constant use of Scripture. And more than this, 
Eusebius tells us that Hegesippus "made quotations from the Gospel according to the 
Hebrews, and the Syriac, and especially from [writings in] the Hebrew language, show- 



40 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



ing thereby that he was a Christian of Hebrew descent." (Euseb., H. E.,iv, 22.) This 
testimony is valuable as coming from the only Greek writer likely to have been familiar 
Avith Syriac literature; and may we not see in the two Gospels thus mentioned two 
recensions of Matthew — the one disfigured by apocryphal traditions, and the one written 
in the dialect of Eastern Syria? Ephrem Syrus, himself a deacon of Edessa, treats the 
version in such a manner as to prove that it was already old in the fourth century. He 
quotes it as a book of established authority, calling it "Our Version;" he speaks of the 
"Translator" as one whose words were familiar, (Horse Syriacas;) and, though the dia- 
lects of the East are proverbially permanent, his explanations show that its language, 
even in his time, had become partially obsolete. Another circumstance serves to exhibit 
the venerable age of this version. It was universally received by the different sects into 
which the Syrian Church was divided in the fourth century, and so has continued current 
even to the present time. The respect in Avhich the Peshito was held was further shown 
by the fact that it was taken as the basis of other versions in the East. An Arabic and 
a Persian version were made from it; but it is more important to notice that, at the com^ 
mencement of the fifth century — before the Council of Ephesus, 431 A. D. — an Armenian 
version was made from the Syriac in the absence of Greek MSS. These indications of 
the antiquity of the Peshito do not, indeed, possess any conclusive authority, but there is 
no sufficient reason to call in question the opinion which has obtained the sanction of the 
most competent scholars, that its formation is to be fixed within the first half of the sec- 
ond century. The text, even in its present corrupt state, exhibits remarkable agreement 
with the most ancient Greek MSS., and the earliest quotations. The very obscurity which 
hangs over its origin is a proof of its venerable age, because it shows that it grew up 
spontaneously among Christian congregations, and was not the result of any public 
labor. Had it been a work of late date, of the third or fourth century, it is scarcely 
possible that its history should have been so uncertain as it is. 

THE OLD LATIN VERSION. 

At first it is natural to look to Italy as the center of the Latin literature of Christian- 
ity, and the original source of that Latin version of the Holy Scriptures which, in a 
later form, has become identified with the Church of Eome, yet, however natural such a 
belief may be, it finds no support in history. Eome itself, under the emperors, was well 
described as a "Greek city;" and Greek was its second language. As far as Ave can learn, 
the mass of the poorer population — every-where the great bulk of the early Christians — ■ 
was Greek, either in descent or in speech. Among the names of the fifteen bishops of 
Eome, up to the close of the second century, four only are Latin ; but in the next century 
the proportion is nearly reversed. When Paul first wrote to the Eoman Church he 
wrote in Greek ; and in the long list of salutation to its members, Avith Avhich the Epistle 
is concluded, only four Latin names occur. Shortly afterward, Clement AAnrote to the 
Corinthians in Greek in the name of the Church of Eome; and at a later date we find 
the bishop of Corinth Avriting in Greek to Soter, the ninth in succession from Clement. 
Justin, Hermas, and Tatian published their Greek treatises at Eome. The Apologies to 
the Eoman emperors Avere in Greek. Modestus, Caius, and Asterius Urbanus bear Latin 
names, yet their Avritings were Greek. MeanAvhile, hoAvever, though Greek continued 
to be the natural, if not the sole language of the Eoman Church, the seeds of Latin 
Christianity were rapidly developing in Africa. Nothing is known in detail of the 
origin of the African Churches. At the close of the second century Christians were 
found in that country in every place and of every rank. They aa t 1io were but of yester- 
day, Tertullian says about the year 200, (Apol., i, 37,) already fill the palace, the senate, 
the forum, and the camp, and leave their temples only to the heathen. To persecute the 
Christians was even then to decimate Carthage. These fresh conquests of the Eoman 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 41 

Church preserved their distinct nationality in their language. Carthage — the second 
Eome — escaped the Graecism of the first. In Africa Greek was no longer a current 
dialect, A peculiar form of Latin, vigorous, elastic, and copious, however far removed 
from the grace and eloquence of a classical standard, fitly expressed the spirit of Ter- 
tullian. It is, then, to Africa we must look for the first traces of the Latin " Peshito," 
the "Simple" version of the "West. And here a new difficulty arises. The Syrian 
Peshito has been preserved without material change in the keeping of the Churches for 
whose use it was made. But no Church of Northern Africa, however corrupt, remains to 
testify to its ancient Bible. The version was revised by a foreign scholar, adopted by a 
foreign Church, and in the end its independent existence has been denied. The 
Scriptural quotations of Tertullian, however, give sufficient evidence that he distinctly 
recognized a current Latin version, marked by a peculiar character, and that it was so 
authorized by popular use as to form the theological dialect of the country. "We have no 
means of tracing the history of the version before the time of Tertullian; but its exist- 
ence, then, is also attested by the Latin translation of the writings of Irenaeus. The 
Scriptural quotations which occur in them were evidently taken from some foreign 
source, and not made by the translator. That this source was no other than a recension 
of the Yetus Latina appears from the coincidence of readings which it exhibits with the 
most trustworthy MSS. of the version. In other words, the Yetus Latina is recognized 
in the first Latin literature of the Church. It can be traced back as far as the earliest 
records of Latin Christianity. Every circumstance connected with it indicates the most 
remote antiquity. Now the beginning of Tertullian's literary activity can not be placed 
later than 190 A. D., and we shall thus find the date 170 A. D., as that before which 
the version must have been made. How much more ancient it really is can not yet be 
discovered. Not only is the character of the version itself a proof of its extreme age, 
but the mutual relations of different parts of it show that it was made originally by dif- 
ferent hands ; and if so, that it was coeval with the introduction of Christianity into 
Africa, and the result of the spontaneous efforts of African Christians. The MSS., in 
which the Old Latin Yersion is found, are few, but some of them are of great antiquity. 
In the Gospels Lachman made use of four, of which one belongs to the fourth, and 
another to the fourth or fifth century. To these Teschendorf has since added the Pala- 
tine MS. of the same date, but inclining to the Italian rather than to the African text; 
and besides these he enumerates nine others, more or less perfect, ranging from the fifth 
to the eleventh century, of which two give African readings. 

§ 12. The Testimony op Heretical and Apocryphal Writings. 

Before we inquire into the relation which the heretical and apocryphal writings 
bear to our canonical Gospels, let us take a survey of the heretical sects which arose 
in the first two centuries, and their relation to the great body- of Christians called the 
Catholic Christians, or the Catholic Church. They may be arranged under two great 
principles : " That well-known pharisaical Judaism whose shibboleth was that the Gen- 
tiles should be constrained to observe the ceremonial law, and which continued to attack 
Paul in his missionary labors, produced Ebionism, in the general sense of this term ; the 
desire to amalgamate with Christianity Grecian and Oriental theosophy, and an oppo- 
sition to Judaism, inclusive of the Old Testament, on the part of Gentile philosojmers 
converted to Christianity, introduced Gnosticism. These two directions were, hoAvever, 
also combined into a Gnostic-Ebionism, a system for which the doctrines of the Essenes 
seem to have served as a point of transition and connecting link. This 'opposition of 
science falsely so called' (1 Tim. vi, 20) began to intrude into Christianity during the 
latter years of Paul's labors. Against it Paul uttered a prophetic warning in his faro- 
well address at Miletus. (Acts xx, 29, 30.) Afterward he opposed it in the Epistles to 



42 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



the Ephesians and to the Colossians, and especially in his pastoral letters, even as Peter 
combated it in his First Epistle. It assumed many and varied forms. It appeared in the 
shape of Oriental theosophy, magic, and theurgy, in voluntary asceticism with reference 
to meats and marriage, in fancied mysteries about the nature and subordination of heav- 
enly powers and spirits, and in the transformation of certain fundamental doctrines of 
Christianity (such as that of the resurrection, 2 Tim. ii, 18) into a mere idealism. These 
seeds of evil had already borne abundant fruit when John came to take up his residence 
in Asia Minor. Accordingly, in his First Epistle, the apostle opposed the growing- 
heresy, and more especially that form of Gnosis, in which the incarnation of God in 
Christ was denied." (See Kurtz's Church History, pp. 71 and 72.) 

The Ebionites proper — -as distinguished from the jSTazarenes, who, though they held 
themselves bound still to observe the ceremonial law, believed in the Divinity of Christ, 
and did not reject Paul entirely — deemed the observance of the ceremonial law indis- 
pensably necessary for salvation ; they saw in Jesus nothing but a human Messiah, 
whom, at his baptism, God had endowed with supernatural powers. His Messianic 
activity they limited to his teaching, by which he had enlarged and perfected the law, 
adding to it new and more strict commandments. The death of Christ was an offense to 
them, under which they consoled themselves with the promise of his return, when they 
expected that he would set up a terrestrial kingdom. They, of course, repudiated the 
apostle Paul entirely, and in order to have some basis for their monstrous heresies, they 
mutilated and interpolated the Gospel of Matthew. A similar position to the Gospels was 
taken by the Gnostics. Though their doctrines were as irreconcilable with the contents 
of our Gospels as those of the Ebionites, they did not assail their authenticity, but 
rejected them only as carnal apprehensions of Jesus and his doctrine, while Marcion 
boldly mutilated the Gospel of Luke, and declared this to be the only true Gospel. 
With regard to the evidence the Gnostics give for the authenticity of our Gospels, 
they may be divided into two principal classes : the Theosophic (or Yalentinian) 
Gnostics, and the Marcionites. 

Now, if it can be proved that the theosophic Gnostics appealed to our canonical Gos- 
pels as freely and confidently as did the Catholic Christians, that they did not pretend to 
possess any Gospel, in any way contradictory to the account of Christ's ministry contained 
in our Gospels, and that the Gospel used by the Marcionites was essentially the same 
with that of Luke, we have an argument of uncommon strength in favor of the authen- 
ticity of our Gospels. For these early heretics were, in their opinions and feelings, so 
widely separated from the Catholic Christians, that they present themselves as an inde- 
pendent class of witnesses, and they lived at a time, when, upon the supposition that our 
Gospels were not written by the authors whose names they bear, it must have been very 
easy to them to prove the fact. Could they have rejected the authority of the Gospels 
on this ground, they would certainly have done it. And had they done so, it is altogether 
incredible that the fact should not have been conspicuous throughout the controversial 
writings of Irenasus and Tertullian, the two princijDal writers against the Gnostics. 
From their works it does not appear that the Yalentinians, the Marcionites, or any other 
Gnostic sect, adduced in support of their opinions a single narrative relating to the public 
ministry of Christ, besides what is found in the Gospels, or that any sect appealed to the 
authority of any history of our Lord's ministry besides the Gospels, except so far as the 
Marcionites, in their use of the interpolated and mutilated copy of Luke's Gospel, may 
be regarded as forming a verbal exception. The Fathers were eager to urge against the 
Gnostics the charge of corrupting and perverting the Scriptures, and of fabricating 
apocryphal writings, but they never brought forward the far graver allegation, that the 
Gnostics pretended to set up other histories of Christ in opposition to those received by the 
great body of Christians. Had they been guilty of this, the fact neither would nor could 
have remained unnoticed. On the contrary, Irenseus says : " There is such assurance 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 43 

concerning the Gospels, that the heretics themselves bear testimony to them, so that each 
one of them, taking the Gospels as his starting-point, endeavors thereby to maintain his 
own teaching." (Adv. Hser., Ill, xii, 7.) And Tertullian says: " They profess to appeal 
to the Scriptures ; they nrge arguments from the Scriptures — as if they could draw argu- 
ments about matters of faith from any other source than the records of faith." (De 
Pressor. Ha3i\, c. xiv.) He takes in this treatise, moreover, especial pains to prove that 
they had no right at all to appeal to the Scriptures as they do. 

But the question naturally arises, how could the Gnostics defend their strange doctrines, 
and yet appeal to our Gospels? This important question is more fully answered by Mr. 
Norton than by any other writer on this subject. We will, therefore, give to the reader 
the benefit of a brief condensation of his argument: 1. The theosophic Gnostics, in com- 
mon with the Catholic Christians, applied the allegorical mode of interpretation to the 
New Testament. Neglecting the proper meaning of words, they educed from them mys- 
tical senses. Their whole system of interpretation was, besides, arbitrary, and unsup- 
ported by any correct principle. The vocabulary of the theosophic Gnostics, like that 
of other erring sects, consisted, in great part, of words from the JSTew Testament, on 
which they had imposed new senses. It thus became easy for them, on the one hand, to 
find supposed references to their theory; and, on the other, to explain away much that 
was inconsistent with it. Like other false expositors of Scripture, they detached partic- 
ular passages from their connection, and infused a foreign meaning into the words. 
Irenseus, after saying they appealed to unwritten tradition as a source of their knowl- 
edge, goes on to remark, that, "twisting, according to the proverb, a rope of sand, they 
endeavor to accommodate, in a plausible manner to their doctrines, the parables of the 
Lord, the declarations of the prophets, or the words of the apostles, so that their fiction 
may not seem to be without proof. But they neglect the order and connection of the 
Scriptures, and disjoin, so far as they are able, the members of the truth. They trans- 
pose and refashion, and, making one thing out of another, they deceive many by a fabri- 
cated show of the words of the Lord which they put together. (Cont. Iiasres., lib. I, c. 
viii, § 1.) 2. They maintained a principle similar to a fundamental doctrine of the 
Boman Catholics ; namely, that religious truth could not be learned from the Scriptures 
alone, without the aid of the oral instructions of Christ and his apostles, as preserved by 
tradition. "When," says Irenseus, "they are confuted by proofs from the Scriptures, they 
turn and accuse the Scriptures themselves, as if they were not correct, nor of authority; 
they say that they contain contradictions, and that the truth can not be discovered from 
them by those who are ignorant of tradition. For that it was not delivered in writing, 
but orally; whence Paul said, 'We speak wisdom among the perfect, but not the wisdom 
of this world.'" (Lib. Ill, c. ii, § 2.) "The heretics," says Tertullian, "pretend that 
the apostles did not reveal all things to all, but taught some doctrines openly to 
every one, some secretly and to a few only." (De Praescr. Hser., c. xxv.) What was 
peculiar in their own doctrines they regarded as that esoteric teaching which had 
come down to them by oral tradition. This notion of a secret tradition is not found 
in Justin Martyr, Irenseus, or Tertullian. When the two latter speak of tradition, they 
mean that traditionary knowledge of the history and doctrines of Christianity which 
necessarily existed among Christians. It is described by Irenseus as a "tradition mani- 
fest throughout the world, and to be found in every Church." (Lib. Ill, c. iii, § 1.) By 
it, he says, a knowledge of our religion was preserved without books among believers in 
barbarous nations. (Ibid., c. iv, § 2.) At the end of about a century from the preaching 
of the apostles, there must have been, throughout the communities which they had 
formed, a general acquaintance with what they had taught, even had no written records 
of our religion been extant. In regard likewise to facts — important in their reference to 
Christianity, as, for example, the genuineness of the books of the New Testament — the 
Christians of the last half of the second century must have relied on the testimony of 



44 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



their predecessors. It is this traditionary knowledge concerning Christianity — not 
secret, but open to all — which Irenasus and Tertullian appeal to with justifiable confi- 
dence in their reasoning against the heretics, when they distinguish between the evidence 
from tradition and the evidence from Scripture. 3. In connection with their notion of a 
secret tradition, some of the Gnostics said, according to Irenseus, "that the apostles, prac- 
ticing dissimulation, accommodated their doctrine to the capacity of their hearers, and 
their answers to the previous conceptions of those who questioned them, talking blindly 
with the blind, weakly with the weak, and conformably to their error with those who 
were in error; and that thus they preached the Creator to those who thought the Creator 
was the only God, but to those able to comprehend the unknown Father, they communi- 
cated this unspeakable mystery in parables and in enigmas." (Lib. Ill, cap. v, § 1.) 
"Some," says Irenaeus, "impudently contend that the apostles, preaching among the 
Jews, could not announce any other God but him in whom the Jews had believed." (lb., 
cap. xii, § 6.) 4. Some of the Gnostics, especially the Marcionites, maintained that Paul 
Avas far superior to the other apostles in the knowledge of the truth — "the hidden doc- 
trine having been manifested to him by revelation." (Ibid., c. xiii, § 1.) They repre- 
sented the other apostles as having been entangled by Jewish prejudices from which he 
was in great measure free. Marcion regarded the Gospels as expressing the false Jewish 
opinions of their writers. But among the Gospels he conceived that there was ground 
for making a choice; and he selected for his own use, and that of his followers, the 
Gospel of Luke. This he further adapted to his purpose by rejecting from it what he 
viewed as conformed to those opinions. Nor did he consider Paul himself as wholly free 
from Jewish errors, but likewise struck out, from those of his Epistles which he used, 
the passages in which he thought them to be expressed. Sometimes, according to 
Irenaaus, the Gnostics apparently, without making an exception in favor of Paul, 
charged the apostles generally with Jewish errors and ignorance concerning the higher 
truths and mysteries of religion. "All those," he says, "who hold pernicious doctrines 
have departed in their faith from him who is God, and think that they have found out 
more than the apostles, having discovered another God. They think that the apostles 
preached the Gospel while yet under the influence of Jewish prejudices, but that their 
own faith is purer, and that they are wiser than the apostles." He states that Marcion 
proceeded on these principles in rejecting the use of some of the books of Scripture, and of 
portions of those which he retained. (Lib. Ill, c. xii, § 12.) "The heretics," says Ter- 
tullian, "are accustomed to affirm that the apostles did not know all things; while, at 
other times, under the influence of the same madness, they turn about and maintain that 
the apostles did indeed know all things, but did not teach all things to all." (De 
Prasser. Hssr., c. xxii.) 5. Add to this the belief of the theosophic Gnostics in their 
own infallible spiritual knowledge. This they conceived of as the result of their spir- 
itual nature. "They object to us," says Clement of Alexandria, "that we are of another 
nature, and unable to comprehend their peculiar doctrines." (Stromal, vii, § 16.) 

After these introductory remarks we will proceed to the examination of the testimony 
of heretical writers, as Westcott gives it in his Canon, and we shall find it strictly anal- 
ogous to that of the Fathers in its progressive development. As the New Testament 
recognizes the existence of parties and heresies in the Christian society from its first 
origin, so the earliest false teachers witness more or less clearly to the existence and 
reception of our canonical Gospels. 

SIMON MAGUS AND CERINTHUS. 

The heretics that arose in the apostolic age were Simon Magus and Cerinthus. The 
former seems to have been the first representative of the antichristian element of the 
Gentile world, the latter that of the antichristian element in Judaism. In the lately- 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 45 



discovei'ed parts of a work of Hippolytus, a disciple of Irenseus, (Pliilosophumena, or a ref- 
utation of all heresies, book VI,) there are preserved several quotations from a writing 
named " The Great Announcement," which contains an account of the revelation SimOn 
Magus professed to be intrusted with, and which seems to have been compiled from his oral 
teaching by one of his immediate followers. In the fragments, which Hippolytus quotes 
of this work, there are coincidences with words recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. 
Reference is also made to the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians in terms which 
prove that it was placed by the author on the same footing as the books of the Old Test- 
ament. "The Cerinthians," Epiphanius says, "make use of Matthew's Gospel, (the 
Gospel according to the Hebrews,) like the Ebionites, on account of the human gene- 
alogy, though their copy is not entire The apostle Paul they entirely reject 

on account of his opposition to circumcision." But of the most importance is the rela- 
tion of Cerinthus to John. While we find in the New Testament no reference to the 
later developments of Gnosticism by Valentinus or Marciou, — another proof of the 
authenticity of the apostolical writings, for if they had been written after the apostolical 
age, an entire ignoring of the heresies of the second century would be inexplicable, — 
some of the prominent features in the false systems of Simon Magus and of Cerinthus 
are exposed in the Epistle to the Hebrews and in the Introduction to John's Gospel. 
Nothing, indeed, can be more truly opposite to Cerinthianism than the theology of John. 
The character of his Gospel was evidently influenced by prevailing errors ; though it is 
not a mere controversial work, we can not but feel that it was written to satisfy some 
pressing want of the age, and to meet some false philosophy, which had already begun 
to fashion a peculiar dialect. Cerinthus upheld a ceremonial system, and taught only a 
temporary union of the Logos with the man Jesus. St. John proclaimed that Judaism had 
passed away, and set forth clearly the manifestation of the Eternal Word in His historic 
Incarnation. The teaching of John is doubtless far deeper and wider than was needed to 
meet the errors of Cerinthus, but it has a natural connection with the period in which 
he lived. 

THE OPHITES. 

This sect, into which some Christian ideas were infused, Hippolytus places in the 
age next succeeding that of the apostles. Although they are said to have made use of 
the Gospel according to the Egyptians, and of the Gospel of Thomas, the passages given 
from their books contain clear references to the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John, 
and to several Epistles. Irenseus speaks of the Ophites as the first source of the Valen- 
tinian school, the original " hydra-head from which its manifold progeny was derived." 

BASILIDES. 

He stood at the head of one of the Gnostic sects, and lived, according to Eusebius, (Hist. 
Ecc, IV, 7,) not long after the times of the apostles. Ho is said to have been a younger 
cotemporary of Cerinthus, and a follower of Menander, who was himself the successor 
of Simon Magus. Clement of Alexandria and Jerome fix the period of his activity in 
the time of Hadrian, and he found a formidable antagonist in Agrippa Castor. All 
these circumstances combine to place him in the generation next after the apostolic age, 
between Clement of Rome and Polycarp. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Epipha- 
nius give specimens of the teaching of Basilides, exactly accordant with the more import- 
ant quotations of Hippolytus. The mode in which the books of the New Testament are 
treated in these fragments, show that the earliest heretics sought to recommend their 
doctrines by forced explanations of apostolic language. And more than this, they con- 
tain the earliest undoubted instances in which the Old and New Testaments are placed 
on the same level ; the Epistles of Paul are called " Scripture," and quotations from them 



46 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



are introduced by the well-known form: "it is written." Since Basilides lived on the 
verge of the apostolic times, it is, however, not surprising that he claimed other sources 
of Christian doctrine besides the canonical books. The belief in Divine inspiration was 
still fresh and real ; and Eusebius relates that he set up imaginary prophets, Barcabbas 
and Barcoph, (or Parchor,) " names to strike terror into the superstitious." At the same 
time he appealed to the authority of Glaucias, who is said to have been, like Mark, an 
interpreter of Peter; he also made use of certain "Traditions of Matthias," which 
claimed to be grounded on private intercourse with the Savior. The author of the 
Homilies on Luke, which have been ascribed to Origen, speaks of a " Gospel according 
to Basilides." But there is no mention of it by Irenseus or by Clement of Alexandria, 
nor by Epiphanius, nor by Eusebius, nor by Theodoret. Why should we not have heard 
as much of a gospel written by Basilides as of the defective Gospel of Luke used by the 
Marcionites ? The notion that Basilides wrote a gospel probably arose from the fact 
that he wrote a commentary on the Gospels. However that may be, he admitted the 
historic truth of all the facts contained in the canonical Gospels, and used them as Scrip- 
ture. In the fragments of his writings which we find in Hippolytus, there are definite 
references to the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John, as well as to several Epistles; 
and Bunsen is of opinion, " that his whole metaphysical development is an attempt to 
connect a cosmogonic system Avith John's prologue and with the person of Christ." 
(Bunsen's Hippolytus and his Age, vol. I, p. 87.) So much is certain, we possess, in 
Basilides, a witness to the existence of these Gospels as early as between 120 and 
130 A. D. 

VALENTINUS. 

Shortly after Basilides began to propagate his doctrines, another system arose at Alex- 
andria. Its author, Valentinus — after the example of the Christian teachers of his age — 
went to Borne, which he chose as the center of his labors. Irena3us relates, that " he 
came there during the episcopate of Hyginus, was at his full vigor in the time of Pius, 
and continued there till the time of Anicetus." His testimony, therefore, in point of age, 
is as venerable as that of Justin, and he is removed, by one generation only, from the 
time of John. Just as Basilides claimed, through Glaucias, the authority of Peter, 
Valentinus professed to follow the teaching of Theodas, a disciple of Paul. This circum- 
stance is important ; for it shows that at the beginning of the second century, alike 
within and without the Church, the sanction of an apostle was considered to be a suffi- 
cient proof of Christian doctrine. The fragments of his writings which remain show 
the same natural and trustful use of Scripture as any other Christian works of the same 
period. He cites the Epistle to the Ephesians as "Scripture," and refers clearly to the Gos- 
pels of Matthew, Luke, and John. The Valentinians, however, are said to have added a new 
gospel to the other four : " Casting aside all fear, and bringing forward their own compo- 
sitions, they boast that they have more gospels than there really are. For they have 
advanced to such a pitch of daring as to entitle a book, which was composed by them 
not long since, 'the Gospel of Truth,' though it accords in no respect with the Gospels 
of the apostles ; so that the Gospel, in fact, can not exist among them without blasphemy. 
For if that which is brought forward by them is the Gospel of Truth, and still is unlike 
those which arc delivered to us by the apostles — they, who please, can learn how from 
the writings themselves — it is shown at once that that which is delivered to us by the 
apostles is not the Gospel of Truth." (Iren. Adv. ILer., Ill, xi, 11, 9.) What, then, was this 
gospel ? If it had been a history of our Blessed Lord, and yet wholly at variance with 
the canonical Gospels, it is evident that the Yalentinians could not have received these — 
nor, indeed, any one of them — as they undoubtedly did. And here, then, a new light is 
thrown upon the character of some of the early apocryphal gospels, which has been in 
part anticipated by what was said of the gospel of Basilides. The gospel of Basilides or 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 47 

Valentinus contained their system of Christian doctrine, their view of the Gospel, philo- 
sophically, and not historically. The writers of these new gospels in no way necessarily 
interfered with the old. They sought, as far as we can learn, to embody their spirit and 
furnish a key to their meaning, rather than to supersede their use. The Yalentinians 
had more gospels than the catholic Church, since they accepted a doctrinal gospel. 

The titles of some of the other Gnostic gospels confirm what has been said. Two are 
mentioned by Epiphanius in the account of those whom he calls " Gnostics," as if that 
were their specific name, the Gospel of Eve and the Gospel of Perfection. Neither of 
these could be historic accounts of the life of Christ, and the slight description of their 
character which he adds, illustrates the wide use of the word "gospel." The first was 
an elementary account of Gnosticism, " based on foolish visions and testimonies," called 
by the name of Eve, as though it had been revealed to her by the serpent. The second 
was "a seductive composition." (Epiph. User., xxvi, 2.) The analogy of the title of this 
"Gospel of Perfection" leaves little doubt as to the character of the "Gospel of Truth." 
Puritan theology can furnish numerous similar titles. And the partial currency of such 
a book among the Yalentinians offers not the slightest presumption against their agree- 
ment with catholic Christians on the exclusive claims of the four Gospels as records of 
Christ's life. These they took as the basis of their speculations ; and by the help of com- 
mentaries endeavored to extract from them the principles which they maintained. 

HERACLEON. 

Origen says that "he was reported to have been a familiar friend of Valentinus," 
(Comm. in Joan., torn, ii, § 8.) Assuming this statement to be true, his writings can not 
well date later than the first half of the second century; and he claims the title of the 
first commentator on the New Testament. Fragments of his commentaries on the Gos- 
pels of Luke and John have been preserved by Clement of Alexandria and Origen. 
The fragments contain allusions to the Gospel of Matthew, to the Epistles of Paul to the 
Eomans, and Corinthians, (I,) and to the Second Epistle to Timothy; but the character 
of the Commentary itself is the most striking testimony to the estimation in which the 
apostolic writings, were held. The sense of the inspiration of the Evangelists — of some 
providential guidance by which they were led to select each fact in their history, and 
each word in their narrative — is not more complete in Origen. The first commentary on 
the New Testament exhibits the application of the same laws to its interpretation as were 
employed in the Old Testament. The slightest variation of language was held to be 
significant. Numbers were supposed to conceal a hidden truth. The Avhole record was 
found to be pregnant with spiritual meaning, conveyed by the teaching of events in 
themselves real and instructive. It appears, also, that differences between the Gospels 
were felt, and an attempt made to reconcile them, (Orig. in Joan., x, § 21;) and it must 
be noticed that authoritative spiritual teaching was not limited to our Lord's own words, 
but the remarks of the Evangelist also were received as possessing an inherent weight. 
The introduction of commentaries implies the strongest belief in the authenticity and 
authority of the New Testament Scriptures; and this belief becomes more important 
when we notice the source from which they were derived. They took their rise among 
heretics, and not among catholic Christians. Just as the earliest Fathers applied them- 
selves to the Old Testament, to bring out its real harmony with the Gospel, heretics 
endeavored to reconcile the Gospel with their own systems. Commentaries were made 
where the Avant for them was pressing. But unless the Gospels had been generally 
accepted, the need for such works would not have been felt. Heracleon was forced to 
turn and modify much that he found in John, which he would not have done if the book 
had not been raised above all doubt. And his evidence is the more valuable because it 
appears that he had studied the history of the apostles. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



PTOLEM^TJS. 

Ptolemseus, like Heracleon, was a disciple of Yalentinus. Epiphanius has preserved 
an important letter which Ptolemseus' addressed to an "honorable sister Flora," in which 
he maintains the imperfect character of the Law. In proof of this doctrine he quoted 
words of our Lord recorded by Matthew, the prologue to John's Gospel, and passages 
from Paul's Epistles to the Komans, Corinthians, (I,) and Ephesians. Many other 
fragments of the teachings, if not of the books, of Ptolemseus have been preserved by 
Irenseus, (Adv. Hser., I, lsqq;) and though they are full of forced explanations of 
Scripture, they recognize, even in their wildest theories, the importance of every detail 
or doctrine. He found support for his doctrine in the parables, the miracles, and the 
facts of our Lord's life, as well as in the teaching of the apostles. In the course of the 
exposition of his system quotations occur from the four Gospels, and from the Epistles of 
Paul to the Romans, Corinthians, (I,) Galatians, Ephesians, and Colossians. 

THE MARCOSIANS. 

"The Marcosians," Irenaeus writes, "introduce with subtilty an unspeakable multitude 
of apocryphal and spurious ■writings, (jpacpal,') which they forged themselves, to confound 
the foolish and those who know not the Scriptures (ypd/jL/xara) of truth." (Adv. User., 
I, xx, 1.) In the absence of further evidence, it is impossible to pronounce exactly on 
the character o these books; it is sufficient that they did not supplant the canonical 
Scriptures. At the same time their appearance in this connection is not without import- 
ance. Marcus, the founder of the sect, was probably a native of Syria; and Syria, it is 
well known, was fertile in those religious tales which are raised to too great importance 
by the title of gospels. "Whatever the apocryphal writings may have been, the words of 
Irenseus show that they were easily distinguishable from Holy Scripture; and the Mar- 
cosians themselves bear witness to the familiar use of our Gospels. The formularies 
which Marcus instituted contain references to the Gospel of Matthew, and perhaps to 
the Epistle to the Ephesians, (Adv. User., I, xiii, 3.) The teaching of his followers 
offers coincidences with all four Gospels. These Gospel quotations present various 
remarkable readings, but there is no reason to suppose that they were borrowed from any 
other source than the canonical books. Irenseus evidently considered that they were 
taken thence; and while he accuses the Marcosians of "adapting" certain passages of the 
Gospels to their views, the connection shows that they tampered with the interpretation 
and not with the text. 

MARCION. 

Hitherto the testimony of heretical writers to the New Testament has been confined 
to the recognition of detached parts, by casual quotations or characteristic types of doc- 
trine. Marcion, on the contrary, fixed a definite collection of apostolic books as the 
foundation of his system. Paul only, according to him, was the true apostle; and Pauline 
writings alone were admitted into his canon. This was divided into two parts: "The 
Gospel" and "The Apostolicon." The Gospel was a recension of Luke, with numerous ' 
omissions and variations from the received text. The Apostolicon contained ten epistles 
of Paul, excluding the pastoral epistles and that to the Hebrews. Tertullian and Epiph- 
anius agree in affirming that Marcion altered the text of the books which he received to 
suit his own views; and they quote many various readings in support of their assertion. 
Those which occur in the Epistles are certainly insufficient to prove the point. "With the 
Gospel the case was different. The influence of oral tradition, by the form and use of 
the written Gospels, was of long continuance. The personality of their authors was, in 
some measure, obscured by the character of their work. The Gospel was felt to be 



TUE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 49 

Christ's Gospel — the name which Marcion ventured to apply to his own — and not the 
particular narration of any Evangelist. And such considerations as these will explain, 
though they did not justify, the liberty which Marcion allowed himself in dealing with 
the text of Luke. There can be no doubt that Luke's narrative lay at the basis of his 
Gospel ; but it is not equally clear that all the changes which were introduced into it 
were due to Marcion himself. Some of the omissions can be explained at once by his 
peculiar doctrines, but others are unlike arbitrary corrections, and must be considered as 
various readings of the greatest interest, dating, as they do, from a time anterior to all 
other authorities in our possession. 

TATIAN. 

The history of Tatian throws an important light on that of Marcion. Both were 
naturally restive, inquisitive, impetuous. They were subject to the same influences, and 
were for a while, probably, resident in the same city. (Tat. ad Gr., 18; Just. Ap., i, 26.) 
Both remained for some time within the Catholic Church, and then sought the satisfac- 
tion of their peculiar wants in a system of stricter discipline and sterner logic. Both 
abandoned the received canon of Scripture ; and together they go far to witness to its 
integrity. While they witness to the existence of a critical spirit among Christians of 
the second century, they point to a Catholic Church as the one center from which their 
systems diverged. 

The earliest mention of the Diatessaron of Tatian is in Eusebius. "Tatian," he says, 
"the former leader of the Encratites, having put together, in some strange fashion, a 
combination and collection of the Gospels, gave this the name of the Diatessaron, 
and the work is still partially current." The words evidently imply that the canonical 
Gospels formed the basis of Tatian's Harmony. The next testimony is that of Ejfiph- 
anius, who writes that "Tatian is said to have been the author of the Harmony of the 
four Gospels, which some call the Gospel according to the Hebrews." (Epiph. Haer., xlvi, 
1.) The express mention of the four Gospels is important as fixing the meaning of the 
original titles. Not long afterward, Theodoret gives a more exact account of the charac- 
ter and common use of the book. "Tatian also composed the gospel called 'Diatessaron,' 
and all the other passages which show that Christ was born of David according to the 
flesh. This was used not only by the members of his own party, but even by those who 
followed the apostolic doctrine, as they did not perceive the evil design of the composi- 
tion, but used the book in their simplicity for its conciseness. And I found also myself 
more than two hundred such books in our Churches, (in Syria,) which had been received 
with respect; and having gathered all together, I caused them to be laid aside, and 
introduced in their place the Gospels of the four Evangelists." (Theod. Hser., lib. I, 20.) 
Not only, then, was the Diatessaron grounded on the four canonical Gospels, but in its 
general form it was so orthodox as to enjoy a wide ecclesiastical popularity. The heret- 
ical character of the book was not evident upon the surface of it, and consisted rather in 
faults of defect than in erroneous teaching. Theodoret had certainly examined it, and 
he, like earlier writers, regarded it as a compilation from the four Gospels. He 
speaks of omissions which were, in part at least, natural in a Harmony, but notices no 
such apocryphal additions as would have found place in any gospel not derived from 
canonical sources. 

Though in the preceding quotations from the heretical writings nearly all the so-called 
apocryphal gospels have been referred to and characterized, we may throw still clearer 
light on the whole question by pointing out the different classes of these apocryphal gos- 
pels, and adding some general remarks. 

There can be no doubt that the Gospel of Matthew in the Aramaic Hebrew — whether 
the Evangelist wrote his Gospel originally in that language or in Greek is a question 



50 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



which will be answered in the Introduction to that Gospel — was the original of various 
recensions, called the Gospel according to the Hebrews, the Ebionite Gospel, the Gospel of 
Cerinth ; it is also highly probable that the numerous quotations which occur in the 
Clementine Homilies are to be traced to some recension of the Gospel of Matthew by 
one of the Judaizing sects, perhaps the Cerinthians. The Nazarenes evidently possessed 
it at first in the pure form which we find in the Greek text ; for even in Jerome's time 
the copy which they still preserved bore the closest resemblance to the canonical Gospel. 
But inasmuch as the outward isolation and peculiar views of the Judaizing sects ren- 
dered the insertion of fresh material easy, the Ebionites falsified and mutilated it, most 
probably, in various ways to suit their peculiar views.* 

As it is admitted on all hands, that the Gospel of Marcion was a mutilated edition of 
that of Luke, and sufficient has been said on this point, we pass on to the so-called 
"Gospel according to the Egyptians." On this Mr. Norton remarks: "It was an anony- 
mous book, extant in the second century, and probably written in Egypt, in the dark 
and mystical style that prevailed in that country. In judging of its importance we must 
compare the few writers who recognize its existence with the far greater number to 
whom it was unknown, or who were not; led by any circumstance to mention it. It was 
a book of which we should have been ignorant, but for a few incidental notices afforded 
by writers, none of whom give evidence of having seen it. Neither Clement, nor any 
other writer, speaks of it as a Gnostic gospel. The Gnostics did not appeal to it in sup- 
port of their fundamental doctrines ; for had they done so, we should have been fully 
informed of the fact. The only argument for believing it to have been a history of 
Christ's ministry is, that it contained a narrative of a pretended conversation of Christ 
with Salome, but that might as well have been inserted in a merely doctrinal book. 
And if the book had been a historical gospel, the representation of Christ — to judge 

* In order to enable the reader to make a comparison between the Gospel according to the Hebrews and the 
Gospel of Matthew, we will copy a few quotations. The following quotation is made by Origen, (Comm. on Matt., 
torn. XVI, I 14:) 

" Another rich man said to him, Master, what good thing shall I do to live ? He said to him : Fulfill the law 
and the prophets. He answered him : I have fulfilled them. He said to him : Go, sell all that thou possessest and 
distribute to the poor, and come, follow me. But the rich man began to scratch his head, and it did not please 
him. And the Lord said to him : How sayest thou, I have fulfilled the law and the prophets, since it is written in 
the law, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself; and lo ! many of thy brethren, sons of Abraham, are clothed in 
filth, dying of hunger; and thy house is full of many goods, and nothing at all goes out of it to them 1 And he 
turned and said to Simon, his disciple, who was sitting by him: Simon, son of Jonas, it is easier for a camel to 
enter the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven." 

In Jerome we find the following quotations : 

"So the mother of the Lord, and his brethren said to him: John the Baptist is baptizing for the remission of 
sins ; let us go and be baptized by him. But he said to them : What sin have I committed that I should go and be 
baptized by him? Unless, perchance, this very word which I have spoken is (a sin of) ignorance." (Hieron. Adv. 
Pelag., Ill, 2.) 

" Now, it came to pass when the Lord had come up out of the water, the Holy Spirit with full stream came 
down and rested upon him, and said to him : My Son, in all the prophets I was waiting for thee, that thou 
shouldest come, and I might rest in thee. For thou art my rest; thou art my first-born Son, who reignest forever." 
(Hieron. in Isaiah, IV, xi, 2.) 

" Now the Lord, when he had given the cloth to the servant of the priest, went to James and appeared to him. 
For James had taken an oath that he would not eat bread from that hour on which he had drunk the cup of the 
Lord, till he saw him risen from the dead. Again, a little afterward, the Lord says, Bring a table and bread. Im- 
mediately, it is added, he took bread, and blessed, and brake, and gave it to James the Just, and said to him, My 
brother, eat thy bread, for the Son of man has risen from the dead." (Hieron. de Vir. Illust., II.) 

"In the Gospel which the Nazarenes and Ebionites use," says Jerome, on Matt, xii, 13, "the man with the 
withered hand is described as a mason, who sought the help of Christ with words to this effect: I was a mason, 
seeking a livelihood by the labor of my hand. I pray thee, Jesus, to restore to me my health, that I may not beg 
my bread in disgrace." 

These extracts show us clearly how little any other age than that of the apostles was able to originate or even 
to reproduce the simple grandeur of inspired language, and what might have been expected from writings founded 
on tradition, even when shaped after an apostolic pattern. In no sense can the apocryphal gospels of the Judaiz- 
ing sects bear any comparison with ours, neither in form nor in matter. They are destitute of spirit, life, good 
taste, sublimity, and authority. 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 51 

from the words ascribed to him in the conversation with Salome — must have been so 
foreign in its character from that in our Gospels, that it could not have existed in the 
last half of the second century without having been an object of far greater attention 
than what this book received." 

The same maybe said concerning the so-called "Gospel according to Peter." From 
the account which Serapion, Bishop of Antioeh about the close of the second century, 
gives of it, as quoted by Eusebius, (Hist. Eccl., lib. VI, c. xii,) it appears clearly that it 
did not pretend to be a history of Christianity. Had this been the case, Serapion could 
not have regarded it with such indifference as he first manifested. It is impossible that 
the existence of such a history should not have been notorious, that it should not have 
been a frequent subject of remark. "When we recollect the abundant notices of Marcion's 
Gospel, it can not be believed that there Avas another historical book extant among the 
heretics, of which the notices are so scanty, and which is never mentioned as a histor- 
ical book. It belongs to the same class of writings as the Gospel of Basilides, the tradi- 
tions of Matthias, the Gospel according to Thomas, the True Gospel, the Gospel of Eve, 
the Gospel of Perfection, which, as we remarked above, were doctrinal tracts, not histor- 
ical accounts of Christ's ministry; or, at least, so very obscure ones, that no sect for a 
moment pretended to set them up in opposition to our canonical Gospels. Norton 
remarks very fitly: "About the beginning of the last century a manuscript was made 
known of a gospel ascribed to Barnabas, in the Italian language, but supposed to be 
translated from the Arabic. It is the work of a Mohammedan, or a work interpolated 
by a Mohammedan. Much more has been written about this book than all that is to be 
found in the Christian writers of the first three centuries concerning apocryphal gospels; 
yet it is a book of which, probably, few of my readers have ever heard. It is easy to 
apply this fact to assist ourselves in judging of the importance to be attached to the 
notices of apocryphal gospels found in the Fathers." Nor would we have devoted so 
much attention to the consideration of these apocryphal gospels, had not the latest 
German school of destructive criticism set up the monstrous claim, that the Ebionitic and 
Gnostic Gospels were the original histories of our Lord, and our canonical Gospels later pro- 
ductions, mitten for the express purpose to impirove upon them! To critics who can main- 
tain that the Gospel according to the Hebrews or the Gospel of Marcion are respectively 
the originals of Matthew and Luke, it is sufficient to apply the word of the apostle: 
"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools." The authors of our four canon- 
ical Gospels, who stood infinitely above all the authors of the second century, are 
assumed to have written toward the close of that century, under the fictitious names of 
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and to have remained undiscovered, although they 
succeeded in revolutionizing the whole Christian literature of that age, and substituting 
their products in the place of the original histories of Christ's ministry, so that none of 
the critical writers at the close of the second century could discover the least trace of the 
unheard-of legerdemain ! 

From the apocryphal gospels having a heretical tendency must be distinguished those 
fabulous books called the Gospels of the Infancy, the Gospel of ISTicodemus, the Prote- 
vangelion of James, etc. "The former," says Mr. Westcott, "were either based on the 
same oral traditions as the canonical Gospels, or revisions of the canonical texts; but 
these enter on a new field, and illustrate the writings of the New Testament more by the 
complete contrast which they offer to the spirit and style of the whole, than by minute 
yet significant divergences from particular books. The completeness of the antithesis 
which these spurious stories offer to the Divine Eecord appears at once — if we may be 
allowed for a moment to compare light with darkness — in relation to the treatment of 
the three great elements of the Gospel history, miracles, parables, and prophecy. In the 
apocryphal miracles we find no worthy conception of the laws of providential inter- 
ference; they are wrought to supply personal wants, or to gratify private feelings, and 



52 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



often are positively immoral. Nor, again, is there any spiritual element in their work- 
ing; they are arbitrary displays of power, and without any spontaneity on our Lord's 
part or on that of the recipient. These apocryphal gospels are also entirely without 
parables; they exhibit no sense of those deeper relations between nature and man, 
between corruption and sin, which are so frequently declared in the synoptic Gospels; 
and, at the same time, they do not rise to the purely-spiritual theology of John, which in 
its very essence rises above the mixed earthly existence of man. Yet more, they do not 
recognize the office of prophecy; they make no reference to the struggles of the Church 
with the old forms of sin and evil, reproduced from age to age, till the final regeneration 
of all things. History, in them, becomes a mere collection of traditions, and is regarded 
neither as the fulfillment of the past nor as the type of the future." 

In conclusion, we may mention two other apocryphal writings which contain numer- 
ous allusions to the facts of the Gospels, but are not imitations of the apostolical books — 
the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, and some portions of the Sybilline Oracles. 
In them the Gospel history is thrown into a prophetic form. 

§ 13. The Testimonies of Heathen Adversaries. 

To the external evidences for the authenticity of the Gospels is to be added the testi- 
mony of avowed enemies. The learned Lardner says in his collection of Jewish and 
heathen testimonies, (on the New Testament canon :) " Of all the testimonies on the writ- 
ings of the New Testament, which we meet with in the first centuries of the Christian era, 
none are weightier and more important than those of the learned philosophers who wrote 
against Christianity; namely, of Celsus, in the second, Porphyry, in the third, and Julian 
the Apostate, in the fourth century." 

Celsus, a philosopher, who flourished about 176 A. D., proposed to himself the formal 
task of setting forth how dangerous the Christian religion would prove to the State. 
His learned argument against the Christians is the first heathen testimony as to the existence 
of New Testament writings. This work, entitled " The True Word," has unfortunately 
been lost, but in Origen's reply to it there are more copious extracts from it than from 
any other book of antiquity that has been lost. In these' extracts we have almost an 
abridgment of the Gospel history. They contain about eighty quotations from the New 
Testament, which amply prove that Celsus Avas acquainted with the writings of Matthew, 
Luke, and John, and some of the Epistles of Paul. He mentions nearly all the leading 
events in the life of Christ from his birth to his death ; of course, only in order to make 
them ridiculous. His whole argument, however, is based on the admission that the writ- 
ings of the Christians were the productions of their professed authors, though he refers 
to some alterations of the Gospels made by the Marcionites and other heretics. From 
the testimony, then, of this most malignant enemy of the Christian religion, who was, at 
the same time, a man of considerable learning and influence, it appears, that the writings 
of the Evangelists existed in his time, the first period succeeding the apostolic age, and 
that these writings were then acknowledged, even by enemies, to be authentic. 

The next witness is Porphyry, who was born 230 A. D., and wrote against Christian- 
ity about 270 A. D. From the few fragments left of this work it appears that he was 
acquainted with our Gospels and some other of the New Testament writings. This 
work enjoyed a high reputation among the heathen, and Eusebius and other learned 
Christians deemed it worth their while to refute it. In what we have left of it there are 
direct references to the. Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John, the Acts, and the Epistles 
to the Galatians. Speaking of the Christians, he calls Matthew their Evangelist. This 
man was every way qualified, both by education and his position in society, to find out 
whether the New Testament writings were authentic, or whether, after the death of the 
apostles and Evangelists, spurious works were, as their writings, palmed upon the Chris- 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 53 

tians. But we discover not even a hint at a suspicion of this kind; yea, Porphyry 
appears to have had no douht whatever as to the authenticity of these writings. From 
the attempt of this ingenious writer that the book of Daniel was an ex post facto 
prophecy, we see how well he knew to estimate an argument against the authenticity 
of a hook of the New Testament, and how eagerly he would have made use of it against 
the Christians, if he had had but the least data for forming one. 

One hundred years after Porphyry, nourished the Emperor Julian, (A. D. 331-363,) 
6urnamed the Apostate, from his renunciation of Christianity after he mounted the impe- 
rial throne. Though he resorted to the most artful political means for undermining Chris- 
tianity, yet, as a writer against it, he was every way inferior to Porphyry. From various 
extracts of his work against the Christians, transcribed by Jerome and Cyril, it is evident 
that he did not deny the truth of the Gospel history, as a history; though he denied the 
Divinity of Jesus Christ asserted in the writings of the Evangelists, he acknowledged the 
principal facts in the Gospels, as well as the miracles of our Savior and his apostles. 
Referring to the difference between the genealogies recorded by Matthew and Luke, he 
noticed them by name, and recited the sayings of Christ in the very words of the Evan- 
gelists. He also bore testimony to the Gospel of John being composed later than the 
other Evangelists, and at a time when great numbers were converted to the Christian 
faith both in Italy and Greece; and alluded oftener than once to facts recorded in the 
Acts of the Apostles. By thus quoting the four Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, and 
by quoting no other books, Julian shows that these were the only historical books 
received by the Christians as of authority, and as containing authentic memoirs of Jesus 
Christ and his apostles, together with the doctrines taught by them. But Julian's testi- 
mony does something more than represent the judgment of the Christian Church in his 
time ; it discovers also his own. He himself expressly states the early date of these 
records ; he calls them by the names which they now bear. He all along supposes, he 
no where attempts to question, their genuineness or authenticity; nor does he give even 
the slightest intimation that he suspected the whole or any part of them to be forgeries. 

We have seen that none of these avowed enemies of Christianity has expressed the 
least suspicion as to the authenticity of the ISTew Testament writings, and we would ask, 
in conclusion, who will deny that in the writings of a Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian, 
all of whom were learned men and zealous adversaries and persecutors of the Chris- 
tians, and whose testimonies cover the period from 176 to 361 of the Christian era, 
every reasonable demand of testimony borne by enemies is fully met, and that this testi- 
mony, in the wise providence of God, makes the external evidence for the Gospel history 
as complete as it possibly can be from the nature of the case ? 



CHAPTEE II. 

THE INTERNAL EVIDENCES. 
§ 14. The Peculiar Dialect op Greek in which the Evangelists Have Written. 

As we remarked in § 5, that some arguments for the genuineness or integrity of the 
Sacred Text were, at the same time, arguments for the authenticity of the records, so we 
can not entirely separate the internal evidences for the authenticity from the arguments 
for the credibility or historic verity of the Gospel records, which will be the subject of 
investigation in our next Part. In the case of such compositions as the Gospels, the 
proof of their having been written by apostles, and by those who received their accounts 



54 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



immediately from the apostles, is at the same time, as we shall further show in the next 
Part, the proof of their historic verity. But, though the arguments for their authen- 
ticity and their credibility are thus intimately blended together, and though the \iltimate 
purpose of both is the same, it is, nevertheless, desirable to consider the former sepa- 
rately, and simply with reference to their bearing upon the question of authenticity. 
They will thus form a natural transition and proper introduction to Part III. 

The Greek language, in which the New Testament writings originally appeared — as is 
universally admitted, with the exception of the Gospel of Matthew, and the Epistle to the 
Hebrews* — is not the classical Greek, such as was written by Plato, Aristotle, and other 
eminent Greek writers. Had the Evangelists and apostles written in pure, elegant, clas- 
sical Greek, thoughtful minds would have found considerable difficulty in believing them 
to be the authors of those productions, and we should lack one imj>ortant evidence 
of the authenticity of New Testament Scripture — its being written in the style natural 
to the persons by whom, and to the age in which it was produced. 

The basis of the New Testament Greek is the common or Hellenic dialect — the name 
given to that form of the Greek language which came into general use after the Mace- 
donian conquest. It was called common, because it originated in a sort of fusion of the 
particular dialects which had prevailed in earlier times; and this fusion of dialects had 
its origin chiefly from the fusion of the several States of Greece into the one great 
Macedonian Empire. In this fusion of dialects, however, the Attic still prevailed 
as the model form of the Greek language. This common dialect we find in the New 
Testament writings— in some of them to a greater extent than in others — intermixed 
with the free and frequent use of forms derived from the Aramaic or Syro-Chaldaic dia- 
lect of the Hebrew language, which had become the vernacular language of the Jewish 
people in the time of the Savior. This Hebraistic influencef in the style of the New 
Testament writers appears, as Fairbairn shows by many examples, 1, in the various fea- 
tures of grammatical construction peculiar to the Hebrew language, as, (1,) in the more 
frequent use of the prepositions for marking relations, which were wont to be indicated 
in pure Greek by means of cases; (2,) in the paucity of conjunctions which existed in 
the Hebrew, while the Greek possessed a great abundance — of which, however, the New 
Testament writers did not avail themselves. (3.) A further Hebraistic turn appears in 
the frequent use of the genitive pronouns instead of the possessives. This naturally 
arose from the inspired writers being used to the Hebrew suffixes. (4.) Another pronom- 
inal peculiarity, arising from assimilation to the Hebrew, is occasionally found in the 
New Testament. In Hebrew there is only one relative pronoun, and this is without any 
distinction as to number, gender, or case; on which account, to make the reference 



*The Epistle to the Hebrews is now held, by all men of competent learning, to have been originally composed 
in Greek. And as to the Gospel of Matthew, though the opinions of the learned are still divided, yet the 
conviction has of late been growing in favor of the proper originality of its present form, which was certainly in 
current use before the close of the apostolic age. (Fairbairn's Hermeneutical Manual.) 

f Against the frequent misuse of the so-called Hebraisms in the interpretation of the New Testament, Fair- 
bairn, in his Hermeneutical Manual, has very justly protested, showing, in the first place, that they are not nearly 
so numerous as they were at one time represented to be. They occur only so far as rendered necessary by the 
circumstances of the writers. Though the Greek syntax differs in many things from the Hebrew, wo find the New 
Testament writers accommodating themselves far more to the foreign idiom than has been generally allowed ; as, 
for instance, in the discriminating use of the aorist and perfect tenses — the aorist as denoting the historic past, and 
the perfect as denoting the past in its relation to the present, the past continuing with its effects and consequences 
to the present. John carefully observes this distinction when he says, (c. i, 3 :) eyeVero bvSe eV o ye'-yoi'ei/, that is, noth- 
ing whatever that has been made, and is still in being, was made without Him. So, also, in Colossians i, 16 ; iii, 3. 
In the second place, we should beware not to attach arbitrary meanings to the real Hebraisms which we find in the 
New Testament, as if the Hebrews had contravened the laws of all human language. For a long time the opinion 
was prevailing among commentators and lexicographers, that the prepositions, when handled by a Hellenistic Jew, 
might express almost any relation whatever. So Schleusner assigns to the preposition eis twenty-four, and to iv 
thirty distinct uses and meanings. In a few instances, even the authorized English version and that of Luther 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 55 

explicit, it is necessary to add the suffixes of the personal pronouns, or these pronouns 
themselves with a preposition. Hence such expressions as the following: "The land in 
which ye dwell upon it," "the place in which ye sojourn in it," and so on. As the Greek 
language possesses a declinahle relative pronoun, and adverbs derived from it, there was 
no need for this kind of awkward circumlocution. Yet the Evangelists were so accus- 
tomed to the Hebrew usage that they indulged in it occasionally, though not so fre- 
quently as the Septuagint. (5.) Again, the Hebrew was as remarkable for the fewness, 
as the Greek for the multiplicity, of its forms to express time — the one having its simple 
past and future tenses, while the other had its present, imperfect, perfect, pluperfect, its 
two aorists, first and second future, and paulo-post future. There can be no doubt that 
the New Testament writers were well acquainted with the principal tenses of the Greek 
verb; at the same time there are occasional anomalies, with a manifest preference for the 
simple past and future of the Hebrew, and a tendency to use the future, as expressive of 
necessity and continued action (must and is wont) somewhat more frequently than is 
usual in ordinary Greek. 2. In the use of words and phrases which have their corre- 
spondence only in Hebrew, but are not found in profane Greek writers, whether of the 
earlier or of the later periods. We mention, first, such words as a/S/9a, (abba,) afxvjv, 
(amen,) yeivva, (hell,) o-arav, (Satan,) etc. These are Oriental words in Greek letters, 
or with a Greek termination, and their meaning must be determined simply by a ref- 
erence to their Oriental use. There are, again, words and jmrases in themselves strictly 
Greek, but used in a sense different from what would naturally be put upon them by a 
simply Greek reader. For instance, the phrase -aea adp^, (all flesh,) for "all men," is quite 
a Hebraism, for native Greek writers never used adp; in the sense of "men;" and such 
an expression, if employed by them, would have meant not all mankind, but the whole 
flesh — of a man or an animal, as it might happen. 

On the whole, we may say the New Testament Greek has about as many Hebraisms 
as a work written in English by a German in this country, who, though familiar with 
the English language, is not a thorough scholar, or a work translated from the German, 
and referring to modes of thought peculiar to German mind, will exhibit, more or less, 
the idiom of the German language. Thus, the Hebraisms we find in the Gospels show 
the Evangelists to have been Jews by birth, and men in humble stations, who were not 
ambitious of seeking an exemption from the dialect they had once acquired, and we need 
not wonder to find the Hebraistic elements also in the writings of so learned a man a3 
Paul. Great as his erudition was, it was the erudition of a Jewish, not of a Grecian, 
school. His argumentations are those of a Jewish convert to Christianity, confuting his 
brethren on their own ground. How clearly can we recognize in his writings the Saul of 
Tarsus, who was educated at the feet of Gamaliel! There was, moreover, apart from the 

have suffered from the too prevalent notion of Hebraistic laxity. Thus, in the prayer of the converted malefactor, 
(Luke xxiii, 42:) "Remember me when thou comest ev tq paoi\ela aov " — not into thy kingdom, which might seem to 
point to the glory into which the Lord was presently going to enter, but in thy kingdom ; namely, when the time 
comes for thee to take to thyself thy great power, and to reign among men ; for this future manifestation of glory 
was undoubtedly what the faith of the penitent man anticipated and sought to share in, not the glory which lay 
within the vail, which only the answer of Christ brought within the ken of his spiritual vision. From the real or 
alleged Hebraisms of the New Testament we must distinguish a class of expressions not in themselves absolutely 
new, but still fraught with an import which could not attach to them as used by any heathen writer, nor even in 
the production of any Greek-speaking Jew prior to the birth of Christ. With the marvelous events of the Gospel 
age, old things passed away, all things became new ; and the change which took place in the Divine dispensation 
could not fail to impress itself on those words and forms of expression which bore respect to what had then for the 
first time come properly into being. We refer to such terms as Aoyo?, (word,) pao-ikeia. tow ®eou, (kingdom of God,) 
aioiv tieKKuv, (world to come,) SiKawa-iiirri, (righteousness,) £u>rj, (life,) 8a.va.Ttv;, (death,) xap'Si (g raee >) ete - I n s0 f ar 
as these terms embodied the distinctive facts or principles of Christianity, their former and common usage could 
only in part exhibit the sense now acquired by them ; for the full depth and compass of meaning belonging to them 
in their new application, we must look to the New Testament itself, comparing one passage with another, and 
viewing the language used in the light of the great things which it brings to our apprehension. 



56 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



relation the New Testament writers bore to their country and nation, as Fairbairn re- 
marks, " a necessity for a certain departure from the pure, classical style, and calling in 
the aid of Jewish idioms and forms of speech, in order to exhibit in the most distinct 
and appropriate manner the peculiar truths of the Gospel. The native language of 
Greece, though in some respects the most perfect medium for the communication of 
thought which has ever been employed by the tongue of man, yet from being always 
conversant with worldly things, adapted to express every shade of thought and every 
variety of relationship within the human and earthly sphere — but still only these — it was 
not fully adequate to the requirements and purposes of Christian authorship. For this 
higher end it needed to borrow something from the sanctuary of God, and to be, as it 
were, baptized in the modes of thought and utterance which were familiar to those who 
had enjoyed the training of the Spirit. Thus the writings of the Old Testament 
formed a necessary preparation for the language of the New, as did also the history and 
institutions of the one for the religious ideas of the other. Nor is it too much to sav, 
that a Gospel in pure Greek, or even an apostolic epistle in pure Greek, is inconceivable. 
The canonical and the Hebrew are most intimately connected." Fairbairn adds to this: 
"It is perfectly consistent with all this, and no less true, that the writers of the New 
Testament often show a correct acquaintance with the idioms of the Greek language. 
In many cases their language rises superior to the common dialect of the time, and 
approaches marvelously near to the precision of Attic Greek, while in other passages it 
seems to sink below the average standard, and to present to us the peculiarities of the 
later Greek, distorted and exaggerated by Aramaic forms of expression. Where, how- 
ever, in a merely-literary point of view, the Sacred Volume may thus seem weakest, it is, 
considered from a higher point of view, incomparably strongest. It is this investiture 
of its doctrines with the peculiar richness and force of Hebraistic modes of expression, 
rather than with the diffluent garb of a corrupted and decayed Hellenism, that does 
truly reveal to us the overruling providence and manifold wisdom of God." 

It is also to be borne in mind, that, while all the writers of the New Testament par- 
took, to some extent, of the Hebraistic influence, some did so considerably more than 
others. The Hebraistic element differed even with the same writers in different parts of 
their writings, as in the Apocalypse of John, which is considerably more Hebraistic than 
either his Gospel or Epistles. The Gospel of Luke is decidedly less marked with Hebra- 
isms than those of Matthew and Mark. While, therefore, there are peculiarities which 
distinguish the New Testament Greek, as a whole, from other Greek writings, there are 
also peculiarities distinguishing the Greek of one writer from that of another, words and 
phrases used by one and not used by the others, or used in a manner peculiar to himself. 
Thus there is an individual, as well as a general, impress on the language of the New Test- 
ament writers — another mark of their authenticity. 

We have shown how fully the language of the Gospels accords with the personality 
and situation of those to whom they are ascribed. We may go still further and assert, 
that they could not have been written by any person or persons who lived in another 
age than that of the apostles. The conjunction of such Latinisms as xsvrupiwv, (centu- 
rion,) keyswv, (legion,) Ttpantopiov, (praetorium, judgment-hall,) xouffrwdca, (watch,) y.j}vffos, 
(census, tribute,) xoSpdvr-qs, (quadrans, farthing,) dqvdpiay, (denarius, penny,) aaaapwv, 
(assarius, farthing,) gizsxooMtu>p, (speculator, executioner,) (ppayslkwcraq, (having scourged, 
a participle formed from the Latin verb flagellare,) and many other terms, referring to 
the military force, revenue, and offices of the Roman Government, with such Hebraisms 
as xopftav, (Mark vii, 11,) paftjlouvt, (my Lord,) duo duo, (literally, two, two, Mark vi, 7,) 
■npaatai npaoiai, (literally, onion-beds, onion-beds, that is, in squares, like a garden-plot, 
Mark vi, 40, a Hebraistic repetition, as in the previous instance,) rd (iSikuyp-a rij^ ipy/ico- 
asuiq, (the abomination of desolation,) was natural only in Palestine during the period 
between Herod the Great and the destruction of Jerusalem, and marks the writers for 



THE AUTHENTICITY OP THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 57 

Jews of that time and country. If we bear in mind that although the New Testament 
diction has much in common with the LXX and the Greek apocryphal literature of the 
Old Testament, yet it has also much that is peculiar to itself; that these conclusive 
peculiarities could possibly arise only in the apostolic age, in such a state of the Jewish 
polity, as characterized the time between the death of our Savior and the destruction 
of Jerusalem, and, finally, that the later Christian Greek literature necessarily presup- 
poses the New Testament diction as its basis, we see at once how powerful a proof of 
the authenticity of our Gospels their peculiar idiom is. Apart from every other con- 
sideration, this circumstance alone exposes the absurdity of the theory which assigns 
the second century to the composition of the Gospels or of any one of them. 

Before dismissing, however, the argument for the authenticity of the Gospel records 
drawn from the New Testament Greek, it is proper to notice an objection. It has been 
asked : Was the current language of the common Jewish people not the Aramaic dialect 
of the Hebrew language? Did our Savior and his apostles not usually speak in that 
language ? How does it come, then, that the Evangelists, as well as the other writers of 
the New Testament, being Jews, should write in Greek ? It is true that our Lord is 
represented on several occasions as speaking in Aramaic : as when he said to the 
daughter of the Jewish ruler, Jairus, "Talitha cumi," and to the blind man, " Ephpha- 
tha," or when he referred to the terms currently employed among the people, such as 
raka, rabbi, corban; when he applied to his disciples such epithets as Cephas, Barjona, 
Boanerges, or when, on the cross, he exclaimed, " Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani." There 
is, on the other hand, a very remarkable circumstance to which the Duke of Manches- 
ter, (in his Essay on the Harmonizing of the Gospels.) has called attention. If we 
compare the Old Testament passages in the synoptical Gospels, we find that those of 
them which occur in the sermons or sayings of the Lord, are always from the LXX, 
while those of them which are quoted by the Evangelists themselves, deviate from the 
LXX in favor generally of the Hebrew text. If Christ had generally spoken the Ara- 
maic, it would be incomprehensible why the Evangelists should put quotations from 
the LXX only upon his lips, while they themselves, in their own quotations, do not restrict 
themselves to the LXX. The verbal harmony of the synoptical Evangelists is also best 
accounted for by the presumption that our Lord spoke usually in Greek with his dis- 
ciples, and this presumption is confirmed by the fact that at the raising of Jairus's 
daughter, where Jesus spoke Aramaic with the ruler of the synagogue, the verbal har- 
mony of the Synoptist's report of his saying is defective ; so, also, in the history of his 
sufferings, the Old Testament is no longer quoted from the LXX, because at Jerusalem 
the Aramaic was spoken more generally than in Galilee. 

Though Dr. Pairbairn contends that the Aramaic, or later Syro-Chaldaic form of the 
Hebrew, was the vernacular language of the Jewish people in the age of our Lord, and, 
consequently, the medium of intercourse on all ordinary occasions, he admits, " that from 
a long and varied concatenation of circumstances, the Greek language must have been 
very commonly understood by the higher and more educated classes throughout Syria. 
It was the policy both of Alexander and his successors, in that part of the world, to 
extend the language and culture as well as ascendency of Greece. With this view cities 
were planted at convenient distances, which might be considered Grecian rather than 
Asiatic in their population and manners. The Syriac kings, by whom the Macedonian 
line of rulers was continued, kept up Greek as the court language, and were, doubtless, 
followed by their official representatives and the influential classes generally throughout 
the country. The army, too, though not entirely, nor perhaps even in the major part, 
yet certainly in very considerable proportions, was composed of persons of Grecian 
origin, who could not fail to make the Greek language in some sense familiar at the 
various military stations in the regions of Syria. Even after the Macedonian rule had 
terminated and all became subject to the sway of the Bomans, it was still usually 



58 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



through the medium of the Greek tongue that official intercourse was maintained, and 
the decrees of government were made known. It is in the very nature of things impos- 
sible that so many Hellenizing influences should have continued in operation for two or 
three centuries without leading somewhat generally to a knowledge of Greek among the 
better classes in all pai-ts of Syria. There were also circumstances more strictly peculiar 
to the Jewish people, which could not be without their effect in making them to some ex- 
tent acquainted with the Greek language. Partly from special encouragements held out 
to them at the founding of Alexandria, a Grecian city, and partly, perhaps, from the mer- 
cantile spirit which began to take possession of them from the time of the Babylonish 
exile, Alexandria became one of their great centers, where, as we are told by Philo, they 
formed about two-fifths of the entire population. They abounded also, as is clear from 
the Acts of the Apostles, in the Greek-speaking cities of Asia Minor, and in those of 
Greece itself. From whatever causes, the dispersion seems, for some generations previous 
to the Christian era, to have taken very much a western, and especially a Grecian, direc- 
tion ; in every place of importance inhabited by Greeks, members of the stock of Israel 
had their homes and synagogues. It is only, too, what might have been expected in the 
circumstances, that the culture and enterprise, which distinguished the communities in 
those Grecian cities, would act with stimulating effect upon the Jewish mind, and bring 
its powers into more energetic play and freedom of action than was likely to be found 
among the Palestinian Jews, who were sealed up in their national bigotry and stagnant 
Pharisaism. Hence the only moral and religious productions which are known to have 
appeared among the Jews, between the closing of the Old Testament canon and the 
birth of Christ — those contained in the apocryphal writings — came chiefly, if not 
entirely, from the pen of the Hellenistic Jews, and exist only — most probably never did 
exist but — in the Greek language. Hence also the Greek translation of the Old Testa- 
ment, which was completed several generations before the Christian era, and which, 
there is good reason to believe, was in extensive use, about that time, among the Jewish 
people. So that, looking to the numbers, the higher intelligence, and varied resources 
of the Hellenistic Jews, and taking into account their frequent personal visits to 
Palestine, at the ever-recurring festivals, we can not doubt that they materially con- 
tributed to a partial knowledge and use of the Greek tongue among their brethren in 
Palestine." 

The fact that the books of the New Testament, and especially those which contain our 
Lord's personal discourses, should have been originally composed in the Greek instead 
of in the Aramaic language, in case our Lord and his immediate disciples spoke generally 
not in Greek to their countrymen, is thus accounted for by Dr. Pairbairn : "It was 
comparatively but a small portion of the people resident in Jerusalem and Judea who 
embraced the Christian faith ; and those who did, having, in the first instance, enjoyed 
many opportunities of becoming personally acquainted with the facts of Gospel history, 
and enjoying afterward the ministry of apostles and Evangelists, who were perfectly 
cognizant of the whole, were, in a manner, independent of any written records. Besides, 
the troubles which shortly after befell their native land, and which were distinctly fore- 
seen by the founders of the Christian faith, destined, as they were, to scatter the power 
of the Jewish nation, and to render its land and people monuments of judgment, pre- 
sented an anticipative reason against committing the sacred and permanent records of 
the Christian faith to the Hebrew language. That language itself, already corrupted and 
broken, was presently to become to all but the merest fragment of the Jews themselves, 
antiquated and obsolete. The real centers of Christianity — the places where it took 
firmest root, and from which it sent forth its regenerating power among the nations — 
from the time that authoritative records of its facts and expositions of its doctrines 
became necessary — were to be found in Greek-speaking communities— the communities 
scattered throughout the cities of Asia Minor, of Greece, at Pome, and the West — where 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 59 

also the first converts to the Christian faith consisted chiefly of those whose native 
tongue was Greek. Whether, therefore, respect were had to the immediate wants of the 
first Christian communities, or to the quarters in which the Gospel was to find its most 
active agents and representatives, and the direction it was appointed to take in the 
world, the Greek was obviously the language in which its original and authoritative 
documents behooved to be written. Whatever reasons there were for the adherents of 
Judaism getting the Scriptures of the Old Testament into Greek ; whatever reasons, also, 
Josephus could have for translating into Greek his Jewish histories, and the authors of 
the apocryphal writings for adopting that language in preference to the Aramaic, the 
same reasons existed, and in far greater force, for the inspired writings, which were to 
form, in earlier and later times, the fundamental records of the Christian faith, being 
composed in the Greek language, and in that language committed to the faithful keeping 
of the Church. Had they not been originally composed in Greek, the course of Provi- 
dence would presently have required that they should be translated into Greek; and 
considering how much depended on the correct knowledge of them, and how many 
sources we have for illustrating Greek, as compared with Aramaic productions, it was 
unspeakably better that, from the first, they should have appeared in a Greek form." 

§ 15. Some other Characteristics of the Style is which the Gospels are Written. 

1. The style of the Gospels, apart from the peculiar dialect of Greek in which they 
were written, is totally devoid of ornament; it presents no beautiful transitions from one 
subject to another; the ear is not charmed with the melody of harmonious periods; the 
imagination is not fired with grand epithets. In short, we find in the Gospels the sim- 
plicity of writers who were more intent upon things than upon words; we find men of 
plain education honestly relating what they knew, without attempting to adorn their 
narratives by any elegance of diction. And this is precisely the kind of writing which 
we should expect from the persons to whom those books are ascribed. 

2. The Gospels are not proper histories ; that is, they do not furnish a full and satis- 
factory account of the ministry of Jesus to one previously unacquainted with the essen- 
tial facts concerning it. Either individually or collectively, they present only a brief 
narrative of some of the most striking events in our Lord's ministry, and these told by 
the writers, for the most part, nakedly and in a few words. No skill is shown by any 
one of the Evangelists in connecting the different parts so as to form a continuous his- 
tory. No explanations are given, except a few, which are parenthetical and unimportant. 
With the exception of some passages in John's Gospel, there is no comment on any thing 
told which discovers the writer's feelings or state of mind. This peculiar] ty of the Gos- 
pels furnishes another proof that they could not have been forged, no more than they 
could have been written by men whose imaginations had been strongly excited by some 
extraordinary delusion. 

3. We discover in the Gospel narratives a striking consistency with that which the 
Evangelists do not state expressly. This striking consistency has been presented by Mr. 
Norton in detail ; it is sufficient to quote from him the leading features : 

In the narratives of the Evangelists, the existence of many facts Avhich are not 
expressly mentioned is implied. In order to understand fully what is told, and to per- 
ceive its bearing and application, we must take into view very much that is not told. 
There is to be found in almost every part of the Gospels a latent reference to some 
existing state of things which is not described. But when we attend to the character of 
those facts with which different portions of the narrative are thus connected, we find 
that they are all probable or certain ; that we have distinct evidence of them from other 
sources, or that they are such as must or might have existed. The inferences from these 
histories, though many and various, are all consistent with the histories themselves, and 



60 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 

whatever we can learn from other sources. In tracing out the necessary or probable 
bearing of those actions and discourses which are recorded, or in assigning their probable 
occasions or consequences, we detect no inconsistency with the history itself, and find no 
contradiction of known facts ; but, on the contrary, we are continually perceiving new 
marks of probability and truth. This coincidence between what is told and what is 
implied does not appear here and there only, but discovers itself throughout the Gospels. 
But such a consistency of the narrative with itself can evidently not be the work of study 
or artifice. The Gospels are very inartificial compositions, and if the coincidences had 
been intended to give an air of probability to the narrative, the writer would have 
taken care that they should be noticed by the reader. The just and lively conception — 
which the writers of the Gospels evidently possessed of those numerous facts and circum- 
stances that must or might have existed, if their history be true — admits of no other ex- 
planation, than that the narratives rest on the authority of those who were witnesses of 
what is related, and were themselves concerned in the transactions recorded. It follows, 
therefore, that these histories were committed to writing either by some of the immediate 
disciples of Christ, or by persons who derived, generally speaking, correct and particular 
information from such disciples. And if this conclusion is reached, there is no room left 
to doubt that they are the works of those particular individuals to whom they have 
always been ascribed. 

We discover, therefore, in the characteristics of the Gospels which we have described, 
another mode in which it has pleased God to preserve to us in the very books themselves 
the evidence of their authenticity. Such is their incompleteness, that they are neces- 
sarily complicated with a great body of circumstantial evidence of the most unsuspicious 
kind. Thus, what we might consider as their defects, when regarded merely as literary 
compositions, contribute greatly to enhance their value. 

§ 16. The Frequent Allusions op the Evangelists to the History op their Times. 

"Whoever," says Michaelis, "undertakes to forge a set of writings, and ascribe them 
to persons who lived in a former period, exposes himself to the utmost danger of a dis- 
cordancy with the history and manners of the age to which his accounts are referred; 
and this danger increases in proportion as they relate to points not mentioned in general 
history, but to such as belong only to a single city, sect, religion, or school. Of all books 
that ever were written, there is none, if the historical books of the New Testament are a 
forgery, so liable to detection; the scene of action is not confined to a single country, but 
displayed in the greatest cities of the Roman Empire ; allusions are made to the various 
manners and principles of the Greeks, the Romans, and the Jews, which are carried so 
far with respect to this last nation, as to extend even to the trifles and follies of their 
schools. A Greek or Roman Christian, who lived in the second or third century, though 
ever so well versed in the writings of the ancients, would still have been wanting in 
Jewish literature; and a Jewish convert in those ages, even the most learned rabbi, 
would have been equally deficient in the knowledge of Greece and Rome. If, then, the 
historical books of the New Testament thus exposed to detection— had it been an impos- 
ture — are found after the severest researches to harmonize with the history, the manners, 
and the opinions of the first century; and since the more minutely we inquire, the more 
perfect we find the coincidence, we must conclude that they were written in the age in 
which they profess to have been written." 

The numerous incidental allusions to the civil history of the times, which the Gospels 
and the Acts furnish, and which are most strikingly verified by profane writers, have 
been most carefully collated by Mr. George Rawlinson in his "Historical Evidences of the 
Truth of the Scripture Records." He groups them under two heads, considering, first, 
all such as bear upon the general condition of the countries, which were the scene of 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 61 

the history, and, secondly, such as have reference to the civil rulers, who are represented 
as exercising authority in the countries at the time of the narrative, as follows: 

I. The political condition of Palestine at the time to which the New Testament nar- 
rative properly belongs, was one curiously complicated and anomalous; it underwent 
frequent changes, but retained through all of them certain peculiarities, which made the 
position of the country unique among the dependencies of Eome. Not having been 
conquered in the ordinary way, but having passed under the Roman dominion with the 
consent and by the assistance of a large party among the inhabitants, it was allowed to 
maintain, for a while, a species of semi-independence, not unlike that of various native 
States in India, which are really British dependencies. A mixture, and to some extent 
an alternation, of Roman with native power resulted from this arrangement, and a con- 
sequent complication in the political status, which must have made it very difficult to be 
thoroughly understood by any one who was not a native and a cotemporary. The 
chief representative of the Roman power in the East — the President of Syria, the local 
Governor, whether a Herod or a Roman procurator, and the high-priest, had each and 
all certain rights and a certain authority in the country. A double system of taxation, 
a double administration of justice, and even in some degree a double military command, 
were the natural consequence, while Jewish and Roman customs, Jewish and Roman 
words, were simultaneously in use, and a condition of things existed full of harsh 
contrasts, strange mixtures, and abrupt transitions. Within the space of fifty years 
Palestine was a single united kingdom under a native ruler, a set of principalities under 
native ethnarchs and tetrarchs, a country in part containing such principalities, in part 
reduced to the condition of a Roman province, a kingdom reunited once more under a 
native sovereign, and a country reduced wholly under Rome, and governed by procura- 
tors dependent on the President of Syria, but still subject in certain respects to the 
Jewish monarch of a neighboring territory. These facts we know from Josephus, and 
other writers, who, though less accurate, on the whole confirm his statements; they ren- 
der the civil history of Judea during this period one very difficult to master and remem- 
ber; the frequent changes, supervening upon the original complication, are a fertile 
source of confusion, and seems to have bewildered even the sagacious and painstaking 
Tacitus. The New Testament narrative, however, falls into no error in treating of the 
period; it marks, incidentally and without effort or pretension, the various changes in 
the civil government — the sole kingdom of Herod the Great, (Matt, ii, 1 ; Luke i, 5 ;) 
the partition of his dominions among his sons, (Matt, ii, 22; xiv, 1; Luke iii, 1 ;) the 
reduction of Judea to the condition of a Roman province, while Galilee, Iturea, and 
Trachonitis continued under native princes, (Luke iii, 1;) the restoration of the old 
kingdom of Palestine, in the person of Agrippa the First, (Acts xii, 1, etc.,) and the final 
reduction of the whole under Roman rule, and re-establishment of procurators, (Acts 
xxiii, 24; xxiv, 27, etc.,) as the civil heads, while a species of ecclesiastical superintend- 
ence was exercised by Agrippa the Second, (Acts xxv, 14, etc.) Again, the New Testa- 
ment narrative exhibits in the most remarkable way the mixture in the government — 
the occasional power of the President of Syria, as shown in Cyrenius's "taxing," (Luke 
ii, 2; compare Acts v, 37;) the ordinary division of authority between the high-priest 
and the procurator, (Matt, xxvii, 1, 2; Acts xxii, 30; xxiii, 1-10;) the existence of two 
separate taxations — the civil and the ecclesiastical — the "census," (Matt, xvii, 17,) and the 
"didrachm," (Matt, xvii, 24;) of two tribunals, (John xviii, 28, 32, etc.,) two modes of 
capital punishment, two military forces, (Matt, xvii, 64, 65,) two methods of marking 
time, (Luke iii, 11;) at every turn it shows, even in such little matters as verbal expres 
sions, the coexistence of Jewish with Roman ideas and practices in the country — a coex- 
istence which, it must be remembered, came to an end within forty years of our Lord's 
crucifixion. The general tone and temper of the Jews at the time, their feelings tow r ard 
the Romans, and toward their neighbors, their internal divisions and sects, their confi- 



62 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



dent expectation of a deliverer, are represented by Josephus, and other writers, in a 
manner which very strikingly accords with the account incidentally given by the 
Evangelists. The extreme corruption and wickedness, not only of the mass of the 
people, but even of the rulers and chief men, is asserted by Josephus in~the strongest 
terms;* while, at the same time, he testifies to the existence among them of a species of 
zeal for religion, a readiness to attend the feasts,f a regularity in the offering of sacri- 
fice,! an almost superstitious regard for the Temple,§ and fanatic abhorrence of all who 
sought to "change the customs which Moses had delivered," (Acts vi, 14.) The con- 
spiracy against Herod the Great, when ten men bound themselves by an oath to kill 
him, and, having armed themselves with short daggers, which they hid under their 
clothes, entered into the theater where they expected Herod to arrive, intending, if he 
came, to fall upon him and dispatch him with their weapons, || breathes the identical 
spirit of that against Paul, which the promptness of the chief captain, Lysias, alone frus- 
trated, (Acts xxiii, 12-31.) "We find, from Josephus, that there was a warm controversy 
among the Jews themselves as to the lawfulness of "giving tribute to Csesar,"^[ (Matt, 
xxii, 17;) that the Samaritans were hostile to such of the Galileans as had their "faces 
set to go to Jerusalem," (Luke ix, 51;) that on one occasion, at least, they fell upon those 
who were journeying through their land to attend a feast, and murdered a large num- 
ber;** that the Pharisees and Sadducees were noted sects, distinguished by the tenets 
which in Scripture are assigned to themjff that the Pharisees were the more popular, 
and persuaded the common people as they pleased, while the Sadducees were important 
chiefly as men of high rank and station ; JJ and that a general expectation, founded upon 

* Joseph., De Bell. Jud., vii, 8, \ 1 : "For that time was fruitful among the Jews in all sorts of wickedness, so 
that they left no evil deed undone ; nor was there any new form of wickedness which any one could invent if he 
wished to do so. Thus they were all corrupt both in their public and their private relations ; and they vied with 
each other who should excel in impiety toward God and injustice to men. The more powerful oppressed the com- 
mon people, and the common people eagerly sought to destroy the more powerful, for the former class were governed 
by the love of power, and the latter by the desire to seize and plunder the possessions of the wealthy." (Comjjare 
Ant. Jud., xx, 7, I 8; Bell. Jud., v, 13, § 6 ; and 10, § 5.) 

f Joseph., Ant. Jud., xvii, 9, § 3 ; xx, 4, $ 3 ; Bell. Jud., ii, 19, # 1, etc. On one occasion it appears that more than 
two and a half millions of persons had come up to Jerusalem to worship. (Bell. Jud., vi, 9, $ 3.) 

% Ant. Jud., xv, 7, § 8 : "In Jerusalem there were two fortresses, one belonging to the city itself, and the other 
to the Temple. Whoever held these had the whole nation in their power; for without the command of these, it was 
not possible to offer the sacrifices; and no Jew could endure the thought that these should fail to be offered; they 
were even ready sooner to lay down their lives than omit the sacrifices which they were accustomed to ofl'er to God. 

$ Not only was Caligula's attempt to have his statue set up in the Temple resisted with determination, (Joseph., 
Ant. Jud., xviii, 8,) but when the younger Agrippa, by raising the hight of his house, obtained a view into the 
Temple courts, the greatest indignation was felt. The Jews immediately raised a wall to shut out his prospect, 
and when Festus commanded them to remove it, they positively refused, declaring that they would rather die than 
destroy any portion of the sacred fabric. (See Ant. Jud., xx, 8, § 11, and on the general subject compare Philo, 
De Legat. ad Caium pp. 1022, 1023.) 

|| Ant. Jud., xv, 8, \\ 1-4. 

^f Josephus tells us that when Cyrenius came to take the census of men's properties throughout Judea, a contro- 
versy arose among the Jews on the legality of submission to foreign taxation. Judas of Galilee (Acts v, 37) 
maintained that it was a surrender of the theocratic principle ; while the bulk of the chief men, including some 
considerable number of the Pharisees, took the opposite view, and persuaded the people to submit themselves. 
(Ant. Jud., xviii, 1, j? 1.) 

•*'*' Ant. Jud., xx, 6, § 1 : " Now, there arose an enmity between the Samaritans and the Jews, from the following 
cause : The Galileans were accustomed, in going up to the feasts that were held in Jerusalem, to pass through the 
country of the Samaritans. At this time there was, on the road which they took, a village called Ginea, situated 
on the boundary between Samaria and the great plain. When the Galileans came to this place they were attacked, 
and many of them killed. 

|f Ant. Jud., xviii, 1, g§ 3, 4. Note especially the following: Of the Pharisees — "They believe that souls 
have immortal vigor, and that beyond the grave there are rewards and punishments, according as they follow a 
virtuous or a vicious course of life in this world." Of the Sadducees — "But the doctrine of the Sadducees is, that 
the soul is annihilated together with the body." (Compare Acts xxiii, 8.) 

\\ Ant. Jud., I, s. c. [The Pharisees] " are very influential with the people ; and whatever prayers to God or 
sacrifices are performed, are performed at their dictation. The doctrine (of the Sadducees) is received by but few : 
but these are the men who are in the highest authority." 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 63 

the prophecies of the Old Testament, existed among the Jews during the Eoman war, that 
a great king was about to rise up, in the East, of their own race and country.* This last 
fact is confirmed by both Suetoniusf and Tacitus,| and is one which even Strauss does not 
venture to dispute. It would be easy to point out a further agreement between the Evan- 
gelical historians and profane writers with respect to the manners and customs of the Jews 
at this period. There is scarcely a matter of this kind noted in the New Testament, which 
may not be confirmed from Jewish sources, such as Josephus, Philo, and the Mishna. 
The points of agreement hitherto adduced have had reference to the Holy Land and its 
inhabitants. It is not, however, in this connection only that the accuracy of the Evan- 
gelical writers in their accounts of the general condition of those countries which are the 
scene of their history is observable. Their descriptions of the Greek and Eoman world, 
so far as it comes under their cognizance, are most accurate. ~No where have the char- 
acter of the Athenians and the general appearance of Athens been more truthfully and 
skillfully portrayed than in the few verses of the Acts which contain the account of 
Paul's visit. The people — "Athenians and strangers spending their time in nothing but 
hearing or telling of some new thing," (Acts xvii, 21;) philosophizing and disputing on 
Mars' Hill and in the market-place, (ibid., verse 17,) glad to discuss, though disinclined 
to believe, (Acts xvii, 32, 33,) and yet religious withal, standing in honorable contrast 
with the other Greeks in respect of their reverence for things divine, (ibid., verse 22) — 
are put before us with all the vividness of life, just as they present themselves to our 
view in the pages of their own historians and orators.§ Again, how striking, and how 
thoroughly classical is the account of the tumult at Ephesus, (Acts xix, 23,) where almost 
every word receives illustration from ancient coins and inscriptions, as has been excel- 
lently shown in a recent work of great merit on the life of Paul.[| Or, if we turn to 
Eome and the Eoman system, how truly do we find depicted the great and terrible 
emperor, whom all feared to provoke — the provincial administration by proconsuls and 
others chiefly anxious that tumults should be prevented — the contemptuous religious 
tolerance — the noble principle of Eoman law, professed, if not always acted on, whereby 

* Bell. Jud., vi, 5, j3 4. "But that which most of all roused them to undertake this war, was an ambiguous 
oracle, . . . found in their sacred books, that, at that time, a man of their country should rule over the whole 
earth." 

fSuet., Vit. Vespasian., \ 4: "An ancient and settled opinion had prevailed throughout the whole East, that 
fate had decreed that at that time persons proceeding from Judea should become masters of the world. This was 
foretold, as the event afterward proved, of the Roman emperor ; but the Jews applied it to themselves, and this 
was the cause of their rebellion." (Compare Vit. Octav., # 94, and Virg. Eclog., iv.) 

% Tacit. Histor., v, 13 : " These things [the prodigies that occurred just before the capture of Jerusalem by the 
Romans] were regarded by a few as alarming omens ; but the greater number believed that it was written in the 
ancient books of the priests, that at that very time the East should become very powerful, and that persons pro- 
ceeding from Judea should become masters of the world." 

$ How attractive to strangers Athens was, even in her decline, may be seen from the examples of Cicero, Ger- 
manicus, Pausanias, and others. (See Conybeare and Howson's Life of St. Paul, vol. i, pp. 398, 399.) On the 
greediness of the Athenians after novelty see Demost. Philipp., i, p. 43, ("Or tell me, do you wish to go about ask- 
ing each other in the market-place, What is the news? And can there be any thing newer than that the man of 
Macedon," etc. ;) Philipp. Epist., pp. 156, 157; ^Elian., Var. Hist., v, 13; Sehol. ad Thucy., iii, 38, etc. On their 
religiousness, compare Pausan., i, 24, \ 3, (the Athenians are more zealous than others in the worship of gods;) 
Xen., Rep. Atheniens., iii, ?,% 1, 8; Joseph., Contra Apion., ii, 11, ("All say that the Athenians are the most 
religious of the Greeks;") Strab., v, 3, g 18; .Lilian., Var. Hist., v, 17; Philostrat, Vit. Appollon.,- vi, 3; and 
among later authors, see Mr. Grote's History of Greece, vol. iii, pp. 229-232. 

|| See the Life and Epistles of St. Paul by Messrs. Conybeare and Howson, vol. ii, pp. 66, etc. (1.) The "Great 
Goddess Diana" is found to have borne that title as her usual title, both from an inscription, (Boeckh, Corpus 
Inscript., 2,963,) and from Xenophon, (Ephes., i, p. 15,) "I invoke our ancestral God, the Great Diana of the 
Ephesians." (2.) The Asiarchs are mentioned on various coins and inscriptions. (3.) The town-clerk (ypa/jixa- 
r««) of Ephesus is likewise mentioned in inscriptions. (Boeckh, No. 2,963, No. 2,966, and No. 2,990.) (4.) The 
curious word i/eowcdpos, (Acts xix, 35,) literally "sweeper" of the temple, is also found in inscriptions and coins, a3 
an epithet of the Ephesian people. Boeckh, No. 2,966.) The "silver shrines of Diana," the "court-days," the 
"deputies" or "proconsuls," (iv9viraToi,) might receive abundant classical illustration. The temple was the glory 
of the ancient world; enough still remains of the "theater" to give evidence of its former greatness. 



64 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



accusers and accused were brought "face to face," and the latter had free "license to 
answer for themselves concerning the crimes laid against them," (Acts xxv, 16) — the 
privileges of Eoman citizenship, sometimes acquired by birth, sometimes by purchase— 
the right of appeal possessed and exercised by the provincials — the treatment of pris- 
oners—the peculiar manner of chaining them— the employment of soldiers as their 
guards— the examination by torture— the punishment of condemned persons not being 
Eoman citizens by scourging and crucifixion— the manner of this punishment— the prac- 
tice of bearing the cross, of affixing a title or superscription, of placing soldiers under a 
centurion to watch the carrying into effect of this sentence, of giving the garments of the 
sufferer to these persons, of allowing the bodies after death to be buried by the friends— 
and the like! The sacred historians are as familiar not only with the general character, 
but even with some of the obscurer customs of Greece and Eome, as with those of their 
own country. Fairly observant and always faithful in their accounts, they continually 
bring before us little points which accord minutely with notices in profane Avriters 
nearly cotemporary with them, while occasionally they increase our knowledge of classic 
antiquity by touches harmonious with its spirit, but additional to the information which 
we derive from the native authorities* Again, it has been well remarked that the con- 
dition of the Jews beyond the limits of Palestine is represented by the Evangelical 
writers very agreeably to what may be gathered of it from Jewish and heathen sources. 
The wide dispersion of the chosen race is one of the facts most evident upon the surface 
of the New Testament history. "Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and dwellers in 
Mesopotamia, and Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus, and Asia, Phrj^gia, and Pamphylia, in 
Egypt, and in the parts of Lybia about Cyrene, strangers of Eome, Cretes, and Arabians," 
(Acts ii, 9-11,) are said to have been witnesses, at Jerusalem, of the first outpourings of 
the Holy G-host. In the travels of Paul through Asia Minor and Greece, there is scarcely 

* Among minute points of accordance may be especially noticed the following: 1. The geographical accuracy. 
(1.) Compare the divisions of Asia Minor mentioned in the Acts with those in Pliny. Phrygia, Galatia, Lycaonia, 
Cilieia, Pamphylia, Pisidia, Asia, Mysia, Bithynia, are all recognized as existing provinces by the Roman geog- 
rapher writing probably within a few years of Luke. (2.) The division of European Greece into the two provinces 
of Macedonia and Achaia, (Acts xix, 24, etc.,) accords exactly with the arrangement of Augustus noticed in Strabo, 
(xvii, ad fin.) (3.) The various tracts in or about Palestine belong exactly to the geography of the time, and of no 
other. Judea, Samaria, Galilee, Trachonitis, Iturea, Abilene, Decapolis, are recognized as geographically distinct 
at this period by the Jewish and classical writers. (See Plin., H. N., v, 14, 18, 23 ; Strab., xvi, §g 10, 11, 34 ; Joseph., 
Ant. Jud., xix, 5, \ 1, etc.) (4.) The routes mentioned are such as were in use at the time. The "ship of Alexan- 
dria," which, conveying Paul to Rome, lands him at Puteoli, follows the ordinary course of the Alexandrian corn- 
ships, as mentioned by Strabo, (xvii, 1, § 7,) Philo, (in Place., pp. 968-9,) and Seneca, (Bpist. 77,) and touches at 
customary harbors. (See Sueton., Vit. Tit., $ 25.) Paul's journey from Troas by Neapolis to Philippi presents an 
exact parallel to that of Ignatius, sixty years later, (Martyr. Ignat., c. 5.) His passage through Amphipolis and 
Apollonia, on his road from Philippi to Thessalonica, is in accordance with the Itinerary of Antoine, which places 
those towns on the route between the two cities. (5.) The mention of Philippi as the first city of Macedonia to one 
approaching from the Bast, ("the chief city of that part of Macedonia," Acts xvi, 12,) is correct, since there was 
no other between it and Neapolis. The statement that it was a " colony " is also true, (Dio. Cass., Ii, 4, p. 445, D.; 
Plin., H. N., iv, 11; Strab., vii, Fr., 41.) 2. The minute political knowledge. (1.) We have already seen the 
intimate knowledge exhibited of the state of Ephesus, with its proconsul, town-clerks, Asiarohs, etc. A similar 
exactitude appears in the designation of the chief magistrates of Thessalonica as " the rulers of the city," (Acts 
xvii, 6,) their pi-oper and peculiar appellation. (Boeckh, Corp. Inscr., No. 1,967.) (2.) So, too, the Roman Govern- 
ors of Corinth and Cyprus are given their correct titles. (3.) Publius, the Roman Governor of Malta, has again 
his proper technical designation, ("the chief man of the island," Acts xxviii, 7,) as appears from inscriptions com- 
memorating the chief of the Melitans, or " Melitensium primus." See Alford ii, p. 282.) (4.) The delivery of the 
prisoners to the "captain of the [Praetorian] guard" at Rome is in strict accordance with the practice of the time. 
(Trajan, ap. Plin., Ep. x, 65: "He ought to be sent bound to the Prefects of my Praetorian guard.") Compare 
Philostrat., Vit. Sophist., ii, 32. Among additions to our classical knowledge for which we are indebted to Scripture 
it may suffice to mention, 1. The existence of an Italian cohort, (the Italian band,) as early as the reign of Tibe- 
rius, (Acts x, 1.) 2. The application of the term Sepacrri), (Augustan,) to another cohort, a little later, (Acts xxviii, 
1.) 3. The existence of an altar at Athens with the inscription, "To the unknown God," (Acts xvii, 23,) which is 
not to be confounded with the well-known inscriptions to unknown gods. 4. The use of the title orpcmj-yoi (Prae- 
tors) by the Duumviri or chief magistrates of Philippi, (Acts xvi, 20.) We know from Cicero, (De Leg. Agrar., 34,) 
that the title was sometimes assumed in such cases, but we have no other proof that it was in use at Philippi. 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 65 

a city to which he comes but has a large body of Jewish residents. Compare with these 
representations the statements of Agrippa the First, in his letter to Caligula, as reported 
by the Jewish writer, Philo. "The Holy City, the place of my nativity," he says, "is 
the metropolis, not of Judea only, but of most other countries, by means of the colonies 
which have been sent out of it from time to time; some to the neighboring countries of 
Egypt, Phoenicia, Syria, Coelo-Syria — some to more distant regions, as Pamphylia, Cilicia, 
Asia as far as Bithynia, and the recesses of Pontus — and in Europe, Thessaly, Boeotia, 
Macedonia, iEtolia, Attica, Argos, Corinth, together with the most famous of the islands, 
Eubcea, Cyprus, and Crete, to say nothing of those who dwell beyond the Euphrates. 
For, excepting a small part of the Babylonian, and other satrapies, all the countries 
which have a fertile territory possess Jewish inhabitants; so that, if thou shalt show 
this kindness to my native place, thou wilt benefit not one city only, but thousands in 
every region of the world, in Europe, in Asia, in Africa — on the continents, and in the 
islands — on the shores of the sea, and in the interior." In a similar strain, Philo him- 
self boasts, that "one region does not contain the Jewish people, since it is exceedingly 
numerous; but there are many of them in almost all the flourishing countries of Europe 
and Asia, both continental and insular." And the customs of these dispersed Jews are 
accurately represented in the New Testament. That they consisted in part of native 
Jews, in part of converts or proselytes, is evident from Josephus ;* that they had places 
of worship, called synagogues or oratories, in the towns where they lived, appears from 
Philo; that these were commonly by the seaside, as represented in the Acts, (Acts xvi, 
13,) is plain from many authors ;f that they had also — at least sometimes — a synagogue 
belonging to them at Jerusalem, whither they resorted at the time of the feasts, is certain 
from the Talmudical writers; that at Eome they consisted in great part of freed men, or 
"Libertines," whence the synagogue of the Libertines, (Acts vi, 9,) may be gathered 
from Philo and Tacitus. Their bearing toward the apostolic preachers is such as we 
should expect from persons whose close contact with those of a different religion made 
them all the more zealous for their own; and their tumultuous proceedings are in accord- 
ance with all that we learn from profane authors of the tone and temper of the Jews 
generally at this period. J 

II. The civil governors and administrators distinctly mentioned by the New Testa- 
ment historians are the following: the Eoman Emperors Augustus, Tiberius, and Clau- 
dius; the Jewish Kings and Princes, Herod the Great, Archelaus, Herod the Tetrarch, 
(or as he is commonly called, Herod Antipas,) Philip the Tetrarch, Herod Agrippa the 
First, and Herod Agrippa the Second; the Eoman Governors, Cyrenius, (or Quirinius,) 
Pontius Pilate, Sergius Paulus, Gallio, Festus, and Felix, and the Greek Tetrarch, Lysa- 
nias. It may be shown from profane sources, in almost every case, that these persons 
existed; that they lived at the time, and bore the offices assigned to them; that they 
were related to each other, when any relationship is stated, as Scripture declares; and 
that the actions ascribed to them are either actually such as they performed, or at least 
in perfect harmony with what profane history tells us of their characters. 

The Jewish kings and princes, whose names occur in the New Testament narrative, 
occupy a far more prominent place in it than the Eoman emperors. The Gospel narra- 
tive opens, "In the days of Herod the King," (Matt, ii, 1; Luke i, 5;) who, as the father 

* Joseph., Ant. Jud., xx, 2; De Bell. Jud., vii, 3, \ 3; Contr. Apion., ii, 36, etc. 

■\ Philo frequently mentions the synagogue under the name of " places of prayer." (In Place., p. 972, A., B., 
E.; Legat. in Caium, p. 1,014, etc.) Their position by the seaside or by a riverside is indicated, among other places, 
in the Decree of the Halicarnassians reported by Josephus, (Ant. Jud., xiv, 10, $ 23,) where the Jews are allowed to 
offer prayers by the seaside according to their national custom. See also Philo, Legat. in Caium, p. 982, D. ; Ter- 
tull. ad Nat., i, 13 ; and Juv. Sat., iii, 13. 

J For the tumultuous spirit of the foreign Jews, see Sueton., Vit. Claud., p. 25 ; Dio Cassius, lx, 6 ; Joseph., 
Aut. Jud. xviii, 8, g 1 ; 9, § 9 ; xx, 1, \ 1, etc. 

5 



66 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



of Archelaus, (Matt, ii, 22,) may be identified with the first monarch of the name, the 
son of Antipater the Idumean. This monarch is known to have reigned in Palestine 
cotemporaneously with Augustus, who confirmed him in his kingdom, and of whom he 
held the sovereignty till his decease. Cunning, suspicion, and cruelty are the chief traits 
of his character, as depicted in Scripture, and these are among his most marked charac- 
teristics in Josephus.* The consistency of the massacre at Bethlehem with his temper 
and disposition is now acknowledged ;f skepticism has nothing to urge against it, except 
the silence of the Jewish writers, which is a weak argument, if it is not outweighed by 
the testimony, albeit somewhat late and perhaps inaccurate, of Macrobius.J 

At the death of Herod the Great his kingdom — according to Josephus — was divided 
with the consent of Augustus, among three of his sons. Archelaus received Judea, 
Samaria, and Idumea, with the title of ethnarch; Philip and Antipas were made 
tetrarchs, and received, the latter Galilee and Perea, the former Trachonitis and the 
adjoining regions.§ The notices of the Evangelists are confessedly in complete accord- 
ance with these statements. Matthew mentions the succession of Archelaus in Judea, 
and implies that he did not reign in Galilee, (Matt, ii, 22.) Luke records Philip's 
tetrarchy, (Luke iii, 1;) while the tetrarchy of Antipas, who is designated by his family 
name of Herod, is distinctly asserted by both Evangelists, (Matt, xiv, 1.) Moreover, 
Matthew implies that Archelaus bore a bad character at the time of his accession, or 
soon afterward, which is consistent with the account of Josephus, who tells us that he 
was hated by the other members of his own family; and that shortly after his father's 
death he slew three thousand Jews, on account of a tumult at Jerusalem. The first 
three Evangelists agree as to the character of Herod Antipas, which is weak, rather than 
cruel or bloodthirsty; and their portraiture is granted to be "not inconsistent with his 
character, as gathered from other sources." The facts of his adultery with Herodias, the 
wife of one of his brothers, || and of his execution of John the Baptist for no crime that 

* The cruelties, deceptions, and suspicions of Herod the Great fill many chapters in Josephus. (Ant. Jud., xt, 
1, 3, 6, 7, etc. ; xvi, 4, 8, 10; xvii, 3, 6, 7, etc.) His character is thus summed up by that writer: "He was a man 
cruel to all alike, yielding to the impulse of passion, but regardless of the claims of justice; and yet no one was 
ever favored with a more propitious fortune." (Ant. Jud., xvii, 8, $ 1.) His arrest of the chief men throughout 
his dominion, and design that on his demise they should all be executed, (Ibid., 6, § 5; Bell. Jud., i, 33, § 6,) 
shows a bloodier temper than even the massacre of the Innocents. 

"j" Strauss grants the massacre to be " not inconsistent with the disposition of the aged tyrant to the extent that 
Schleiermacher supposed," but objects that "neither Josephus, who is very minute in his account of Herod, nor the 
rabbins, who were assiduous in blackening his memory, give the slightest hint of this decree." He omits to 
observe, that they could scarcely narrate the circumstance without some mention of its reason — the birth of the 
supposed Messiah — a subject on which their prejudices necessarily kept them silent. 

JMacrob., Saturnal., ii, 4: "When Augustus had heard that among the children under two years of age whom 
Herod, the king of the Jews, had commanded to be slain in Syria, there was also one of the king's own sons, 
he said it was better to be the sow than the son of Herod;" Strauss contends that "the passage loses all 
credit by confounding the execution of Antipater, who had gray hairs, with the murder of the infants renowned 
among the Christians ;" but Maerobius says nothing of Antipater, and evidently does not refer to any of the known 
sons of Herod. He believes that among the children massacred was an infant son of the Jewish king. It is im- 
possible to say whether he was right or wrong in this belief. It may have simply originated in the fact that a 
jealousy of a royal infant was known to have been the motive for the massacre. (See Olshausen, Biblic. Com- 
ment., vol. i, p. 72, note, p. 67, E. T.) 

\ Josephus says, " When Csesar had heard these things he dissolved the assembly, and a few days after he 
appointed Archelaus, not indeed king, but ethnarch of half the country which had been subject to Herod, and the 
other half he divided, and gave it to two other sons of Herod, Philip, and Antipas, ... to the latter of whom 
he made Perea and Galilee subject, . . . while Batanea with Trachonitis and Auranitis, with a certain part of 
what is called the House of Zenadorus, were subjected to Philip ; but the parts subject to Archelaus were Idumea, 
and Judea, and Samaria." (Antiq. Jud., xvii, 11, § 4.) Compare the brief notice of Tacitus : " The country which 
had been subdued was governed, in three divisions, by the sons of Herod." (Hist., v, 9.) 

|| Josephus says, " Herod the tetrarch had married the daughter of Aretas, and had now lived with her a long 
time. But having made a journey to Rome, he lodged in the house of Herod, his brother, but not by the same 
mother. For this Herod was the son of the daughter of Simon, the high-priest. Now, he fell in love with Herodias, 
this man's wife, who was the daughter of Aristobulus, their brother, and the sister of Agrippa the Great; and he 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 67 

could be alleged against him, are recorded by Josephus ;* and though in the latter case 
there is some apparent diversity in the details, yet it is allowed that the different accounts 
may be reconciled. f The continuance of the tetrarchy of Philip beyond the fifteenth, 
and that of Antipas beyond the eighteenth of Tiberius, is confirmed by Josephus,J who 
also shows that the ethnarchy of Archelaus came speedily to an end, and that Judea was 
then reduced to the condition of a Roman province, and governed for a considerable 
space by procurators. However, after a while, the various dominions of Herod the 
Great were reunited in the person of his grandson, Agrippa, the son of Aristobulus and 
brother of Herodias, who was allowed the title of king, and was in favor with both 
Caligula and Claudius. It can not be doubted that this person is the "Herod the King" 
of the Acts, (Acts xii, 1,) whose persecution of the Church, whose impious pride, and 
whose miserable death, are related at length by the sacred historian. Josephus records, 
with less accuracy of detail than Luke, the striking circumstances of this monarch's 
decease — -the "set day," the public assemblage, the "royal dress," the impious flattery, its 
complacent reception, the sudden judgment, the excruciating disease, the speedy death.g 

had the boldness to propose marriage. She accepted the proposal, and it was agreed that she should go to live 
with him whenever he should return from Rome." (Ant. Jud., xviii, 5, $ 1.) And again : " Herodias, their sister, 
was married to Herod, the son of Herod the Great, who was horn of Mariamne, the daughter of Simon the high- 
priest, who had also a daughter Salome ; after the birth of whom Herodias, in shameful violation of the customs 
of our nation, allowed herself to marry Herod, the brother of her former husband by the same father, separating 
from him while he was living. Now this man [whom she married] held the office of tetrarch of Galilee." 
(Ibid., §4.) 

* Ant. Jud., xviii, 5, § 2 : " Now some of the Jews thought that the army of Herod had been destroyed by God, 
in most righteous vengeance for the punishment inflicted upon John, surnamed the Baptist. For he taught the Jews 
to cultivate virtue, and to practice righteousness toward each other and piety toward God, and so to come to bap- 
tism. For he declared that this dipping would be acceptable to Him, if they used it not with reference to the 
renunciation of certain sins, but to the purification of the body, the soul having been purified by righteousness. And 
when others thronged to him — for they were profoundly moved at the hearing of his words — Herod feared that 
his great influence over the men would lead them to some revolt, for they seemed ready to do any thing by his 
advice ; he, therefore, thought it much better to anticipate the evil, by putting him to death, before he had 
attempted to make any innovation, than to allow himself to be brought into trouble and then repent after some 
revolutionary movement had commenced. And so John, in consequence of the suspicion of Herod, was sent as a 
prisoner to the aforementioned castle of Macha;rus, and was there put to death." The genuineness of this passage 
is admitted even by Strauss. (Leben Jesu, $ 48; vol. i, pp. 344-47, E. T.) 

f This even Strauss admits. The chief points of apparent difference are the motive of the imprisonment and 
the scene of the execution. Josephus makes fear of a popular insurrection, the Evangelists offense at a personal 
rebuke, the motive. But in this there is no contradiction, for Antipas might well fear that John, by his 
strong censure of the marriage and the whole course of the tetrarch's life, might stir up the people into rebellion 
against him. Again, from the Gospels we naturally imagine the prison to be near Tiberias, where Herod Antipas 
ordinarily resided; but Josephus says that prison Was at Machajrus in Perea, a day's journey from Tiberias. 
Here, however, an examination of the Gospels shows, that the place where Antipas made his feast and gave his 
promise is not mentioned. It only appears that it was near the prison. Now, as Herod at this time was engaged 
in a war with Aretas, the Arabian prince, betwoen whose kingdom and his own lay the fortress of Machajrus, it is 
a probable solution of the difficulty that he was residing with his court at Maehserus at this period. (Strauss, j) 48, 
ad fin.) This supposition is confirmed by the fact that Josephus connects the imprisonment and death of the 
Baptist with the defeat of Herod in battle by his father-in-law, Aretas— this defeat being regarded by many of 
the Jews as a just punishment sent by God upon Herod for this act of injustice and cruelty. 

J Philip is said to have retained his tetrarchy till the twentieth year of Tiberius. (Ant. Jud., xviii, 5, I 6.) 
Herod Antipas lost his government in the first of Caligula. (Ibid., ch. 7.) 

g Josephus, Ant. Jud., xix, 8, § 2 : " Now after he had reigned three full years over the whole of Judea, he was 
at the city of Casarea, which was formerly called Strata's Tower. And there he held public shows in honor of 
Ciesar, having learned that a certain festival was celebrated at that time to make vows for his safety. Now, at 
that festival, there were assembled a multitude of those who were first in office and authority in the province. On 
the second day of the shows, putting on a robe made entirely of silver, the texture of which was truly wonderful 
he came into the theater early in the morning. When the first beams of the sun shone upon the silver, it glittered 
in a wonderful manner, flashing forth a brilliancy which amazed and awed those who gazed upon him. Whereupon 
his flatterers immediately cried out-though not for his good-one from one place, and one from another-address- 
mg him as a god-' Be propitious unto us;' and adding, 'Although we have heretofore feared thee as a man, yet 
henceforth we acknowledge thee to be of more than mortal nature.' The king did not rebuke them, nor reject their 
impious flattery. A little after, therefore, looking up, he saw an owl sitting on a certain rope over his head; and 
he immediately understood that it was a messenger of evil, as it had formerly been of good ; whereupon he was over- 



68 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



No where does profane history furnish a more striking testimony to the substantial truth 
of the sacred narrative, no where is the superior exactness of the latter over the former 
more conspicuous. 

On the death of Herod Agrippa, Judea — as Josephus informs us — became once more 
a Eoman province under procurators * but the small kingdom of Chalcis was, a few 
years later, conferred by Claudius on this Herod's son, Agrippa the Second, who, after- 
ward, received other territories.f This prince is evidently the " King Agrippa " before 
whom Paul pleaded his cause. (Acts xxv, 13, etc.) The Bernice, who is mentioned 
as accompanying him on his visit to Festus, was his sister, who lived with him, and 
commonly accompanied him upon his journeys.J Besides his separate sovereignty he 
had received from the emperor a species of ecclesiastical supremacy in Judea, where 
he had the superintendence of the Temple, the direction of the sacred treasury, and the 
right of nominating the high-priests.§ These circumstances account sufficiently for 
his visit to Judea, and explain the anxiety of Festus that he should hear Paul, and 
Paul's willingness to plead before him. 

The Eoman procurators, Pontius Pilate, Felix, and Festus, are prominent personages 
in the history of Josephus, where they occur in the proper chronological position, || and 
bear characters very agreeable to those which are assigned to them by the sacred 
writers. The vacillation of Pilate, his timidity, and, at the same time, his occasional 
violence,^]" the cruelty, injustice, and rapacity of Felix** and the comparatively-equitable 

come with a profound sadness. There was also a severe pain in his bowels, which began with a sudden violence. 
Turning, therefore, to his friends, he said : ' I, your god, am now commanded to end my life ; and fate immediately 
reproves the false shouts that were just now addressed to me; and so I, whom you call immortal, am now snatched 
away by death. But we must accept tho fate which God ordains ! And, indeed, we have not lived ill, but in the 
most brilliant good fortune.' When he had said this he was overcome by the intensity of the pain. He was, 
therefore, quickly carried to the palace, and the report went abroad to all that he must inevitably soon die. . . 
Being consumed thus, for five days in succession, with the pain in his belly, he departed this life." 

* Ant. Jud., xix, 9, § 2 : " [Claudius] therefore sent Cuspius Fadus as a procurator over Judea and all the 
kingdom." 

f Ant. Jud., xx, 5, g 2 ; vii, 1 ; and 8, j3 4. Agrippa II bore the title of king, (De Bell. Jud., ii, 12, $ 8.) 

J Ant. Jud., xix, 9, $ 1 ; xx, 7, £ 3. The evil reports which arose from this constant companionship are noticed 
by Josephus in the latter of these passages. They are glanced at in the well-known passage of Juvenal, (Sat. vi, 
155-169:) " That well-known diamond made even more precious by being worn on the finger of Bernice. This 
jewel the barbarian formerly gave to that unchaste woman, and Agrippa gave it to his sister, in that country where 
kings keep the Sabbath festival with naked feet, and an ancient indulgence allows the old men to eat pork." 
(Compare Tacit., Hist., ii, 2, 81.) 

j! Joseph., Ant. Jud., xx, 8, g 8 ; 9, § 7 : " The king had been intrusted by Claudius Cassar with the care of the 
Temple." In one passage, (Ant. Jud., xx, 1, \ 3,) Josephus says that these privileges continued to be exercised 
by the descendants of Herod, king of Chalcis, from his decease to the end of the war. But he here uses the term 
" descendants " very loosely, or he forgets that Agrippa II was the nephew, and not tho son of this monarch. (See 
the note of Lardner, Credibility, vol. i, p. 18, note g.) 

|| The procuratorship of Pilate lasted from the twelfth year of Tiberius — A. D. 26 — to the twenty-second — A. 
D. 36. (See Joseph., Ant. Jud., xviii, 3, § 2; 4, ji 2.) Felix entered upon his office as sole procurator in the twelfth 
year of Claudius — A. D. 53 — and was succeeded by Porcius Festus early in the reign of Nero, (Ant. Jud., xx, 7, 
§1; 8,? 9.) 

\ The vacillation and timidity of Pilate appear in his attempt to establish the images of Tiberius in Jerusalem, 
followed almost immediately by their withdrawal. (Ant. Jud., xviii, 3, § 1.) His violence is shown in his conduct 
toward the Jews who opposed his application of the Temple money to the construction of an aqueduct at Jerusa- 
lem, (Ibid., § 2,) as well as in his treatment of the Samaritans on the occasion which led to his removal. (Ibid., 
iv, \ 1.) Agrippa the elder speaks of the iniquity of his government in the strongest terms, (Ap. Philon., Leg. 
ad Caium, p. 1,034 : " He feared lest they should examine and expose the misdeeds of his former procuratorship, the 
taking of bribes, the acts of violence, the extortions, the tortures, the menaces, the repeated murders without any 
form of trial, the harsh and incessant cruelty.") 

** Tacitus says of Felix: " Antonius Felix exercised the royal authority in a manner agreeable to the baseness 
of his disposition, with all cruelty and wantonness." (Hist., v, 9.) And again: "But his father, whose surname 
was Felix, did not conduct himself with the same moderation. Having been a long time governor of Judea, he 
thought he could commit all crimes with impunity, relying on his great power." (Ann., xii, 54.) Josephus gives 
a similar account of his government. (Ant. Jud., xx, 8.) After he quitted office he was accused to the emperor, 
and only escaped a severe sentence by the influence which his brother Pallas possessed with Nero. 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL EECORDS. 69 

and mild character of Festus,* are apparent in the Jewish historian, and have some 
sanction from other writers. 

It only remains to notice an objection that has been made to the evidence presented 
in the many historical allusions of the Evangelists, and their verification by profane 
writers. It is said that there are remarkable facts in the Gospels, which we do not find 
alluded to by profane historians, though we might justly expect them to have attracted 
their attention. We shall speak of these in §. 23. 

Great stress is laid upon the difficulty with regard to the taxing of Cyrenius. The 
satisfactory solution, which has been made of this and a few other minor difficulties, the 
reader will find in the Commentary. Mr. Eawlinson closes his historical review with the 
following remarks : " "We have found that the historical books of the New Testament 
contain a vast body of incidental allusions to the civil history of the times, capable of 
being tested by comparison with the works of profane historians. We have submitted 
the greater part of these incidental allusions to the test of such comparison; and we 
have found, in all but some three or four doubtful cases, an entire and striking harmony. 
In no case have we met with clear and certain disagreement; in such cases we must take 
into consideration that profane writers are not infallible; Josephus, our chief profane 
authority for the time, has been shown, even in matters where he does not come into 
any collision with the Christian Scriptures, to teem with inaccuracies. If, therefore, in 
any case it should be thought that we must choose between Josephus and an Evangelist, 
sound criticism requires that we should prefer the latter to the former. Josephus is not 
entirely honest; he has his Roman masters to please, and he is prejudiced in favor of his 
own sect, the Pharisees. He has been convicted of error, which is not the case with any 
Evangelist. His authority, therefore, is, in the eyes of a historical critic, inferior to 
that of the Gospel writers, and in any instance of contradiction, it would be necessary to 
disregard it. In fact, however, we are not reduced to this necessity. The Jewish writer 
no where actually contradicts the Gospel records, and in hundreds of instances he con- 
firms them. It is evident that the entire historical frame-work, in which the Gosj)el 
picture is set, is real; that the facts of the civil history, small and great, are true, and 
the personages correctly depicted." We have only to add that such correctness could 
not have been attained, unless the Gospels were written by the men, to whom they are 
ascribed, who were living in the age in which the events described by them took place. 

§ 17. The Relation of the Four Gospels to each other and to the Acts op 

the Apostles. 

In the case of three out of the five historical books of the New Testament, there is 
an internal testimony to their composition by cotemporaries, which is of no small im- 
portance. "And he that saw it," says John, "bare record, and his record is true, and he 
knoweth that he says true, that ye may believe." (John xix, 35.) And again, still more 
explicitly, after speaking of himself, he says: " This is the disciple which testifieth of these 
things and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true." (John xxi, 24.) 
Either, therefore, John must be allowed to have been the writer of the fourth Gospel, or 
the writer must be deemed guilty of willful fraud. 

That the Acts of the Apostles and the third Gospel have "a testimony of a particular 
kind," which seems to give them a special claim to be accepted as the works of a cotem- 
porary, is admitted even by Strauss. The writer of the Acts, he allows, "by the use of 

*See Ant. Jud., xx, 8, §§ 10, 11; Bell. Jud., ii, 14, § 1. In the latter passage Josephus says: "Now Pestus 
having succeeded this man in the office of procurator, relieved the country of its greatest scourge. For he cap- 
tured a large number of the robbers, and destroyed not a few. But Albinus, who succeeded Festus, did not 
govern after tho same manner. For it is not possible to mention any form of evil-doing which he omitted to 
practice." 



70 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



the first person, identifies himself with the companion of Paul," and the prefaces of the 
two books make it plain that they " proceeded from the same author." Yet, while Strauss 
does not venture to deny that a companion of Paul may have written the two works he 
finds it "difficult" to believe that this was actually the case, and "suspects" that the 
passages of the Acts, where the first person is used, "belong to a distinct memorial by 
another hand, which the author of the Acts has incorporated into his history "(!) But 
still he allows the alternative — that "it is possible the companion of Paul may have 
composed the two woi-ks" — only it must have been "at a time when he was no longer 
protected by apostolic influence from the tide of tradition," (!) and so was induced to 
receive into his narrative, and join with what he had heard from the apostle, certain 
marvelous — and, therefore, incredible — stories which had no solid basis. A hypothesis 
like this is not worthy of a serious refutation. The Acts, as is clear from the fact of 
their terminating where they do, were composed at the close of Paul's first imprison- 
ment at Eome, A. D. 58 — or 63, according to some winters — and the Gospel, as being the 
"former treatise," must have been written earlier. 

We may, therefore, independently of the general voice of antiquity on the authen- 
ticity of the third Gospel, allow it to have been composed by one who lived in the 
apostolic age and companied with the apostles. And a new argument is presented to us 
for the early date of the first and second, based upon their accordance with the third, ' 
their resemblance to it in style and general character, and their diversity from the pro- 
ductions of any other period. The first three Gospels belong so entirely to the same 
school of thought, and the same type and stage of language, that, on critical grounds, 
they must be regarded as the works of cotemporaries ; while in their contents they are 
at once so closely accordant with one another, and so full of little differences, that we 
must assign to them an almost instantaneous origin. So peculiar is their relation to 
each other that the authenticity of one involves that of the others. If the evidence for 
either of the Gospels had been much weaker than that for the other three, its discrepan- 
cies from them, if there had been no other cause, would have decided its rejection. 
Moreover, if one of the Gospels had been published much in advance of the others, it is 
not probable that a second account of the ministry of Christ, confirmatory to any great 
extent of the preceding one, would have been written. A supplementary gospel, like 
that of John, might of course have been added in any case; but had the Gospel of Mat- 
thew, for instance, been composed, as some have supposed, before the separation of the 
apostles and the formation of distinct Christian communities, it would have been carried, 
together with Christianity, into all parts of the world; and it is very unlikely that, in 
that case, the Gospels of Mark and Luke, which cover chiefly the same ground, would 
have been written. The need of written gospels was not felt at first, while the apostles 
and companions of Christ were in full vigor, and were continually moving from place to 
place, relating with all the fullness and variety of oral discourse the miracles which they 
had seen wrought, and the gracious words which they had heard uttered by their Master. 
But, as they grew old, and as the sphere of their labors enlarged, and personal superin- 
tendence of the whole Church by the apostolic body became difficult, the desire to possess 
a written gospel arose, and simultaneously, in different parts of the Church, for different 
portions of the Christian body, the three Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke were 
published. 

The peculiar relation of the synoptic Gospels to one another, and to the Gospel of 
John, and the points which modern criticism has made on this relation with reference to 
their inspiration, the reader will find fully discussed in Part IY. It is sufficient, here, to 
quote the following remarks of Dr. Lange on the bearing which the peculiar relation of 
the Gospels to each other have on their authenticity. He says: "The attempts that have 
been made, in modern times, to prove that the four Gospels weaken each other's authority 
have had the very opposite result. By their mutual relation to each other the Gospels 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 71 

gain the compactedness of a house hewn into a rock; for the relation of their differ- 
ences and points of agreement is so peculiar that sound criticism finds in them, after 
every new investigation, four independent witnesses for one and the same fact, and 
accordingly, also, for each other. If, for instance, a critic wishes to disprove the author- 
ity of the Gospel of John, he recognizes t^hat of three synoptic Gospels in order to gain a 
point of attack against the fourth Gospel. But the points of agreement between this 
and the three other Gospels prove so many and so strong, that, by recognizing the 
authority of the latter, the former is virtually, also, recognized. Or, the Gospel of John is 
taken for the authentic record of the Gospel history, and the differences between this and 
the three other Gospels are pointed out in order to shake thereby the authority of the lat- 
ter. But in this case, also, the force of the agreement between the two sets of documents 
proves stronger than that of the differences, so that, if the fourth Gospel is true, the sub- 
ject-matter of the three others must also be true. Again, Luke and Matthew are taken in 
hand to undermine the authority of Mark. But Mark has so much in common with the 
two others, that if he falls they must fall with him, while at the same time his peculiarities 
establish his independent authority. So, if the second Gospel is made the original Gospel 
at the expense of the first and third, Matthew and Luke have so much that is peculiar to 
them, that their own originality is placed beyond any and every reasonable doubt, while 
they have, at the same time, so much in common with Mark, that the recognition of the 
latter involves that of their own authority. In all these different directions the Gospels 
have been attacked by modern criticism, but all such attacks have proved futile. Their 
peculiar relation to one another is a fine net of truth, spread out to catch all impure criti- 
cism, and to entangle the critics in their own contradictions. Or we may compare the four 
Gospels to a wondrous grove, in which a magic influence makes the godless critics run 
to and fro in utter confusion, finding neither ingress nor egress. This magic influence 
proceeds from the circle of the four Gospels, because, from the fourfold refraction of the 
One Light of the world, there are issuing a thousand dazzling reflections for every oblique 
look, while the straightforward look sees in the fourfold refraction but the One Sun of 
the day. We may say that the relation of the four Gospels to each other, while it courts 
and challenges the spirit of criticism more than any single one for itself, becomes^in turn 
the withering critique of every false criticism. Whenever criticism undertakes to under- 
mine one Gospel through the other, it overlooks the mysterious links that bind them 
together, and thus digs its own grave. While the four Gospels testify to the Divine 
origin which they have in common, so completely and so mysteriously, that every impure 
critique is put to shame, they are in their outward form so purely human, that they 
thereby invite critical examination; and they rest on so firm a basis that every new 
examination can only bring them additional gain." 



§18. The Authenticity of the Gospels — a Postulate of Reason, as it alone Accounts 

for the Existence of the Christian Church, and for some of Paul's 

Epistles, whose Authenticity is Universally Admitted. 

The Christian Church is in the world, and has been in it a little more than eighteen 
centuries ; that it can be traced back to the historically-attested death of Christ is placed 
beyond the possibility of a doubt by heathen and Jewish as well as Christian writers. 
Josephus, born 37 A. D., says, in a passage, of which we will include in brackets what has 
been justly declared to have been interpolated : "About this time Jesus appears, a wise man, 
[if it is right to call him a man, for he was] performing surprising deeds, [a teacher of 
men, who willingly received the truth,] and many Jews as well as heathen became his 
followers; [being the Messiah] on the accusations of our chief men, Pilate condemned him 
to the cross; nevertheless, those who had loved him before did not give up their faith in 



72 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



him; [for he appeared to them alive on the third day, as the prophets had predicted of 
him, hesides many other marvelous things,] and the generation of Christians, that are 
named after him, is not extinct to this day." (Ant. Jud., XVIII, 3, § 3.) In another 
passage, which can not be justly suspected, Josephus, who grew up at Jerusalem till he 
was twenty-six years of age, and was thus a witness of the principal occurrences at 
Jerusalem, mentioned in the Acts, subsequently to the accession of Herod Agrippa, says: 
"Ananus .... called the council of judges, and bringing before them James, the 
brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, and certain others, he accused them of transgress- 
ing the laws, and delivered them up to be stoned." (Ant. Jud., XX, 9, § 1.) There 
existed, therefore, according to the testimony of Josephus, in the early part of the first 
century, a body of followers of Christ. Tacitus, the Eoman historian, who wrote in the 
second half of the first century, says, (Ann., XV, 44,) speaking of the fire which con- 
sumed Eome in Nero's time, and of the general belief that he had caused it: "In order, 
therefore, to put a stop to the report, he laid the guilt, and inflicted the severest punish- 
ments upon a set of people who were holden in abhorrence for their crimes, and called by 
the vulgar, Christians. The founder of that name was Christ, who suffered death in the reign 
of Tiberius, under his Procurator, Pontius Pilate. This pernicious superstition, thus checked 
for a while, broke out again, and spread not only over Judea, where the evil originated, but 
through Rome also, whither all things that are horrible and shameful find their way, and 
are practiced. Accordingly, the first who were apprehended confessed, and then on their 
information a vast multitude were convicted, not so much of the crime of setting Eome 
on fire, as of hatred to mankind." Suetonius says briefly in reference to the same occa- 
sion: "The Christians were punished, a set of men of a new and mischievous superstition." 
(Vita Ner., § 16.) The younger Pliny, while he was Governor of Bithynia, says, in an 
official report to Trajan: "They [that is, those Christians who recanted] declared that 
the whole of their guilt, or their error, was, that they were accustomed to meet on a 
stated day, before it was light, and to sing in concert a hymn of praise to Christ, as God, 
and to bind themselves by an oath, not for the perpetration of any wickedness, but that 
they would not commit any theft, robbery, or adultery, nor violate their word, nor refuse, 
when called upon, to restoi'e any thing committed to their trust. After this, they were 
accustomed to separate, and then to reassemble to eat in common a harmless meal. 
Even this, however, they ceased to do, after my edict, in which, agreeably to your com- 
mands, I forbade the meeting of secret assemblies. After hearing this, I thought it the 
more necessary to endeavor to find out the truth by putting to the torture two female 
slaves, who were called 'deaconesses.' But I could discover nothing but a perverse and 
extravagant superstition; and therefore I deferred all further proceedings till I should 
consult with you. For the matter appears to me worthy of such consultation, especially 
on account of the number of those who are involved in peril. For many of every age, of every 
rank, and of either sex are exposed, and will be exposed to danger. Nor has the conta- 
gion of this superstition been confined to the cities only, but it has extended to the villages, 
and even to the country. Nevertheless, it still seems possible to arrest the evil, and to 
apply a remedy. At least, it is very evident that the temples, which had already been 
almost deserted, begin to be frequented, and the sacred solemnities, so long interrupted, 
are again revived; and the victims, which heretofore could hardly find a purchaser, are 
now every-where in demand. From this it is easy to imagine what a multitude of men 
might be reclaimed, if pardon should be offered to those who repent." (Pliny, Ep. X, 
97.) It is not necessary to quote any more testimonies concerning the existence of a 
great body of Christians before the close of the first century. 

Now to some of these Christians at various places the apostles addressed their Epis- 
tles, and there are no valid reasons for entertaining any doubt concerning their author- 
ship, except, perhaps, in the case of that to the Hebrews, and of the two shorter Epistles 
which are assigned to John. All these Epistles are not only consistent with, but imper- 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 73 

atively demand, our belief in the authenticity of such historical documents as our four 
Gospels are. It is indisputable that the writers, and those to whom they wrote, believed 
in the recent occurrence of a set of facts similar to, or identical with, those recorded in 
the Gospels and the Acts, especially those fundamental facts upon which the Christian 
faith rests. "Great is the mystery of godliness," says Paul. "God was manifest in the 
flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the 
world, received up into glory." (1 Tim. iii, 16.) "Christ," says Peter, "suffered once 
for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the 
flesh, but quickened in the Spirit." (1 Peter iii, 18.) "He received from God the Father 
honor and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory: This is 
my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased; and this voice which came from heaven we 
heard, .when we were with him in the holy mount." (2 Peter i, 17, 18.) "God raised up 
Christ from the dead, and gave him glory." (1 Peter i, 21.) "He is gone into heaven, 
and is on the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers being made subject 
to him." (1 Peter iii, 22.) "Eemember," says Paul, "that Jesus Christ of the seed of 
David was raised from the dead." (2 Tim. ii, 2, 8.) "If Christ be not risen, then is our 
preaching vain, and your faith also is vain." (1 Cor. xv, 14.) "I delivered unto you 
first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the 
Scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to 
the Scriptures ; and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve, after that he was 
seen of James, then of all the apostles." (1 Cor. xv, 3-7.) These are only half a dozen 
texts out of hundreds which might be adduced to show that Paul represented the 
death of Christ on the cross, as necessary to procure the pardon of our sins, or to make 
that pardon consistent with God's justice and truth ; he does not mention the charge on 
which he was condemned to this ignominious death, but that was necessarily implied. 
It was a Eoman punishment, and Pilate could not condemn a public teacher, whose 
morals were spotless, on any other charge than that which the Evangelists state at large, 
and which no enemy of Christ gainsayed, to which He himself pleaded guilty in reply to 
the adjuration of Caiaphas; namely, "that he said, he was the Christ, the Son of God" — 
a declaration by which the Eoman governor, interpreting it according to the well-known 
Jewish notions of the Messiah, understood Jesus to have proclaimed himself "the king 
of the Jews;" on which account he wrote that charge on the tablet over the cross. Paul 
tells us, (Gal. i, 12,) that he had received his Gospel by the revelation of Jesus Christ, 
and he proves it by preaching the same Christ, whom the four Evangelists delineate. 
Matthew records the last commission of Jesus, commanding his disciples to baptize all 
nations "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." God is 
here called Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and the same divinity is claimed for the Son 
and Holy Ghost as for the Father. John calls Jesus in his antemundane state "the 
Word, that was with God from the beginning, and that was God," and says: "the "Word 
became flesh." Paul teaches Christ's divinity proper, and his incarnation not less dis- 
tinctly and emphatically than John or Matthew. "To us there is but one God, the 
Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom 
are all things, and we by him." (1 Cor. viii, 6.) "Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his 
poverty might be rich." (2 Cor. viii, 9.) "Let this mind be in you, which was also in 
Christ Jesus; who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with 
God; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and 
was made in the likeness of men." (Phil, ii, 6, 7.) "God sent his own Son in the like- 
ness of sinful flesh." (Eom. viii, 3, 32.) These are only a few texts out of a hundred, 
which might be adduced to show that the writers of the Epistles entirely agree with the 
Evangelists, as to the facts on which Christianity is based, and as strongly assert their 
reality. If we find in Paul's Epistles some doctrines that are not in the Gospels, and if 



74 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



others are set forth more fully and distinctly, it is exactly what we have to expect 
according to John xvi, 12-14. 

But we will go a step further and make the argument more direct and more pointed 
in giving it a strictly historical character. "Christianity or revealed religion is," as 
Eawlinson remarks in the opening of his Lectures on the "Historical Evidences," "in 
nothing more distinguished from the other religions of the world, than in its objective or 
historical character. The religions of Greece and Eome, of Egypt, India, Persia, and 
the East generally, were speculative systems, which did not even seriously postulate a 
historical basis. But it is otherwise with the religion of the Bible. There, whether we 
look to the Old or the New Testament, to the Jewish dispensation, or to the Christian, 
we find a scheme of doctrine which is bound up with facts; which depends absolutely 
upon them, and which is null and void without them." The truth of this remark we 
will illustrate and confirm by a consideration of the incontestable facts implied in Paul's 
Epistle to the Romans, the Corinthians, and the Galatians — Epistles which, even by those 
critics who have assailed the authenticity of every other portion of the New Testament 
canon, are admitted to be authentic, that is, to have been composed by the man whose name 
they bear, at the time and for the class of readers that are claimed for them. 

There was in the churches in Galatia and at Corinth a party which denied the apos- 
tolical authority of Paul, which saw in him, at best, an apostle's disciple. Paul, in vin- 
dicating his apostolical authority, appeals to his call by the risen Savior, and to his 
possessing the power to work miracles. He commences the Epistle to the Galatians with 
these words: "Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Chiist and 
God the Father, who raised him from the dead." The mention of the resurrection of 
Christ, in this connection, is evidently made to remind the Galatians that he had seen 
the risen Savior as well as the other apostles. It appears from verses 13-17, that they 
were well acquainted with his former enmity against Christ and his disciples, and with 
the miraculous event which resulted in his conversion. In 1 Cor. xv, 8, the apostle tells 
the Corinthians that the risen Savior was seen (uxpO-q) by him, as he had been seen by 
others, and, 1 Cor. ix, 1, he bases his apostleship upon his personal knowledge of Christ, 
obtained by actual sight (iwpaxa.) From this sight, which took place with the natural 
eye, in a state of perfect self-consciousness, Paul distinguishes a vision, of which he him- 
self does not know whether he had it in or out of the body. (2 Cor. xii, 1, 2.) Yet the 
personal manifestation of the risen Savior, narrated Acts ix, although it was the most 
important in point of its effects and differed also in its nature from subsequent manifest- 
ations of the Lord, was not an isolated fact in the life of the apostle, but only the grand 
opening act of his personal communion with the Lord. He appeals in different places 
to especial revelations of Christ on doctrinal points, in full accordance with what the 
Lord had told him at his conversion: "I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to 
make thee a minister both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in 
the which I will appear unto thee." 

Now, what deductions are we compelled to draw from what Paul writes to the Gala- 
tians and Corinthians respecting his having seen the risen Savior? If he has told the 
truth, if Christ appeared to him, then the truth of what the Evangelists have reported 
of the resurrection of Christ receives an incontestable confirmation, and the verity of that 
fact involves the authenticity of the Gospels. The latter has never been called in ques- 
tion by any who admit the resurrection of Jesus. It is attacked simply, as we shall 
show in the next Part, on the ground of the miraculous elements of the Gospel nar- 
ratives. Whoever admits the miracle of Christ's resurrection can not object to the other 
miracles recorded in the Gospels. 

But is Paul's testimony of having seen the risen Savior trustworthy? Was he a man 
of veracity, and of a sound mind? Has he told the truth? We answer: 1. If Christ did 
not appear to Paul, neither did he receive those miraculous powers to which he appealed 






THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 75 

in vindication of his apostolical authority, in letters whose authenticity, even those who 
assail every other portion of the New Testament Canon have felt themselves compelled to 
acknowledge. And how were, then, the Galatians and Corinthians brought to believe his 
Gospel of a risen Savior? 2. If Paul has not told the truth, we^iust set him down either 
as one of the most stupid victims of a disordered imagination, or as a willful impostor. 
For we must bear in mind that he did not become an apostle for the promulgation of mere 
theories or speculations, such as would admit of both intellect and candor. All he 
preached was based upon his testimony of the fact of the resurrection of the crucified 
Bedeemer. 

Can we conceive the author of such a composition as the Epistle to the Eomans to 
have been the wretched dupe of an entirely unaccountable self-deception? That he was — 
far from being a weak-minded enthusiast or fanatic — a man of gigantic intellect, high 
culture, dialectic skill, inflexible purpose, and indomitable courage, the destructive criti- 
cism of modern infidelity must unwillingly admit, inasmuch as, in order to put the per- 
son of Christ out of the way, Paul is made the self-constituted founder of the Christian 
Church, and, consequently, the author of the whole modern civilization and culture. 

Or was Paul a willful impostor? Is it conceivable that he should have blasted all his 
earthly prospects, and subjected himself to unceasing privations and sufferings, (2 Cor. 
xi, 23-27,) in order to make Jews and Gentiles believe what, in the case supposed, he 
must have known to be a lie? The thought is as great an outrage upon common-sense, 
and as black a libel upon humanity as it is a daring blasphemy against God. Hear how 
the apostle himself affirms his candor and soberness: "Yourselves, brethren, know our 

entrance in unto you, that it was not in vain For our exhortation was not 

of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile. But as we were allowed of God to be put in 
trust with the Gospel, even so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our 
hearts." (1 Thess. ii, 1, 3, 4.) "Therefore, seeing we have this ministry, as we have 
received mercy, we faint not; but have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not 
walking in craftiness, nor handling the Word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation 
of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God." (2 
Cor. iv, 1, 2.) "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also 
vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God 

that he raised up Christ If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are 

of all men most miserable." (1 Cor. xv,- 14, 15, 19.) 

So much with regard to Paul's testimony of having seen the risen Savior. Let us 
also consider what he says concerning the existence of miraculous powers in the primitive 
Churches. In the Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Cor. xii-xiv) the apostle speaks of certain 
extraordinary gifts, (charismata,) not for the purpose of proving their reality, or instruct- 
ing his readers about their origin, but taking their existence for granted, he merely gives 
direction about their proper use. He mentions the gift of healing, prophecy, the dis- 
cerning of spirits, and working of miracles. If the existence of these gifts had not been 
an incontestable fact, the apostle could not have written thus to a society of Christians, a 
part of whom did not recognize his apostolical authority, for it would have given his 
opponents the best means to destroy all confidence in him even as a man of veracity. In 
the Epistle to the Eomans, (c. xii, 6,) these gifts are likewise referred to. In Galatians 
iii, 5, we meet again the working of miracles. Thus these charismata appear in all the 
Churches, however remote from each other they are. In the Epistle to the Galatians the 
apostle has a special object in appealing to them. The Galatians had been shaken in 
their Christian faith, and were in danger of apostatizing from the Gospel which Paul 
had preached to them. He reminds them that they had received, through his preaching 
of the Gospel, the Holy Spirit and the power to work miracles. JSTow, if they had not 
received these powers, how could the apostle have dared to argue thus? In vindicating 
his apostleship against his detractors at Corinth, he appeals to the miracles performed by 



76 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



himself before their eyes: "The signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all 
patience, in signs, wonders, and mighty deeds." According to Acts xviii, 11, 18, the 
apostle was at Corinth some eighteen months. From his miracles not being mentioned 
there, we see that the writers of the New Testament did not eagerly mention every mir- 
acle of which they had knowledge, bnt passed by many in silence for the reason given 
by John in his Gospel, (c. xx, 30; xxi, 25.) 

Other epistles of Paul show a decline of these charismata in the Churches; in his pas- 
toral letters the apostle finds it necessary to point out the proper qualifications of a min- 
ister of the Gospel, undoubtedly because the rich stream of miraculous gifts had compar- 
atively ceased to flow, and they no longer pointed out to the Churches the proper persons 
for the various offices. The Epistle to the Hebrews, no matter by whom it was written, 
was certainly written before the close of the first century ; Clement of Rome quotes from 
it largely, and internal evidences demonstrate that it was composed while the Temple 
worship was still in its full glory. The believing Jews, like the Galatians, came in dan- 
ger of apostatizing from the faith; for this reason they are reminded, (Heb. ii, 4,) of the 
miracles performed among them and accompanying the preaching of the Gospel by those 
who had heard the Lord. These miraculous powers appear here in nearly the same 
order in which they stand, 2 Cor. xii, 12. We have thus the strongest evidence that 
there was no difference in this respect between the Jewish and heathen converts, that the 
one enjoyed these gifts as well as the other. From this fact we have to infer that the 
Lord himself wrought such miracles as are recorded in the Gospels, for the Master was 
certainly not inferior to his disciples, and it is expressly so stated, Heb. ii, 4. 

The Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of Paul sustain the nearest relation to each 
other, and are wonderfully confirmed one hy the other. The incidental allusions in the 
Epistles to facts related at length in the Acts, and vice versa, as well as the mention of 
facts in the one that are omitted in the other, complete each other. No less striking is 
the agreement between the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospels. 

§ 19. The Absurdity of the Mythical Theory. 

Unless all the arguments by which we have established the authenticity of the Gospel 
records are of no account, the mythical theory, laid down by Strauss in his "Life of 
Jesus," has no ground on which it can stand, and deserves no formal refutation. To 
state it is to refute it; and inasmuch as no English or German writer has stated this 
theory so clearly and fairly as Mr. Norton, we will give his statement, showing thereby 
how utterly futile this last effort of infidelity is to explain the origin of Christianity or 
any one essential fact connected with its origin. 

The external testimonies for the authenticity Strauss sets aside by simply making the 
following assertions: "This most ancient testimonies tell us, firstly, that an apostle, or 
some other person who had been acquainted with an apostle, wrote a Gospel history; but 
not whether it was identical with that which afterward came to be circulated in the 
Church under his name; secondly, that writings similar to our Gospels were in existence, 
but not that they were ascribed with certainty to any one apostle or companion of an 
apostle. Such is the uncertainty of these accounts, which, after all, do not reach further 
back than the third or fourth decade of the second century. According to all the rules 
of probability the apostles were all dead before the close of the .first century, not except- 
ing John, who is said to have lived till A. D. 100; concerning whose age and death, 
however, many fables were early invented. What an ample scope for attributing to the 
apostles manuscripts they never wrote!" (Strauss, Life of Jesus, i, 62.) In the follow- 
ing passage he asserts still more emphatically, that the apostles and their associates are 
not to be held responsible for the fables contained in the Gospels : " The fact that many 
such compilations — as the Gospels — of narratives concerning the life of Jesus were 



THE AUTHENTICITY OP THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 77 



already in general circulation during the lifetime of the apostles, and more especially 
that any one of our Gospels was known to an apostle and acknowledged by him, can 
never be proved. With respect to isolated anecdotes, it is only necessary to form an 
accurate conception of Palestine and of the real position of the eye-witnesses referred to, 
in order to understand that the origination of legends, even at so early a period, is by no 
means incomprehensible. Who informs us that they must necessarily ^ave taken root in 
that particular district of Palestine where Jesus tarried longest, and where his actual 
history was well known? And with respect to eye-witnesses, if by these we are to 
understand the apostles, it is to ascribe to them absolute ubiquity to represent them as 
present here and there weeding out all the unhistorical legends concerning Jesus, in 
whatever places they had chanced to spring up and nourish." (Ibid., i, 63, 64.) 

The internal evidences for the authenticity of the Gospels are entirely ignored by Strauss 
on account of the internal evidences which he sets up in opposition to them; namely, 
the contradictory statements which he charges upon the Evangelists, and the impos- 
sibility of miracles. As these two objections are directed against the historic verity or 
credibility of the Gospel records, we shall consider them in the next Part, and proceed 
now to the statement of the mythical theory itself in the words of Norton. 

As there was among the Jews an eager expectation of their Messiah, Jesus, at least 
during a part of his ministry, regarded himself as the Messiah, as "the greatest and last 
of the prophetic race." He was, consequently, so regarded by his followers. The expect- 
ation, which the Jews entei'tained of their Messiah, was definite and "characterized by 
many important particulars." They had formed many imaginations concerning him 
connected with allegorical and typical misinterpretations of the Old Testament; and, 
after the appearance of Jesus, there were some among the Jews who converted their 
imaginations of what the Messiah was to be into fictions of what Jesus had been, and 
embodied those fictions in a history of his ministry. The Jewish people generally 
rejected him, as not their Messiah, and their leaders persecuted and crucified him as a 
religious impostor and blasphemer. Nor, according to Strauss, were the supposed 
fictions concerning him propagated by his immediate disciples, who had witnessed his 
deeds and listened to his words, his apostles, and their associates; nor, consequently, by 
those who knew and held the truth concerning him, as taught by them. To affirm that 
they were propagated by the apostles and their associates would be to maintain what the 
most reckless infidelity has shrunk from directly asserting; namely, that the received 
history of Jesus is a collection of enormous falsehoods, fabricated by his immediate dis- 
ciples, and preached by them with ineffable effrontery in the very face of those who 
knew them to be false. From this simple solution of the origin of our religion, the 
"mythical" theory of Strauss essentially differs; for though he does not define the sense 
in which he uses the term "mythus" it is fundamental in his theory that mythi, and par- 
ticularly the mythi or fables concerning Jesus, are not generally intentional falsehoods. 
It is this characteristic alone which distinguishes it from the more obvious and base 
solution of the origin of Christianity which has baen adverted to. According to Strauss, 
the greater part of those fictions concerning Jesus, which are embodied in the Gospels, 
became connected with his history during the period of about thirty years which inter- 
vened between his death and the destruction of Jerusalem, (Strauss, i, 84,) that is, during 
the period throughout which many of his apostles and their associates — the first preach- 
ers of our religion — and the great body of those instructed by them were living. These 
fictions did not proceed from, nor were they countenanced by, them, nor were they 
received as true by those who relied on their authority. How, notwithstanding, they 
obtained such currency as almost immediately to obscure and obliterate his true history, 
is to be thus explained: 

The age, it is true, was "a historical age" — by which term Strauss, I suppose, must 
be understood as meaning an age in which facts would be recorded, and mythological 



78 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



fables would not find ready currency — but "the pure historic idea was never developed 
among the Hebrews." "Indeed, no just notion of the true nature of history is possible, 
without a perception of the inviolability of the chain of finite causes and of the impos- 
sibility of miracles. This perception, which is wanting to so many minds of our own 
day, was still more deficient in Palestine, and, indeed, throughout the Eoman Empire. 
And to a mind still open to the reception of the marvelous, if it be once carried away by 
the tide of religious enthusiasm, all things will appear credible ; and should this enthusi- 
asm lay hold of a yet wider circle, it will awaken a new creative vigor even in a decayed 
people. To account for such an enthusiasm it is by no means necessary to presuppose 
the Gospel miracle as the existing cause. This may be found in the known religious 
dearth of that period, a dearth so great that the cravings of the mind after some religious 
belief excited a relish for the most extravagant forms of worship; secondly, in the deep 
religious satisfaction which was afforded by the belief in the resurrection of the deceased 
Messiah, and by the essential principles of the doctrine of Jesus." (Strauss, i, 64, 65.) 

The theory of Strauss necessarily supposes that Jesus was a conspicuous individual 
who acted strongly on the minds of men. Before this theory can be received, it becomes 
requisite to explain the very rapid growth of those most extraordinary fictions concern- 
ing him, which sprung up and flourished while very many of his cotemporaries were 
still living; especially as by a great majority of those cotemporaries, his enemies, they 
would be at once indignantly spurned and trampled under foot, as being, what they 
were, monstrous falsehoods; while by another portion, the first adherents of Jesus, and 
the original witnesses of his ministry, their growth, to say the least, was not fostered — • 
they did not rest on their testimony. Strauss has shown himself sensible that an expla- 
nation of this phenomenon is requisite; and the solution which he gives of the sudden 
development of such an array of fables concerning Jesus may be found in the following 
passage. It may be readily understood, if we bear in mind what has been before stated, 
that, according to his theory, the Jews had entertained many imaginations concerning 
their expected Messiah; and that the process in forming the history of Jesus which has 
come down to us, consisted in converting these imaginations of what was to be into 
fables concerning Jesus. 

He saj^s: "A frequently -raised objection still remains, . . . the objection, namely, 
that the space of about thirty years from the death of Jesus to the destruction of Jeru- 
salem, during which the greater part of the narratives must have been formed — or even 
the interval extending to the beginning of the second century, the most distant period 
which can be allowed for the origin of even the latest of these Gospel narratives — is 
much too short to admit of the use of so rich a collection of mytlii. But as we have 
shown, the greater part of these mythi did not arise during that period, for their first 
foundation was laid in the legends of the Old Testament before and after the Babylonish 
exile; and the transferrence of these legends, with suitable modifications, to the expected 
Messiah was made in the course of the centuries which elapsed between that exile and 
the time of Jesus. So that, for the period between the foundation of the first Christian 
community and the writing of the Gospels, there remains to be effected only the trans- 
ferrence of Messianic legends, almost all ready formed, to Jesus, with some alterations to 
adapt them to Christian opinions and to the individual character and circumstances of 
Jesus; only a very small proportion of mythi having to be formed entirely new." 
(Strauss, i, 84, 85.) This is the only explanation he affords. 

It appears, then, according to Strauss, that some time during the thirty or forty years 
after the death of our Lord, the small body of his followers among the Jews was divided 
into two parties of very different characters. One was composed of his personal friends 
and followers, the apostles and their associates, who knew his true history and doctrines, 
and who did not propagate those falsehoods concerning him on which the religion of 
Christians is founded. The other was composed of persons who did propagate those 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 79 

falsehoods. These had their origin, as Strauss suggests, in districts of Palestine where 
Jesus did not tarry long, and where his actual history was not well known, and it would, 
he says, be ascribing absolute ubiquity to the apostles to suppose them to have been 
capable of being present here and there to weed out all the unhistorical legends concern- 
ing him in whatever places they had chanced to spring up and nourish. (Strauss, i, 63, 
64.) Those who propagated these fictions concerning him had no intention of deceiving. 
They were unconscious of falsehood; they believed that what they related had actually 
taken place. They had so little acquaintance with Jesus or with the eye-witnesses of his 
ministry, that they did not know that all which they affirmed concerning him was 
untrue. On the contrary, they were persuaded that it was true. But though, as Strauss 
suggests, their fictions may not originally "have taken root in that particular district of 
Palestine where Jesus tarried longest," (Strauss, i, 84,) yet, in order to make converts to 
the belief of them, it was necessary that they should be preached in parts of Palestine 
where our Lord had been well known, and where there could be no ignorance respecting 
the essential facts in his ministry. Here, on the one hand, they would be indignantly 
and vehemently contradicted by the great body of the unbelieving Jews, and on the 
other, they would be denied and discountenanced by the true followers of Christ. The 
innocent impostors, who, in their ignorance, propagated unconsciously such enormous 
falsehoods concerning him, must have been surprised to find all those acquainted with 
the facts in his history, whether friends or enemies, utterly confounded, to say the least, 
by their marvelous stories. One might think that their own confidence would have been 
shaken by the direct and authoritative evidence, which they must have encountered on 
every side, of the falsehood of their narrations. It might seem, moreover, that it would 
be impossible under such circumstances to procure converts to the belief of them. But 
such was not the case. Their own confidence was not shaken; they persisted in pro- 
mulgating their stories, and they triumphed signally. They are the true authors of 
Christianity. It is to them that we are indebted for the Gospels. Their fictions have 
supplanted the real history of Christ, the original testimony of eye-witnesses, and have 
become the foundation of Christian faith ! Nor is this all. Keeping themselves out of 
view, they have had complete success in putting their stories before the world as resting 
on the authority of the apostles and their associates, in making them responsible for 
their marvelous tales. The whole Christian world has believed that these stories pro- 
ceeded from apostles and their associates. But it was not so. They proceeded from 
another party among the followers of Jesus Christ, a party that does not appear in his- 
tory, the existence of which is irreconcilable with all remaining records and memorials 
of the times when it is supposed to have flourished, utterly irreconcilable with all proba- 
bility, and which, therefore, was unknown to the world before its discovery by Strauss. 

It is to be borne in mind that the distinguishing characteristic of the theory of 
Strauss, the "mythical" theory of the origin of Christianity, consists in the supposition 
that the mythi or fictions in the history of Jesus were not intentional fabrications for the 
purpose of deception, but that they sprang up, as it were, spontaneously; those among 
whom they originated, and by whom they were propagated, being unconscious of false- 
hood. This fact is fully recognized by Strauss, though not clearly apprehended by him 
in its necessary relations. His reader should keep it in mind. We must not suffer 
ourselves to vacillate between two theories wholly inconsistent with each other. 
The apostles and their associates were, or were not, the most shameless of impostors. 
According to Strauss they were not impostors. It follows that the history of our Lord, 
which the Christian world has received, was not derived from them, though it grew to 
its present form principally while the most, or many, of them were living. It proceeded, 
therefore, from other individuals, of whom history has preserved no record, and who 
must have taught under the circumstances which have been described. 

We may next observe, that, however difficult was the task of these teachers of our 



80 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 

present religion in persuading the cotemporaries and countrymen of an individual as 
conspicuous as our Lord must have been, to give credit to a history of him full of mar- 
vels that were utterly devoid of truth, yet this was not the sole, nor the greatest, diffi- 
culty which they are supposed to have overcome. This teaching consisted, as we are 
informed by Strauss, in identifying the history of Jesus with the anticipations of the 
Jews concerning their expected Messiah. The mythi respecting this imaginary person- 
age were ready made for their use, and they had only to turn them into historical 
fictions, and accommodate them to Jesus. 

But every one knows what were the popular expectations of the Jews respecting 
their coming Messiah. Of him, David, the greatest of their kings, the founder of their 
monarchy, was, in their view, the especial type; though in all by which the favor of God 
had distinguished David, the Messiah was to be far more distinguished. He, too, was to 
be a monarch, the restorer of the kingdom of Israel, a warrior, a conqueror, the deliverer 
and exalter of his people. Establishing the seat of his empire at Jerusalem, he was to 
found a kingdom extending over the world, and enduring to the consummation of all 
things, over which he was to rule without a successor. This was the outline of their 
expectations, which, doubtless, before the coming of our Lord, was filled up, as it has 
been since, with many particular imaginations corresponding to its general character. 

But according to Strauss, it was the purpose of those who propagated the fabulous 
history of Jesus, to evince that he was the Messiah through the correspondence of its 
fictions with the previous expectations of the Jews concerning the Messiah. This his- 
tory actually shows one striking point of resemblance in representing Jesus as the last 
great messenger of God to the Jewish nation endowed with miraculous powers. But the 
whole representation of the purpose and effects of his mission, of his personal character, 
of his humble condition in this world, of his determined repression of all hope of 
worldly aggrandizement for himself, his followers, or his countrymen, of his annunci- 
ation to his immediate disciples that they must submit to poverty and suffering, and 
prepare themselves for the last outrage of persecution, together with the account of the 
apparent triumph of his enemies, and of his cruel death — this representation, if it were 
a fiction, might seem to have been devised in direct opposition to the expectations of the 
Jews respecting their Messiah. 

But it may be said that the facts to which I have referred were so notorious that no 
other account could be given by the honest impostors, who, unconscious of falsehood, 
propagated the stories of his miracles. Certainly these facts were so notorious that no 
other account could be given but that which we have received. But such being the case, 
it follows that no attempt could be more hopeless or more foolish, than an attempt to 
persuade the Jews that the life and death, the character, acts, and teachings of Jesus 
corresponded to 'their previous expectations of the Messiah. So far, indeed, from their 
finding any such correspondence, we know that, during his ministry, and after his death, 
he was rejected by a very great majority of the nation, as disappointing all their hopes 
from a Messiah, and exasperating their strongest prejudices. 

This theory of Strauss is, indeed, an outrage upon common-sense, if the preceding 
account of it be correct, and no one will pretend that it is not. But we have as yet 
viewed this theory only under one aspect; namely, in its relation to the Jewish nation. 
We will consider it in some other very important relations in which its author has not 
presented it, and in regard to which he has, of course, given no explanation. 

The heathens believed the Gospel, and of the strength of their belief they gave sure 
proof by the marvelous change which it wrought in their hearts and lives, by the wide 
separation which it produced between them and the heathen world, by their readiness to 
submit to all the deprivations and evils which it brought upon them. Now, from whom 
did the heathens receive their knowledge of Christianity and of the Gospels? The 
theory of Strauss admits of but one answer. According to this theory, they must have 






THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 81 

received it not from the main body of the Jewish Christians, but from those few mis- 
taken men among them who, having little or no acquaintance with Jesus, propagated, 
unconscious of falsehood, those mythi concerning him with which the Gospels are filled, 
and who thus established in the world not merely a fabulous history of him, the pro- 
fessed Messiah of whom they knew nothing correctly, but likewise a new religion, 
embracing the noblest principles of action, founded upon faith in one whose real history 
they had obliterated or rendered doubtful, and whose character they had essentially mis- 
represented. This is the only answer which the theory of Strauss admits. But the only 
answer admitted by authentic history and indisputable fact is that the heathens were 
instructed in Christianity by the immediate followers and companions of our Lord, and 
by their associates — -by those who were perfectly aware whether their teaching was or 
was not true; that they received our religion from Barnabas, and Paul, and Luke, from 
Peter and Mark, from the apostle John, who resided so long among them, and from 
others associated with these early teachers. Above all, no degree of folly, certainly 
none to which a rational person can be required to give heed, will lead any one to pre- 
tend expressly that there is any evidence or any ground whatever for imagining that 
the Gospel was preached to the heathen world in two different forms; in one form 
by half-crazy fanatics, who filled the history of our Lord with stories of fictitious 
miracles, and in another, by his immediate followers and friends, who told the truth 
concerning him, whatsoever that was. But turning from unquestionable truths, we will 
enter the regions of mere hypothesis. We will clear the ground, as far as possible, of 
those facts that stand in our way. The Epistles of Paul we will regard as forgeries, and 
the whole history of the propagation of Christianity, which may be gathered from the 
New Testament, as a fabrication. We will suppose that these Christians received their 
instruction in Christianity from the fanatical and ignorant portion of Christ's disciples. 
Every one knows what these teachers effected. Let us consider their means and the 
obstacles which they had to encounter. 

They were men very deficient in good sense. They had taken no pains to inform 
themselves correctly concerning the character, acts, and teaching of him whose disciples 
they professed to be, and whom they were so zealous in exhorting others to obey. They 
had, on the contrary, fallen into the grossest mistakes concerning them. God did not 
"bear them witness with signs, and wonders, and divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy 
Ghost." The pretense that he did so is merely one of those fables which are j>ut forward 
throughout the New Testament. It was not only morally, but physically, impossible 
that they should produce any miraculous evidence of the truth of their fictions. Nor 
were they distinguished for eloquence or ability of any sort, since, though they effected 
such an astonishing work, history has not even preserved their names, but has falsely 
substituted for them those of other individuals — apostles of Christ and the associates of 
apostles. Such were the character and the facilities for accomplishing their purpose, 
possessed by these zealous missionaries of falsehood. What obstacles, then, had they to 
encounter? 

According to Strauss their main purpose in their mythical history of Christ, which 
we now find in the Gospels, was to evince that a Messiah — named Jesus — had appeared 
among the Jews. This was the story which they propagated in the heathen world. 
But the heathen world would have regarded only with indifference or ridicule such a 
story from such preachers — a story that a Messiah had appeared among the Jews, a 
people toward whom the prevalent feelings of the heathens had been those of dislike and 
contempt; and in whose supposed good or ill fortune in the advent of their Messiah it 
must have been very hard to persuade them that they had any concern. Admitting, 
however, that it were possible to excite their attention to the subject, with what ineffable 
scorn must they have regarded the sort of evidence laid before them ! How would they 
have listened to proofs founded on a pretended correspondence between a body of 



82 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



incredible fictions and certain passages of a book called the Old Testament — a book 
for which they had no respect, which even many of them had never heard of, and which 
it may be safely presumed, no one of them had read — which passages were represented 
to them as expressing typically or mystically what the Jews had expected concerning 
the Messiah? With how much patience would they have listened to these Jewish j)rose- 
lyting missionaries who had come among them, when these missionaries themselves told 
them that the person, whom they called on them to receive as the Jewish Messiah, had 
been rejected by his own nation as an impostor and blasphemer, and had, in consequence 
of his pretensions, suffered a public execution, as ignominious as it was cruel? What 
must they have thought of this Jewish Messiah, the deliverer of his people, when he was 
preached to them after the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jewish 
nation? Is it possible, an intelligent reader may ask, that any one can have been so 
bewildered and confounded by irreligion and mysticism, as to imagine that the most 
astonishing moral revolution in the history of mankind, the establishment of Christian- 
ity in the heathen world, was effected by such agents, under such circumstances? 
We add to Mr. Norton's critique of Strauss a few remarks : 

1. The mythical theory is a tissue of self-contradictory statements. One Gospel is 
rejected as spurious, and then, again, treated as authentic, in order to prove from it 
the spuriousness of another. In one place we are told that the people, among whom 
these myths originated, were in a state of childish ignorance and credulity, under the 
influence of an untutored, extravagant imagination; in another place we are called 
upon to admire the deep philosophy, lying at the bottom of these evangelical myths, 
the expansive views, thorough analysis, and far-seeing sagacity of those ignorant and 
superstitious persons who propagated them ! 

2. What we are called upon to believe by the mythical theory, is, in short, that 
Jesus — if he wrought no miracles, and was the subject of no miracles — contradicted, 
in every circumstance of his birth, and education, and teaching, and life, and death, 
the best established and most cherished notions of all around him, concerning the 
promised Messiah, and was, nevertheless, believed to be that Messiah. We are called 
upon to believe that miracles were ascribed to him, because the Messiah ought to have 
wrought miracles; that he was believed to have risen again, because it suddenly 
occurred to somebody that he ought to have risen again ; and that, by such a process 
as this, a creed of fables was transmuted into a creed of facts, and, toward the close 
of the second century, stamped indelibly, and with one impression, upon the faith and 
institutions of the great Christian communities throughout the world, so that the 
consentient tradition of all these Churches ascribes their foundation to the first dis- 
ciples of Jesus Christ, and our Gospels to those whose names they bear; and this 
tradition is confirmed by the universal observance of the sacraments, of the weekly 
Lord's day, and of Easter, the special festival in remembrance of Christ's resurrection. 

3. That no speculative system, based upon the myth of an incarnate God, could have 
started such a revolution in the moral world, as has been produced by Christianity 
for over eighteen centuries, with the manifest destiny to leaven and change the whole 
world, is evident, from the fact, that all the philosophical elements, to which the 
mythical theory attributes the propagation of Christianity, are found in the lofty specu- 
lations of Plato, in the logology of Philo, and a host of Oriental myths, concerning 
incarnations of Deity; but though they were in the world for centuries, they never 
exerted a world-renewing influence. 

4. "With this last effort," says Dr. Schaff, "infidelity seems to have exhausted its 
scientific resources. It can only repeat itself hereafter. Its different theories have all 
been tried and found wanting. One has in turn transplanted and refuted the other, 
even during the lifetime of their champions. They explain nothing in the end ; on the 
contrary, they only substitute an unnatural for a supernatural miracle, an inextricable 



THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 83 

enigma for a revealed mystery. They equally tend to undermine all faith in God's 
providence, in history, and ultimately in every principle of truth arid virtue, and 
they deprive a poor and fallen humanity, in a world of sin, temptation, and sorrow, 
of its only hope and comfort in life and in death. — The same negative criticism which 
Strauss applied to the Gospels, would, with equal plausibility, destroy the strongest 
chain of evidence before a court of justice, and resolve the life of Socrates, or Charle- 
magne, or Luther, or Napoleon, into a mythical dream. The secret of the mythical 
hypothesis is the pantheistic denial of a personal, living God, and the a priori assumption 
of the impossibility of a miracle. In its details it is so complicated and artificial, that 
it can not be made generally intelligible, and in proportion as it is popularized, it 
reverts to the vulgar hypothesis of intentional fraud, from which it professed, at the 
start, to shrink back in horror and contempt." 



84 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



PART III. 

THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 
§20. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

In the preceding Part, the authenticity of the Gospels has been established by the 
most conclusive evidences. A book, however, may be authentic; that is, it may have 
been written by the author by whom it claims to have been written, and yet have no 
claims upon our confidence ; that is, it may not be credible. Though this is rarely the 
case with historical books, and, in the nature of the case, inapplicable to such records 
as the Gospels, yet, we will consider them for the j)resent, without any reference to 
their containing a divine revelation, and subject them to the same laws of historical 
criticism as may be applied to any historical record. 



OHAPTEE I. 

A CONSIDERATION OP THE OBJECTIONS THAT HAVE BEEN RAISED 
AGAINST THE CREDIBILITY OF THE EVANGELISTS. 

§ 21. The Alleged Discrepancies or Contradictions in the Four Gospels. 

It has been asserted that the Evangelists differ in some of their statements from 
each other to such a degree as to contradict each other. That we find their records 
as different as we should expect them, from independent writers, is admitted ; but it 
can be satisfactorily shown, that they are not of such a nature as to impair their 
character as faithful and trustworthy reporters. The charge of alleged contradictions 
will be refuted in detail, in the interpretation of the respective passages to which 
the charge refers; such, for instance, as the difference with regard to the hour of the 
crucifixion of our Lord. Here we confine ourselves to general remarks: 

1. The differences adduced, consist mostly of omissions by one Evangelist of what 
is mentioned by another, such omissions being regarded by Strauss as equivalent to 
direct negatives.* Throughout his "Life of Jesus," he conceives himself at liberty to 

*With regard to the Annunciation, for instance, Mr. Rawlinson observes, we find the following enumeration 
of discrepancies : " 1. The individual who appears is called, in Matthew, an angel of the Lord; in Luke, the 
angel Gabriel. 2. The person to whom the angel appears is, according to Matthew, Joseph ; according to Luke, 
Mary. 3. In Matthew, the apparition is seen in a dream ; in Luke, while awake. 4. There is a disagreement 
with respect to the time at which the apparition took place. 5. Both, the purpose of the apparition and the 
effect, are different." In this way five discrepancies are created out of the single fact that Matthew does 
not relate the Annunciation to the Virgin, while Luke gives no account of the angelic appearance to Joseph. 
Similarly, in the section where the calling of the first apostles is examined, discrepancies are seen between 
the fourth and the first two Evangelists, in the following respects : " 1. James is absent, according to John's 
Gospel, and, instead of his vocation, we have that of Philip and Nathanael. 2. In Matthew and Mark, the 
ecene is the coast of the Galilean Sea; in John, it is the vicinity of the Jordan. 3. In each representation 



THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 85 

discard facts recorded by one Evangelist only, on the mere ground of silence on the 
part of the others. Whatever an Evangelist does not record, he is argued not to have 
known ; and his want of knowledge is taken as a proof that the event could not have 
happened. The sophistry of such an argument is apparent. Who will deny that eye- 
witnesses of one and the same event notice a different portion of the attendant circum- 
stances, and that, moreover, those who record an event which they have witnessed, 
omit, ordinarily, by far the greater portion of the attendant circumstances, though 
they have noticed them at the time ! Strauss's cavils could only have been precluded 
by the mere rejoetition, on the part of each Evangelist, of the exact circumstances men- 
tioned by every other — a repetition which would have been considered to mark collusion, 
and which would thus have destroyed their value as distinct and independent witnesses. 
The deviations, therefore, with regard to particular circumstances attending an event, 
are so far from lessening the credibility of the Gospel history, that they rather increase 
it. They are deviations, such as are most sure to appear, wherever there is the highest 
degree of harmlessness, the calmest consciousness of entire truthfulness, and an entire 
absence of collusion. And, suppose we should have to acknowledge the existence of 
a deviation, for which — from a want of a full knowledge of all the attending circum- 
stances — we could not offer a satisfactory explanation; as, for instance, with regard to 
the cure of the blind at Jericho, (Matt, xx, 29, 34; Mark x, 46, 52; Luke xviii, 35, 19) — 
such a concession Avould still leave the credibility of the Gospel history untouched. 
It would only conflict with the verbal inspiration of the Evangelists, but they would 
remain historical authorities of the first order, witnesses as fully to be trusted for the 
circumstances of our Lord's life, as Xenophon for the sayings and doings of Socrates. 
Even Lessing, that severe critic, while he pointed out apparent discrepancies in the 
accounts of Christ's resurrection, did not feel himself justified to reject the fact itself 
on the ground of these discrepancies. "Who," he says, "has ever drawn such an 
inference in profane history? If Livy, Polybius, and Tacitus record the same event, 
but Avith such a difference, as regards the attending circumstances, that the details of 
the one seem irreconcilable to that of the other, is, therefore, the event itself put in 
question? Now, if we deal so trustfully with profane writers, why should we torture 
the Evangelists for every syllable?" To which Tholuck adds: "It will not be easy 
to find two historians in classic antiquity, who, though equally trustworthy, do not 
differ from, or even contradict, each other, when they relate the same event, be it 
from the imperfections of man's faculties of observation and description, or because 
the writers could not anticipate our circumstances and meet our wants. How insoluble 
are often the difficulties which arise from the conflicting testimonies of trustworthy 
witnesses at court! He that would make shipwreck of faith on account of some few 

there are two pairs of brothers ; hut, in the one, they are Andrew and Peter, James and John ; in the other, 
Andrew and Peter, Philip and Nathanael. And, 4. In Matthew and Mark, all are called by Jesus; in John, 
Philip only, the others being directed to hirn by the Baptist." Here, again, we have four discrepancies mado 
out of the circumstance, that the first two Evangelists relate only the actual call of certain disciples, while 
John informs us what previous acquaintance they had of Josus. So, from the mere silence of Matthew, 
Strauss concludes, positively, that he opposes Luke, in not considering Nazareth, but Bethlehem, to have 
been the original residence of our Lord's parents ; from the omission, by the three earlier writers, of the 
journeys into Judea, during our Lord's ministry, ho pronounces that they contradict John, who speaks of 
such journeys ; he finds a discrepancy between this Evangelist's account of the relations between the Baptist 
and our Lord, and the account of the others, since he gives, and they do not give, the testimony borne by 
the former to our Lord's character; he concludes, from Luke's not saying that John the Baptist was in 
prison when he sent his two disciples to our Lord, that he considered him as not yet cast into prison; he 
finds Luke's and Matthew's accounts of the death of Judas "irreconcilable," because Luke says nothing of 
remorse, or of suicide, but relates what has the appearance of a death by accident ; he regards the presence 
of Nicodemus at our Lord's interment, as a "fabrication of the fourth Evangelist," simply because it is 
unnoticed by the others; he concludes, from their silence as to the raising of Lazarus, that "it can not have 
been known to them," and, therefore, that it can not bo true; and, in other instances, too numerous to mention, 
he makes similar use of the mere fact of omission. 



86 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



insignificant discrepancies in the Gospel narratives, would be no greater loss to the 
Church than he would be a gain, who is induced to embrace the faith of the Gospel 
by no weightier argument, than the proof that the Evangelists stated alike every 
particular of each event, and wrote down the words of our Lord verbatim and literatim, 
like stenographers." 

2. By far the greatest number of the so-called discrepancies in the Gospels are of 
a chronological character, and some of them — as, for instance, the journey of Jesus into 
the country of the Gadarenes, which, according to Matthew, was preceded by a number 
of events that followed it according to Mark and Luke — might, indeed, be called con- 
tradictory, if it could be shown that any of the Evangelists designed to furnish us 
with a complete, consecutive account of the ministry of Christ. The very contrary 
of this assumption is an undeniable fact. They evidently do not intend, or pretend, 
to give us more than a selection from the rich materials of the life and labors of their 
Master. All that the Synoptists report of the earlier half of his ministry is confined 
to a few fragments. From Matt, xi, 21, it appears that Christ had endeavored by 
mighty works to call Chorazin to repentance; but neither Matthew nor the other 
Evangelists say any thing of the works of Christ performed there. It has, however, 
been contended, that Luke, in the preface to his Gospel, does claim to give a history of 
Christ in chronological order. But this is not so. Compared with the sketches, which 
some Christians had made in an unauthorized manner, Luke could very properly call 
his work "perfect" and "in order," even though he did not pursue the life of Christ from 
day to day, and week to week, but gave what appeared to him most important, in 
some systematic order. Each of the Evangelists had a plan of his own, according to 
which he arranged and grouped the events, and, therefore, the sequence — called akolou- 
thia — of the events and sermons differs in each of the Synoptists., But if this difference 
in the selection and arrangement of the material in each of the Synoptists has its 
ground in the special plan which each followed, it is evident that this variety implies 
no incongruity or disharmony. The question, whether and how the chronological order 
of the events, recorded by the Evangelists, can be established, belongs to the subject 
of the Harmony of the Gospels, which we shall treat in Part V. It is sufficient to 
remark here, with regard to such sayings and discourses of the Lord as are placed by 
the Evangelists in connection with different occasions, that we are fully justified to 
assume, that similar sayings and discourses were delivered by our Savior more than 
once, at different times and under different circumstances, as appears, for instance, 
clearly from those denunciations of the scribes and Pharisees which were first uttered 
by our Lord on his journey to Jerusalem, (Luke xi, 37,) afterward solemnly repeated 
in the Temple at the close of his public ministry. (Matt, xxiii.) 

§ 22. The Assumption that Miracles are Impossible and Unsusceptible of Proof. 

While German rationalism has vainly tried to disprove the verity of the miracles re- 
corded in the Gospels, that is, to explain away the miraculous nature of these occurrences 
by means of an interpretation, admitted now on all hands to be entirely unauthorized and 
absurd — pantheistic and atheistic philosophy denies the miracles on the plea of their 
impossibility. This stupendous assumption is the basis upon which the criticism of 
Strauss, in his "Life of Jesus," rests. Miracles are declared to be impossible, and, there- 
fore, a narrative of which supernatural occurrences form an essential part, is, just so far, 
said to be devoid of historic character. The thesis that miracles are impossible, im- 
plies, of course, that the word "miracle" is not used in the sense of the Latin "mirabile" 
meaning something wonderful arising from natural causes not known at the time of its 
taking place, or yet unknown. "With this is conceded the proper definition of a mir- 
acle. It is a Divine interposition to accomplish, by special agency, an effect not to be 



THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 87 

reached in the natural course and order of events. But the denial of the possibility of such 
an interposition — from whatever stand-point the argument is attempted, whether with 
reference to philosophical conceptions of God's nature and attributes, or with reference 
to experience and the empirical laws of Nature, which are said to preclude the possibil- 
ity of a sufficient evidence of the miracle — can be shown to be a mere begging of the 
question. Let us examine this axiom of modern infidelity in its chameleon-like phases, 
which all may be summed up under two general heads. 

I. Spinoza, the father of modern pantheism, to whom God and nature are one, says 
in substance: "A miracle is inconsistent Avith the perfections of the Deity, for it is con- 
ceivable only upon the supposition that the self-manifestation of God in nature proved 
defective, but such a supposition would be irreconcilable with a belief in God's per- 
fection." In this syllogism Spinoza takes for granted: 1. That there is in the universe 
no self-conscious, personal Intelligence, independent of matter, for he defines a miracle, 
at another place, " as something which we can not explain by a natural law, but which has 
always a natural cause," admitting evidently of no other Divinity than what nature mani- 
fests. Matter is to him the only image of his God. 2. That the world is still in its original, 
normal state, its harmony not having been disturbed by sin, the act of free moral agents, 
and that, therefore, there is no need of a Divine interposition for moral purposes, that is, 
for the sake of the moral beings in the physical universe. On the contrary, it is assumed, 
that the universe is governed only by physical laws, not by moral laws, and that a mir- 
acle would be an alteration of the established machinery of nature. 3. That, because 
nature is an expression of God's will, there can be no other expression. It is assumed 
that, because God acts after a particular mode in certain circumstances, he can never 
have reasons for acting after a different manner in other circumstances. It is assumed 
that an addition is an inconsistency, that to superinduce any thing further upon soine- 
thing previously existing is to declare that which thus existed to have been wrong or 
bad. It is evident that, unless these premises can be proved, the pantheistic argument 
against miracles falls to the ground. "The simple question," says Dr. J. Haven, in an 
article on miracles, (Bibl. Sacra, 1862,) "is this: Is there a Deity at all? Or is all power 
to be resolved into this great system of universal, invariable, eternal law — this grand 
machinery of 'eternally-impressed consequences,' that goes grinding and clanking on 
from eternity to eternity? If the latter, then we grant that miracles are out of question. 
Bat if there be a God, as some of us in our simplicity have supposed; if we may crave 
the indulgence of this highly-cultivated age so far as to be permitted to retain the anti- 
quated notion of a Deity at the head of affairs; and if we place this Deity where he 
belongs, behind all those laws, and above them all, as their source and spring, then why 
may not the power that usually works in and by such and such methods or laws, if occa- 
sion requires, act in some other way, without or above those laws? Nay, why may he not, 
if necessary to the accomplishment of his purposes, even reverse, or wholly set aside for 
the time, those usual methods of procedure which we call laws of nature?" We call an 
event natural, when it is produced by natural means or agencies. But God, who created 
these agencies and set them in operation, is himself supernatural, and when he operates 
in nature otherwise than through those so-called natural causes, we call the work super- 
natural. The work of creation is supernatural ; it is a work in nature, proceeding from 
a power above nature. The raising of the dead would be supernatural, for there is no 
physical or physiological law capable of producing such a result. To contend that every 
event or phenomenon must be referred as an effect to a physical law, is simply to deny 
both the existence of a Supreme Intelligence as the original cause or creator, and that 
of the power of self-determination of the human will, either of which being denied, 
neither the possibility of miracles nor any other question of religion or morality is Worth 
speaking about. "Admit, on the other hand, the existence of a free will in man, and 
we have the experience of a power analogous, however inferior, to that which is sup- 



88 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



posed to operate in the production of a miracle, and forming the basis of a legitimate 
argument from the less to the greater — as Twesten shows in his ^orlcfnngen iibcr Mc 
'Soa.trtatif." In the will of man we have the solitary instance of an efficient cause, in the 
highest sense of the term, acting among and along with the physical causes of the mate- 
rial world, and producing results which would not have been brought about by any 
invariable sequence of physical causes left to their own action. We have evidence also 
of an elasticity, so to speak, in the constitution of nature, which permits the influence of 
human powers on the phenomena of the world to be exercised or superseded at will, 
without affecting the stability of the whole. We have thus a precedent for allowing the 
possibility of a similar interference by a higher will on a grander scale, provided for by 
a similar elasticity of the matter subjected to its influence. Such interferences, whether 
produced by human or by superhuman will, are not contrary to the laws of matter; but 
neither are they the result of those laws. They are the work of an agent who is inde- 
pendent of the laws, and who, therefore, neither obeys them nor disobeys them. (See 
9iotl)e ttl ©tllbtcn tint) Sfritifctl, 1858, p. 33.) If a man, of his own free will, throws a 
stone into the air, the motion of the stone, as soon as it has left his hand, is indeed 
determined by a combination of purely-material laws. But by what law came it to be 
thrown at all ? What law brought about the circumstances through which the aforesaid 
combination of material laws came into operation on this particular occasion and in this 
particular manner? The law of gravitation, no doubt, remains constant and unbroken, 
whether the stone is lying on the ground or moving through the air; but neither the 
law of gravitation nor all the laws of matter put together could have brought about this 
particular result, without the interposition of the free will of the man who throws the 
stone. Substitute the will of God for the will of man; and the argument, which in the 
above instance is limited to the ntirrow sphere within which man's powers can be exer- 
cised, becomes applicable to the whole extent of creation and to all the phenomena 
which it embraces." (Mansell on Miracles, p. 28.) As this argument ought to be 
apprehended with the utmost clearness, we will give it as stated by another late English 
writer, Dr. Heurtley, in his refutation of Baden Powell : " The human will is the ele- 
ment, the action of whose disturbing force upon the material system around us comes 
most frequently or most strikingly under our notice. Man, in the exercise of his 
ordinary faculties, is perpetually interfering with, or molding, or controlling the opera- 
tion of those ordinary laws of matter which are in exercise around him. He does so, if 
he does but disturb one pebble in its state of rest, or stay the fall of another before it 
reaches the ground. He does so to a vastly -greater extent when, by means of the appli- 
ances with Avhich art, instructed by science, has furnished him, he projects a ball to the 
distance of four or five miles, or constrains steam, or light, or electricity, or chloroform 
to do his bidding. Still his doings are not miracles, because they do not extend beyond 
the range of his unassisted powers. But what is there in the reason of things to make it 
incredible or even improbable, that God, on special occasions, and for special ends, may 
have endowed some men with superhuman powers, by which the laws of the mateinal 
world may be controlled to an extent beyond what could have been done by unassisted 
nature? or that he may have directed or permitted beings superior in might to man to 
exercise such powers? That he has done so Scripture affirms. To say that it is con- 
trary to experience is to beg the whole question at issue. The fact is, once admit that 
there is a Gad, and that he may, for special reasons, endow man with higher powers, and 
you grant that there are agents who have it in their power to interfere with or control 
the laws ordinarily in operation in the material world, so as to work miracles. Admit, 
further, that there may be an occasion calling for superhuman interference — and such surely 
is the authentication of a revelation containing truths which it was of the utmost conse- 
quence for man to know, but of which, except by revelation, he could know nothing — 
and the possibility is advanced to the highest probability." 



THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 89 

"We have shown, then, that "a miracle is not a violation of the laws of nature, in any 
sense in which such a violation is impossible or inconceivable. It is simply the intro- 
duction of a new agent, possessing new powers, and, therefore, not included under the 
rules generalized from a previous experience. Its miraculous character, distinguishing 
it from mere new discoveries in nature, consists in the fact that the powers in question 
are supposed to be introduced for a special purpose, and to be withdrawn again when that 
purpose is accomplished, and thus to be excluded from the field of future observation 
and investigation. But the supposition of such powers needs not imply any violation of 
the present laws observed by present natural agents. The laws of nature are simply 
general statements concerning the powers and properties of certain classes of objects 
which have come under our observation. They say nothing about the powers and prop- 
erties of other objects or classes of objects which have not been observed, or which have 
been observed with a different result. There are laws, for instance, of one class of mate- 
rial agents which do not apply to another; and there are laws of matter in general 
which are not applicable to mind; and so there may be other orders of beings of which 
we have no knowledge, the laws of whose action may be different from all that we know 
of mind or body. A violation, in the proper sense of the word, of the laws of nature 
would only take place, if, in two cases in which the cause or antecedent fact were exactly the 
same, the effect or consequent fact were different. But no such irregularity is asserted by 
the believer in miracles. He does not assert that miracles are produced by the abnormal 
action of natural and known causes — on the contrary, he expressly maintains that they 
are produced by a special interposition of Divine power; and that such an interposition, 
constituting in itself a different cause, may reasonably be expected to be folloAved by a 
different effect. So far, then, as a miracle is regarded as the operation of a special cause 
producing a special effect, it offers no antagonism to that general uniformity of nature, 
according to which the same effects will always follow from the same causes. The oppo- 
sition between science and miracle, if any exist, must be sought in another quarter; 
namely, in the assumption that the introduction of a special cause is itself incredible. 
The ground of such an assumption appears to lie in the hypothesis that the existing 
forces of nature are so mutually related to each other that no new power can be intro- 
duced without either disturbing the whole equilibrium of the universe, or involving a 
series of miracles, coextensive with the universe, to counteract such disturbance.' 1 (Man- 
sel, pp. 24, 25.) To the last-named assumption it is sufficient to reply: 1. If we admit the 
personality and, as implied in the personality, the moral nature of God, without which 
admission no religion, no feeling of a spiritual relation between God and man, and no 
conception of a mind superior to nature can have any existence, we may doubtless 
believe that God from the beginning so ordered the constitution of the world as to leave 
room for the exercise of those miraculous powers which he foresaw would, at a certain 
time, bo exercised; just as he has left similar room for the exercise, within narrower 
limits, of the human will. 2. That God should interpose in the uniformities which exist 
among natural phenomena, by introducing a new (miraculous) power, is the less sur- 
prising, as he has permitted man, as a free moral agent, to act contrary to the design for 
which he was created, and thus, by sinning, to violate the originally-established order of 
nature, and the miraculous interposition of God has really for its object to restore the 
order of things which has been disturbed by the fall. 

II. It is assei'ted that "even supposing a miracle were wrought, it would be impos- 
sible to establish the fact by evidence." On what grounds is this assertion made? 
Hume says: "A miracle is contrary to human experience, and, therefore, incredible." 
To state this argument is to refute it. Neither the major nor the minor premise is true. 
To assert that miracles are contrary to all human experience is an assumption which 
begs the whole question in dispute. That miracles are contrary to general experience is 
very true, else they would not be miracles. That they are contrary to all human expo- 



90 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



rience is not true. So far from this, they have become actually the objects of human 
experience in connection with the promulgation both of the Jewish and, afterward, of 
the Christian systems of religion. The facts are well attested, the statements clear, full, 
explicit. The instances, though rare, yet, in the aggregate, are numerous. The wit- 
nesses are many, men of good character and good sense. They testify to plain facts, 
about which there could well be no mistake. They appeal to their cotemporaries for 
the truth of their statements; and that testimony goes uncontradicted, nay, is confirmed, 
by their enemies. Now it is a sheer begging of the question for any man to assert that 
miracles are contrary to human experience, when so many witnesses testify positively to 
the occurrences under their own observation of events, which, if they really did occur as 
stated, must be admitted to be miraculous. The fact that Mr. Hume, or any number of 
men, did not see a miracle, does not prove that nobody has ever seen one. Mere negative 
testimony can not outweigh positive. Nor is the major premise of Mr. Hume's argu- 
ment more tenable. An event is not necessarily incredible, because not known to have 
occurred before. Is it quite certain that nothing can take place in the world which has 
not already taken place? Even if it were conceded, then, as it is not, that miracles are 
contrary to human experience, it by no means follows that they are, on that account, 
necessarily incredible. If in ten thousand millions of occurrences we have found 
nothing but natural occurrences — this will never entitle us, by any logical rule, to declare 
that in no other occurrence can there be supernatural agency. 

Again, it is said: "You can not prove a miracle, as it is beyond the capacity of a man 
to tell what powers are in nature. You may show us a phenomenon inexplicable in our 
present state of knowledge, but this does not prove it to be beyond agencies of nature 
as yet undiscovered by man." It is sufficient to reply to this, that, though we do not 
know the full extent of the powers of nature, there are some things — just such things as 
the works actually recorded as having been done by Christ and his apostles — of which 
we are quite certain that they are not within the range of natural agency. Moreover, 
" in proportion as the science of to-day surpasses that of former generations, so is the 
improbability that any man could have wrought in past times, by natural means, works 
which no skill of the present age is able to imitate. The effect, therefore, of scientific 
progress, as regards Scriptural miracles, is gradually to eliminate the hypothesis which 
refers them to unknown natural causes, and to reduce the question to the following altern- 
ative : Either the recorded acts were not performed at all, or they were performed, as 
their authors themselves declare, by virtue of a supernatural power consciously exercised 
for that very purpose. The theory which attempts to explain them as distorted state- 
ments of events reducible to known natural causes, has been tried by the rationalists of 
Germany, and has failed so utterly as to preclude all expectation of its revival, even in 
the land of its birth. There remains only the choice between accepting the sacred 
narrative as a true account of miracles actually performed, and rejecting it as wholly 
fictitious and incredible; whether the fiction be attributed to the gradual accretion of 
mythical elements, or — for a later criticism has come back again to the older and more 
intelligible theory — to the conscious fabrication of a willful impostor." (Mansel, pp. 22, 
23.) Again, it is said by Strauss, and repeated by a writer in the late "Essays and 
Eeviews:" "No testimony can reach to the supernatural; testimony can apply only to 
apparent, sensible facts; testimony can only prove an extraordinary and perhaps inex- 
plicable occurrence or phenomenon: that it is due to supernatural causes is entirely 
dependent on the previous belief and assumptions of the parties." To this Mansel (pp. 14, 
15) makes the pertinent and weighty reply: "It may, with certain exceptions, be appli- 
cable to a case in which the assertion of a supernatural cause rests solely on the testi- 
mony of the spectator of the fact; but it is not applicable to those in which the cause is 
declared by the performer. Let us accept, if we please, merely as a narrative of ' appar- 
ent, sensible facts,' the history of the cure of the blind and dumb demoniac, or of the lame 



THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 91 

man at the Beautiful Gate ; but we can not place the same restriction upon the words of 
our Lord, and of Peter, which expressly assign the supernatural cause: 'If I cast out devils 
by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you,' (Matt, xii, 28,) and, 
'By the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth doth this man stand here before you whole,' 
(Acts iv, 10.) We have here, at least, a testimony reaching to the supernatural ; and if 
that testimony be admitted in these cases, it may be extended to the whole series of won- 
derful Avorks performed by the same persons. For if a given cause can be assigned as 
the true explanation of any single occurrence of the series, it becomes at once the most 
reasonable and probable explanation of the remainder. . . . One miracle is enough 
to show that the series of events with which it is connected is one which the Almighty 
has seen fit to mark by exceptions to the ordinary course of his providence; and, if this 
be once granted, we have no a priori grounds on which we can determine how many of 
such exceptions are to be expected. If a single miracle recorded in the Gospels be once 
admitted, the remainder cease to have any special antecedent improbability, and may be 
established by the same evidence, which is sufficient for ordinary events." Again, we 
are told: "In nature, and from nature, by science and by reason, we neither have, nor 
can possibly have, any evidence of a Deity working miracles; for that we must go out of 
nature and beyond reason. If we could have any such evidence from nature, it could 
only prove extraordinary natural effects, which would not be miracles in the old theolog- 
ical sense, as isolated, unrelated, and uncaused ; whereas, no physical fact can be conceived 
as unique, or without analogy and relation to others, and to the whole system of natural 
causes." To this Dr. J. Haven, quoted above, replies: "True, that which is from nature, 
that is, produced by natural causes, can not be supernatural ; but it is not true that in 
nature, that is, within the limits and domain of nature, there can be no occurrence of 
the supernatural. Nor is it true that whatever is beyond the power of natural causes to 
produce is, therefore, beyond the domain of reason to investigate, and must be received, 
if at all, only by a blind and unquestioning faith. That is not for a moment to be con- 
ceded. That which is extra-natural is not of necessity incapable of proof. The question 
whether a dead man was, on a certain occasion, restored to life, is a question to be settled 
wholly by evidence and investigation of reason. If the event did occur, clearly it was 
supernatural; the laws and forces of nature are not adequate to produce such a result. 
But did it occur? That is the real question; and it is a question which falls as clearly 
and fully within the range of rational investigation, and the laws of evidence, as any 
question in physical science." One word more with reference to a phrase which Strauss 
and a writer in the "Essays and Reviews" use in place of an argument, "that miracles 
are inconceivable by reason." This phrase can certainly not mean that we can not have* 
an idea of a miracle, for we can easily form the idea or notion of an event in nature — for 
instance, of a person rising from the dead, with a cause beyond nature. Those who use 
it no doubt mean by it, that a miracle is contrary to intuitive reason, that is, to a funda- 
mental law or constitutional principle of the mind; such, for instance, as the law of 
causation. If this were the case, Ave grant that it would be impossible to establish a 
miracle. But Avhat constitutional law of the mind is contradicted by a miracle? None 
has been named. It is certainly not the law of causation; for a supernatural event is 
not declared to be an effect without a cause; it is merely an effect not resulting from the 
agencies Avorking in that system which we call nature. The principle of cause and effect 
must not be confounded with the principle of the uniformity of nature. While the 
former is universal, the latter is only partial; it declares, for instance, that fire left to 
itself will burn, but it does not say that fire may not be counteracted by a higher and 
Divine agency. Upon a disregarding of this distinction rests the assertion that a mir- 
acle is contrary to experience. Inductive philosophy has shown that there is a set of 
agencies working in nature, and that there is uniformity in their operations. All this is 
freely granted; but when it is said that there can be nothing else, we demand the proof 



92 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



that every occurrence must have a physical or mundane cause. To this demand infidelity 
has never given a response. 

"We have now met the assumption of the impossihility of miracles in all its various 
phases. The verity of the miracles recorded in the Gospel history rests upon the credi- 
bility of the Evangelists, and upon the divine seal which the subject of their narrative, 
Jesus Christ, stamps upon the whole Gospel history. 

§23. The Alleged Lack of Sufficient Testimony by Profane Writers. 

The verification by profane writers of the many incidental allusions to the civil his- 
tory of the times, which the writings of the Evangelists furnish, has been set forth in 
§ 16. In §18 of the same chapter we have seen that the existence, at this time, of one 
called by his followers Christ, the place of his teaching, his execution by Pontius Pilate, 
Procurator of Judea under Tiberius, the rapid spread of his doctrine through the Eoman 
world, the vast number of converts made in a short time, the persecutions which they un- 
derwent, the innocency of their lives, their worship of Christ as God, are witnessed to by 
heathen writers of eminence, and would be certain and indisputable facts, had the New 
Testament never been written. To expect from profane sources a testimony concerning 
the supernatural facts recorded by the Evangelists would be absurd, since those who 
believed them naturally and almost necessarily became Christians. 

It has, however, been urged that, assuming the historical truth of the New Testament 
narrative, we might have expected far more frequent and fuller notices of the Christian 
religion and its Pounder than the remains of antiquity furnish. It has, for instance, 
been said that Josephus ought to have said more of Christ ; and Seneca, the brother of 
Gallio, the observant Pausanias, the voluminous Plutarch, the copious Dio, the exact 
Arian, should have made frequent mention of Christianity in their writings, instead of 
almost wholly ignoring it. To this objection Mr. Eawlinson makes the following reply: 

"Let it be considered, in the first place, whether the very silence of these writers is 
not a proof of the importance which in their hearts they assigned to Christianity, and 
the difficulty which they felt in dealing with it — whether, in fact, it is not a forced and 
studied reticence — a reticence so far from being indicative of ignorance that it implies 
only too much knowledge, having its origin in a feeling that it was best to ignore what 
it was unpleasant to confess and impossible to meet satisfactorily. Pausanias must 
certainly have been aware that the shrines of his beloved gods were in many places 
deserted, and that their temples were falling into decay, owing to the conversion of the 
mass of the people to the new religion; we may be sure he inwardly mourned over this 
sad spirit of disaffection — this madness, as he must have thought it, of a degenerate age; 
but no word is suffered to escape him on the painful subject; he is too jealous of his 
gods' honor to allow that there are any who dare to insult them. Like the faithful 
retainer of a fallen house, he covers up the shame of his masters, and bears his head so 
much the more proudly, because of their depressed condition. Again, it is impossible 
that Epictetus could have been ignorant of the wonderful patience and constancy of the 
Christian martyrs, of their marked contempt of death, and general indifference to 
worldly things; he must, one would think, as a Stoic, have been moved with a secret 
admiration of those great models of fortitude, and if he had allowed himself to speak 
freely, could not but have made frequent reference to them. The one contemptuous 
notice, which is all that Arian reports, sufficiently indicates his knowledge; the entire 
silence, except in this passage, upon what it so nearly concerned a Stoical philosopher to 
bring forward, can only be viewed as the studied avoidance of a topic which would have 
been unpalatable to his hearers, and to himself perhaps not wholly agreeable. The phi- 
losopher who regarded himself as raised by study and reflection to an exalted hight 
above the level of ordinary humanity, would not be altogether pleased to find that his 



THE HISTORIC VEEITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 93 

elevation was attained through the power of religion, which he looked on as mere fanat- 
icism. Thus, from different motives — from pride, from policy, from fear of offending the 
chief of the State, from real attachment to the old heathenism, and tenderness for it — 
the heathen writers who witnessed the birth and growth of Christianity united in a reti- 
cence which causes their notices of the religion to be a very insufficient measure of the 
place which it really held in their thoughts and apprehensions. A large allowance is to 
be made for this studied silence in estimating the value of the actual testimonies to the 
truth of the New Testament narrative adducible from heathen writers of the first and 
second centuries. 

"And the silence of Josephus is, more plainly still, willful and affected. It is quite 
impossible that the Jewish historian should have been ignorant of the events which had 
drawn the eyes of so many to Judea but a few years before his own birth, and which a 
large and increasing sect believed to possess a supernatural character. Jesus of Naza- 
reth was, humanly speaking, at least as considerable a personage as John the Baptist, 
and the circumstances of his life and death must have attracted at least as much atten- 
tion. There was no good reason why Josephus, if he had been an honest historian, 
should have mentioned the latter and omitted the former. He had grown to manhood 
during the time that Christianity was being spread over the world; he had probably 
witnessed the tumults excited against Paul by his enemies at Jerusalem, (Acts xxi, 27, 
etc.; xxii, 22, 23; xxiii, 10;) he knew of the irregular proceedings against 'James, the 
Lord's brother,' (Gal. i, 9;) he must have been well acquainted with the persecutions 
which the Christians had undergone at the hands of both Jews and heathen; at any 
rate he could not fail to be at least as well informed as Tacitus on the subject of transac- 
tions of which his own country had been the scene, and which had fallen partly within 
his own lifetime. When, therefore, we find that he is almost entirely silent concerning 
the Christian religion, and, if he mentions Christ at all, mentions him only incidentally 
in a single passage, as, 'Jesus, who was called Christ;' when we find this, we can not but 
conclude that, for some reason or other, the Jewish historian practices an intentional 
reserve, and will not enter upon a subject which excites his fears or offends his preju- 
dices. No conclusions inimical to the historic accuracy of the New Testament can rea- 
sonably be drawn from the silence of a writer who determinedly avoids the subject. 

"Further, in estimating the value of that direct evidence of adversaries to the main 
facts of Christianity which remains to us, we must not overlook the probability that 
much evidence of this kind has perished. The books of the early opponents of Chris- 
tianity, Avhich might have been of the greatest use to us for the confirmation of the 
Gospel history, were, with an unwise zeal, destroyed by the first Christian Emperors. 
Other testimony of the greatest importance has perished by the ravages of time. It 
seems certain that Pilate remitted to Tiberius an account of the execution of our Lord, 
and the grounds of it; and that this document, to which Justin Martyr more than once 
alludes, was deposited in the archives of the empire. The Acts of Pilate,' as they were 
called, seem to have contained an account, not only of the circumstances of the cruci- 
fixion, and the grounds upon which the Eoman Governor regarded himself as justified 
in passing sentence of death upon the accused, but also of the miracles of Christ." 

Dr. Kurtz remarks, in his Church History: "Among genuine non-Biblical testimonies 
about Christ, probably the most ancient is a Syriac letter of Mara, addressed to his son 
Serapion, written about the year 73. Mara, a man thoroughly versed in Greek philos- 
ophy, but not satisfied with the consolations it offered, writes from his place of exile a 
letter of comfort and instruction to his son, in which he ranks Christ along with 
Socrates and Pythagoras; he honors him as a wise king; he charges the Jews with his 
murder, declares that thereby they had brought upon themselves the destruction of their 
commonwealth, but that Christ continued to live in the new law which he had given." 



94 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 

CHAPTEE II. 

THE CREDIBILITY OP THE EVANGELISTS* 

§ 24. The Evangelists weee in a Condition to inform themselves accurately 
and thoroughly concerning the things which they record. 

Two of them were the chosen and almost constant companions of the wonderful 
person whose life they describe ; they listened to his public discourses, they enjoyed his 
familiar intercourse and private instruction, they were eye-witnesses of his miracles, and 
consequently received them on the testimony of their own senses. Certainly no other 
biographer ever enjoyed such opportunities of informing himself thoroughly concerning 
the subject of his narrative. Even cotemporary historians rarely see the facts which 
they relate; they are often in a distant country from that in which the event happened, 
and are informed of it only by public reports, which are seldom faithful in all points. 
If it happens that an author be at the same time both historian and witness — that he has 
accompanied the general whose actions he relates, as, for instance, Polybius accompanied 
Scipio — that he has been his particular confident — we set a high value upon his memoirs, 
and should consider it an act of injustice to call them in question without solid proofs. If 
Plato has been deemed a competent witness, and in every respect qualified to compose 
the biographical account of his master, Socrates, surely the Evangelists were equally- 
competent witnesses of the facts which they have related. 

It is true, two of them were not eye-witnesses; but they received their information 
from eye-witnesses, and their accounts agree in every essential point with those of the 
eye-witnesses; though it is evident, at the same time, that they did not know, or paid 
no regard to what others had before written on the same subject. (See more on this 
subject, § 32.) 

§25. The Evangelists Exhibit in their Narratives no Symptom op Mental De- 
rangement, WHICH MIGHT HAVE MADE THEM VICTIMS OP SELP-I>ELUSI0N. 

To every candid reader of the Gospels the certainty of the assertion made in the 
heading is self-evident, and a contrary supposition seems unworthy of an answer. 
Yet, as there are so many who condemn the Gospels without having subjected them 
to a candid examination, we will show how unreasonable it is to suspect the Evan- 
gelists of being the victims of self-delusion. In the first place, let it be borne in mind 
that their testimony did not relate to certain abstract doctrinal points, concerning which 
they might have erred through some mental defect. It respected facts concerning the 
reality of which they could not be misled. They became the disciples of Jesus Christ 

*The argument to be presented in this chapter has been stated at large in all the English works on the " Evi- 
dences of Christianity." We follow substantially Home's Introduction, deviating, however, from that author in 
the order of the argumentation, and basing the personal credibility of the Evangelists upon the preceding proofs 
of the authenticity of the writings ascribed to them. If the Gospel records have been written by the persons 
whose names they bear, it can not be denied that they were written by men who were possessed of a full knowl- 
edge of all they relate, and who had no conceivable motive to deviate from the truth. The credibility of a histo- 
rian is established when there is sufficient evidence, 1. That he has had ample means of knowing the truth 
of the facts he relates, either by being himself an eye-witness, or by deriving his knowledge from an eye-witness ; 
2. That he is a man of a sound mind, free from any mental bias to self-deception ; 3. That he is above the sus- 
picion of having any motive or design to mislead his readers. Though historical works are generally accepted 
without a special inquiry into these criteria of credibility, being rejected only where there is positive proof that 
the historian is destitute either of the ability or of the willingness to report correctly, the Gospel history can chal- 
lenge its being subjected to the severest tests of historical criticism. 



THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 95 

upon rational conviction, not upon internal persuasion alone, but on the irrefragable evi- 
dence of clear and stupendous miracles, proofs submitted to their senses, and approved 
by their reason — such proofs as enthusiasm could not have counterfeited, and never 
would have required; and at every step of their progress, as their faith was called to sig- 
nalize itself by new exertions, or to sustain new trials, it was fortified by new proofs. 
The slowness and caution with which the apostles received the fact of their Lord's resur- 
rection from the dead fully exempt them from all suspicion of being the dupes of delusion 
and credulity. In the second place, the style of enthusiasts is always obscure, arrogant, 
and violent; the style of the Evangelists is the very reverse of this, plain, calm, and 
unexaggerated, detailing the facts which establish the unparalleled perfection of their 
divine Lord with the particularity and consistency of truth. Moreover, they do that 
which enthusiasts never do; they record their own mistakes, follies, and faults, and those 
of very serious magnitude, acknowledged to be such by themselves, and severely cen- 
sured by their Master. Nor do we discover in the Gospels any effusion of passion and 
imagination, such as we find invariably in the writings of enthusiasts. 

§26. The Evangelists can not be charged with having had any Motive or De- 
sign TO IMPOSE UPON THE WORLD WHAT, IF IT DID NOT TAKE PLACE, 
THEY MUST HAVE KNOWN TO BE FALSE. 

No man of sense or candor ever dared to make such a charge. It is self-evident 
that, if the first disciples of Jesus, had any disposition to commit such a fraud, it 
would have been impossible for them to succeed in it with their cotemporaries ; and 
that, even if they could have done it, they would not have had a conceivable motive for 
it. No man will propagate a deliberate falsehood without having some advantage in 
view, either immediate or remote. Now, the first teachers of Christianity could have no 
prospect whatever of any advantage. They could expect none from him in whom they 
professed to believe. Jesus Christ, indeed, had warned them to expect persecution, igno- 
miny, and death in this world, if they continued to be his disciples. They could not 
expect any honors or emoluments from the hands of the Jews and heathens, who perse- 
cuted them with unrelenting severity. They could not expect to acquire wealth, for 
their profession of the Christian faith subjected them to the loss of all things. Moreover, 
according to their own principles, either as Jews or Christians, they involved themselves 
in eternal misery if they made themselves guilty of propagating a deliberate falsehood. 
Again, how incredible that the sublimest precepts of piety and virtue should have been 
delivered by men of such abandoned principles, as they must have been, if they had 
really been impostors! How incredible that the first disciples should have been willing 
to die for the cause of Christ, who, if he had not risen again from the dead, would have 
miserably deceived them! Lastly, if the apostles and Evangelists had designed to 
impose upon mankind, they would have accommodated themselves to the opinions and 
inclinations of the people whom they addressed ; they would carefully have avoided say- 
ing any thing that might offend them; but, instead of this, they did not spare the preju- 
dices and corruptions of their cotemporaries. 

That the Evangelists were, on the contrary, men of the strictest integrity and sin- 
cerity is, as has been already remarked from another stand-point, manifest from the style 
and manner of their writings. There are no artful transitions or connections, no effort 
to set off a doubtful action and reconcile it to some other, or to the character of the 
person that did it. They do not dissemble certain circumstances in the life and suffer- 
ings of their Master which have no tendency to enhance his glory in the eyes of the 
world: such as the low circumstances of his parents, the mean accommodations of his 
birth — that, when he appeared publicly to the world, his townsmen and near relations 
despised and rejected him — that few among his followers were men conspicuous for 



96 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



wealth, dignity, or knowledge — that the rulers, the scribes and Pharisees disowned his 
pretensions and opposed him continually — that some, who for a time followed him, after- 
ward deserted him — that he was betrayed into the hands of high-priests and rulers by 
one of those who had been selected for his constant conrpanions. Impostors would cer- 
tainly have acted differently. 

The same integrity and fidelity we find in what they record concerning themselves. 
They honestly acknowledge not only the lowness of their station, but also the inveteracy 
of their national prejudices, the slowness of their apprehension, the weakness of their 
faith, the ambition of some of the disciples, the intolerant temper of others, and the 
worldly views of all. They even tell us of their cowardice in deserting their Master 
when he was seized by his enemies; and that, after his crucifixion, they had for a while 
given up their hopes in their Master, notwithstanding all the proof that had been exhib- 
ited, and the conviction which they had before entertained that he was the Messiah, and 
his religion was from God. They mention, with many affecting circumstances, the 
incredulity of one of their number, who was convinced of the reality of their Lord's 
resurrection only by ocular and sensible demonstration. They might have concealed 
their mental and moral deficiencies, or, at least, they might have alleged some reasons 
to extenuate them. But they did no such thing. They related, without disguise, events 
and facts just as they happened, and left them to speak for themselves. 

In short, it does not appear that it ever entered the minds of these writers to consider 
how this or the other action would appear to mankind, or what objections might be 
raised against it. Greater marks of sincerity than those which the Evangelists bear it is 
impossible to find in any historical compositions that are extant; they convince their 
readers, in all they have written, that they published nothing to the world but what 
they believed themselves. When they relate any of the miracles of Jesus Christ, or the 
exercise of the miraculous powers with which they were endowed, they relate these 
astonishing facts, without any ornaments of language, in the most concise and simple 
manner; saying nothing previously to raise expectation, nor after the recital of them 
breaking out into exclamations, but they leave the reader to draw his own conclusion. 
When they narrate the resurrection and ascension of Christ they afford no explanation 
of any difficulties; they never offer a single argument to enforce their credit; they leave 
the bare facts with their readers, who may receive or reject them. In perusing the 
simple and unadorned narratives of the Evangelists it is impossible not to feel that the 
purport of their writing was to bear witness of the truth. 

Finally, the same striking integrity characterizes the Evangelists when speaking of 
their enemies. Of all who were concerned in the persecution and death of Christ, they 
mention by name only the high-priest Caiaphas and his coadjutor Annas, the Eoman 
Procurator Pilate, and the treacherous disciple Judas. The suppression of their names 
would have impaired the evidence of their history to posterity; but not the slightest 
tincture of resentment is observable in the notice of these persons. The epithet attached 
to Judas by all the Evangelists — 8 irapadobs, who delivered him up — is expressive of the 
simple fact rather than of its criminality, which latter would more aptly be signified by 
TtpuSorrji;, traitor, as he is styled on one solitary occasion. 



THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 97 



OIAPTEE III. 

THE DIVINE SEAL STAMPED UPON THE GOSPEL HISTORY BY ITS 
SUBJECT, THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST. 

§ 27. The Verity op the Gospel History best accredited by the Personality 

of Jesus Christ. 

After having proved that the canonical Gospels were written in the apostolic age, 
and having found no testimony contrary to the consentient tradition of Christian 
antiquity in regard to their having been written by the persons whose names they 
bear, we placed them on no higher ground than other ancient productions. We have, 
thus far, considered them merely as human productions, and subjected them, as such, to 
the common laws of historical criticism. The result of this critical investigation has 
been, that we found them to bear the highest marks of human credibility— such as no 
other historical work of antiquity has. The assumption that miracles are impossible, 
and that, therefore, credibility can not be claimed for a record of miracles, we have met 
by showing, on metaphysical grounds, that, and why, miracles are not impossible, and 
that, therefore, the miraculous elements of the Gospel history are not incompatible with 
its credibility. But we have now to go a step further, and produce the positive proofs 
of the historic verity of the miracles recorded in the Gospels. 

Instead of basing the truth of Gospel history and the Divinity of Christ upon the 
miracles recorded by the Evangelists, we may prove the historic verity of the miracles 
and the Divinity of Christ by the unparalleled perfectness of the moral and intellectual 
character of the man Jesus of Nazareth, as he is presented to us by the plain and honest 
fishermen of Galilee. "Demanding nothing more," says Mr. Young, in his Christ of 
History, "than the simple humanity of Jesus of Nazareth, we shall venture from this plat- 
form to assert and expound his true Divinity. Dismissing all preconceptions, however 
fondly cherished, and however long adopted into the faith of the Churches, assuming 
nothing which is not virtually and even formally admitted by enemies as well as friends, 
we hope to show that the manhood o£-Christ, as it appealed to the senses and the minds 
of the men of his own times, supplies and sustains the proof of his Godhood. Behold 
only the man Jesus — he shall indicate and demonstrate his union with absolute Godhead. 
Such a humanity as his is utterly inexplicable, except on the ground of true Divinity."* 

From this stand-point it is our object to show that the character and life of Jesus 
could not possibly have been the natural product of the times and country in which the 
Gospel records incontestably originated — nor, indeed, of any other age or country; that 

*Mr. Norton, though not admitting the perfect exhibition of moral excellence in the teachings and actions of 
Christ, as an intrinsic proof of his Divinity proper, nevertheless argues from it the truthfulness of the Gospel records. 
His argument is this : " The Gospels contain an exhibition of character incomparably more wonderful than is to be 
found in any other writings. It is the character of a messenger from God, assuming in his name the highest 
authority, constantly exercising supernatural powers, and appearing among men for the purpose of making them 
acquainted with God, with their own immortal nature, with their duty, and with those ennobling and awful sanc- 
tions by which it is enforced. He is represented as discovering to men a perfect system of religion. He always 
appears, whether teaching, or acting, or suffering, as displaying the highest excellence. His character is every- 
where consistent with itself and with the supernatural dignity of his office, though he is represented as passing 
through scenes the most trying and humiliating. We have, then, in these writings a just conception of a perfect 
system of religion, as taught by a Divine teacher, assuming the highest authority and exercising the most extra- 
ordinary powers, and displaying throughout a character in which we discover nothing but what is excellent and 
sublime. Now, the writers of the Gospels derived those conceptions which we find in their works either from 
reality or from their own imaginations. If it be contended that these writers did not draw from reality, but from 

7 



98 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



the moral and intellectual perfectness of the character of Jesus, and the wonderful 
harmony and consistency of his doctrines and works, could not possibly have been con- 
ceived and delineated by the Evangelists, unless they had been actually witnessed by 
them; that the moral and intellectual perfectness of Jesus imparts to the testimony he 
gives of himself, as well as to the miracles which the Evangelists ascribe to him, a verity 
absolutely unassailable; and, finally, that the unparalleled human perfection of Jesus — 
which by almost universal consent, even of unbelievers, rises far above every human 
greatness known before or since — can not be rationally explained, except on the ground 
of such an essential union with the Godhead as he claimed himself, and as the Evangelists 
ascribed to him. Thus, as the eye of a traveler at the foot of a mountain may slowly 
travel up the majestic slope till it is lost in the clouds or dazzling glories of the summit, 
so the mind may contemplate Christ from his lowliest and most human traits, where he 
is one with the humblest human being, up beyond the highest reach and limit of human- 
ity, "far above all principalities, and powers, and every name that is named," to that 
dazzling summit of glory where he is one with God. 

From whatever point of view we examine the human character and earthly life of 
Jesus, whether we contemplate the circumstances, times, and country in which he lived, 
or his moral and intellectual grandeur, or the testimony he gives of his own person, or 
the nature of the miracles ascribed to him, we shall be compelled, by a strictly -historical 
process, to acknowledge the justness of the deductions named above. This new homage 
to the Savior was first paid by the modern Evangelical theology of Germany. Dr. 0. 
Ullmann opened the way by his work on "The Sinlessness of Jesus an Evidence of Chris- 
tianity;" and, ever since the appearance of that classical work, greater prominence has 
been given by English, as well as German theologians, to the ethical element and human 
perfection of Christ. This branch of apologetical literature, in the English language, 
has been also enriched by Dr. John Young in his "Christ of History," by Dr. Horace 
Bushnell in his "Nature and the Supernatural," and by the theological tract of Dr. 
Schaff, entitled, "The Moral Character of Christ, or the Perfection of Christ's Humanity, 
a Proof of his Divinity." 

§ 28. The admitted outer Conditions of the Life of Jesus — Leaving its astound- 
ing Results, as well as the unlimited Scope of the Mind of Jesus and the 
Perfect Symmetry of his Character, utterly Inexplicable without 
the Admission of a Supernatural and Divine Element. 

The most destructive criticism finds itself compelled to admit that Jesus of Nazareth 
is a historical personage, that he was a resident in the obscure village of Nazareth till 
about thirty years old, a carpenter's son, poor, unlearned, unbefriended, and that he was 
put to an ignominious death by the Jewish hierarchy a few years after he had appeared 
in public. 

imagination — the answer to this supposition is, that the conceptions of moral excellence and sublimity which we 
find displayed and embodied in their writings would imply a transcendent genius and force of mind to which there 
is no parallel, which it is impossible should have existed in four anonymous, unknown authors, and which are 
irreconcilable with the actual want of extraordinary talents, and of skill in composition, that is discovered in 
their works. These conceptions likewise would imply a correctness of moral principle, and a purity and sublimity 
of moral feeling, which could not exist in union with intentional falsehood. The argument, therefore, is briefly 
this, that the religion and morality of the Gospels, as exhibited in the doctrines, precepts, and life of Christ, are 
such as could not have been conceived and represented by the writers of the Gospels if they had not had a living 
archetype before them ; and that, without such an archetype, the power of conceiving and representing what we 
find in the Gospels, if it ever existed in any human being, would necessarily imply that that extraordinary being 
had a character which entitled him to perfect confidence. It was wholly out of the power of the writers of the 
Gospels to deceive us, as they must have done, supposing their representations false ; and the very existence of 
such a power, in any case, would in itself imply the absence of all will to deceive. The intrinsic character of these 
writings, therefore, affords positive evidence of their historic verity as to all essential facts." 



THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 99 

It is utterly inconceivable that such circumstances and conditions would have been 
made by any Jewish writer the substratum of the miraculous life of the Messiah. And 
it is equally inconceivable that a mere man, under such circumstances and conditions, 
could have become the turning-point of the world's history, accomplishing what neither 
the wisdom of the wisest, nor the power of the mightiest, neither philosophers nor 
emperors could accomplish. This Mr. Young, the author of "The Christ of History," 
has set forth in a very minute and complete argumentation, of which we will give the 
main points: Ordinarily the early life and social position of a man are the true key to 
the proper understanding of his future character and career. To this rule the life of 
Jesus makes an unqualified exception. In his early training and position there is nothing 
that but distantly accounts for his subsequent relation to the world. His life stands out a 
mysterious exception from all laws which generally govern the destiny of men; what he 
became and accomplished could not possibly be the natural development of earlier impres- 
sions received through favorable circumstances. He grew up among a people seldom and 
only contemptuously named by the ancient classics, and subjected at the time to the yoke 
of a foreign oppressor; in a remote and conquered province of the Eoman Empire; in the 
darkest district of Palestine; in a little country town of proverbial insignificance; in 
poverty and manual labor, in the obscurity of a carpenter's shop; without the help of lit- 
erary culture, as is testified by the surprise of the Jews, who knew all his human relations 
and antecedents. "How knoweth this man letters," they asked, when they heard Jesus 
teach, "having never learned?" (John vii, 15.) This question is unavoidable and unan- 
swerable, if Christ be regarded a mere man. For each effect presupposes a corresponding 
cause. The difficulty here presented can by no means be solved by a reference to the 
fact that many, perhaps the majority of great men, especially in the Church, have risen 
by their own industry and perseverance from the lower walks of life, and from a severe 
contest with poverty and obstacles of every kind. The fact itself is readily conceded ; 
but in every one of these cases, schools, or books, or patrons and friends, or peculiar 
events and influences, can be pointed out, as auxiliary aids in the development of intel- 
lectual or moral greatness. There is always some human or natural cause, or combina- 
tion of causes, which accounts for the final result. In the case of Christ no such natural 
explanation can be given. All the attempts to bring him into contact with Egyptian 
wisdom, or the Essenic theosophy, or other sources of learning, are without a shadow of 
proof; and, even if he had been in connection with some sources of learning, the phe- 
nomenon he presents would remain unexplained, for, as we shall show, he taught the 
world as one who had learned nothing from it, and was under no obligation to it. 

Another fact in the life of Jesus which leaves its astounding results unexplained on 
natural grounds, is his early death. On this point we will quote Mr. Young in full: "He, 
whom Christians recognize as the Eedeemer of the world, was only a youth. Whether 
his religion be regarded as a system of doctrines, or as a body of laws, or as a source of 
extraordinary influence, it is passing strange that he should have died in early life. His 
brief period of existence afforded no opportunity for maturing any thing. In point of 
fact, while he lived he did very little in the common sense of doing. He originated no 
series of well-concerted plans, he neither contrived nor put in motion any extended 
machinery, he entered into no correspondence with jDarties in his own country and in 
other regions of the world, in order to spread his influence and obtain cooperation. Even 
the few who were his constant companions, and were warmly attached to his person, were 
not, in his lifetime, imbued with his sentiments, and were not prepared to take up his work 
in his spirit after he was gone. He constituted no society with its name, design, and laws 
all definitely fixed and formally established. He had no time to construct and to organ- 
ize, his life was too short; and almost all that he did was to speak. He spoke in familiar 
conversation with his friends, or at the wayside to passers-by, or to those who chose to 
consult him, or to large assemblies, as opportunity offered. He left behind him a few 



100 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



spoken truths — not a line or word of writing — and a certain spirit incarnated in his 
principles, and breathed out from his life, and then he died. In the ordinary course of 
events the memory of a mere youth, however distinguished, would soon have utterly 
perished from among men. But Jesus lives in the world at this moment, and has influ- 
enced the world from his death till now. This is an unquestioned fact. There have 
been multitudes in all the ages since his death, and at this moment, after nearly two 
thousand years, there are multitudes to whom he is dearer than life. History tells of 
warriors who reached the summit of their fame in comparative youth; it tells of men of 
science also, and of scholars, and of statesmen, who in youth rose to great and envied 
distinction. But the difference is obvious, and it is wide between the conquest of terri- 
tory and the conquest of minds — between scientific, literary, or political renown and 
moral, spiritual influence and excellence. Is there an instance of a man who died in 
youth, gaining vast influence of a purely-spiritual kind, not by force of arms, and not by 
secular aid in any form, but simply and only by his principles and his life — of such a 
man transmitting that influence through successive generations, and after two thousand 
years retaining it in all its freshness, and continuing, at that distance of time, to estab- 
lish himself, and to reign almightily in the minds and hearts of myriads of human beings? 
If there be, or any thing approaching to it, where is it? There is not such an example 
in the whole history of the world, except Jesus Christ." 

"There is," says Dr. Schaff, "another striking distinction of a general character 
between Christ and the heroes of history. We should naturally suppose that such an 
uncommon personage, setting up the most astounding claims and proposing the most 
extraordinary work, would surround himself with extraordinary circumstances, and 
maintain a position far above the vulgar and degraded multitude around him. We 
should expect something uncommon and striking in his look, his dress, his manner, his 
mode of speech, his outward life, and the train of his attendants. But the very reverse 
is the case. His greatness is singularly unostentatious, modest and quiet, and, far from 
repelling the beholder, it attracts and invites him to familiar approach. His public life 
never moved on the imposing arena of secular heroism, but within the humble circle of 
every-day life, and the simple relations of a son, a brother, a citizen, a teacher, and a 
friend. He had no army to command, no kingdom to rule, no prominent station to 
fill, no worldly favors and rewards to dispense. He was a humble individual, without 
friends and patrons in the Sanhedrim, or at the court of Herod. He never mingled in 
familiar intercourse with the religious or social leaders of the nation, whom he had 
startled in his twelfth year by his questions and answers. He selected his disciples 
from among the illiterate fishermen of Galilee, and promised them no reward in this 
world but a part in the bitter cup of his sufferings. He dined with publicans and sin- 
ners, and mingled with the common people without ever condescending to their low 
manners and habits. He was so poor that he had no place on which to rest his head. 
He depended for the supply of his modest wants on voluntary contributions of a few 
pious females, and the purse was in the hands of a thief and a traitor. Nor had he 
learning, art, or eloquence, in the usual sense of the term, nor any other kind of power 
by which great men arrest the attention and secure the admiration of the world. The 
writers of Greece and Eome were ignorant even of his existence till, several years after 
the crucifixion, the effects of his mission in the steady growth of the sect of his followers 
forced from them some contemptuous notice, and then roused them to opposition. And 
yet this Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms, conquered more millions than 
Alexander, Cscsar, Mohammed, and Napoleon; without science and learning, he shed 
more light on things human and divine than all scholars and philosophers combined, 
without the eloquence of schools, he spoke words of life as were never spoken before 01 
since, and produced effects which lie beyond the reach of orator or poet; Avithout writing 
a single line, he has set more pens in motion, and furnished themes for more sermons, 



THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 101 



orations, discussions, learned volumes, works of art, and sweet songs of praise, than the 
whole army of great men of ancient and modern times. Born in a manger, and crucified 
as a malefactor, he now controls the destinies of the civilized world, and rules a spiritual 
empire which embraces one-third of the inhabitants of the globe. There never was in 
this world a life so unpretending, modest, and lowly in its outward form and condition, 
and yet producing such extraordinary effects upon all ages, nations, and classes of men. 
The annals of history produce no other example of such complete and astounding suc- 
cess in spite of the absence of those material, literary, and artistic influences which 
are indispensable to success for a mere man." 

We have seen that the outer conditions of the life of Jesus make its astounding 
results utterly inexplicable on the basis of ordinary history, experience, and psychology. 
The same is true with regard to the unlimited scope of his mind and the perfect sym- 
metry of his character. Let us first consider the one great central idea of his mission, 
that of the establishment of a new spiritual kingdom: "Contrary to every religious prej- 
udice of his nation, and even of his time," saj^s Horace Bushnell, "contrary to the com- 
paratively-narrow and exclusive religion of Moses itself, and to all his training under it,* 
he undertakes to organize a kingdom of God, or kingdom of heaven on earth. His 
purpose includes a new moral creation of the race — not of the Jews only, but of the 
whole human race. He declared thus, at an early date in his ministry, that many shall 
come from the east and the west and sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob 
in the kingdom of God; that the field is the world; and that God so loveth the world as 
to give for it his only-begotten Son. He also declared that his Gospel shall be published 
to all nations, and gave his apostles their commission to go into all the world and publish 
his Gospel to every creature. Here, then, we have the grand idea of his mission — it is 
to new-create the human race, and restore it to God in the unity of a spiritual kingdom. 
And, upon this single fact, Beinhard erects a complete argument for his extra-human 
character, going into a formal review of all the great founders of States, and most cele- 
brated law-givers, all the philosophers, all the prophet-founders of religions, and discov- 
ering as a fact that no such thought as this, or nearly proximate to this, had ever before 
been taken up by any living character in history; showing, also, how it had happened 
to every other great character, however liberalized by culture, to be limited in some way 
to the interests of his own people or empire, and set in opposition or antagonism more or 
less decidedly to the rest of the world. But to Jesus alone, the simple Galilean carpen- 
ter, it happens otherwise; that, having never seen a map of the world, or heard the 
name of half the great nations on it, he undertakes, coming out of his shop, a scheme as 
much vaster and more difficult than that of Alexander, as it proposes more, and what is 
more divinely benevolent! This thought of a universal kingdom, cemented in God — 
why, the immense Boman Empire of his day, constructed by so many ages of war and 
conquest, is a bauble in comparison, both as regards the extent and the cost! And yet 
the rustic tradesman of Galilee propounds even this for his errand, and that in a way of 
assurance as simple and quiet as if the immense reach of his plan were, in fact, a matter 
to him of no consideration. Nor is this all: there is included in his plan, what, to any 
mere man, would be yet more remote from the possible confidence of his frailty; it is a 
plan as universal in time as it is in the scope of its objects. It does not expect to be 
realized in a lifetime, or even in many centuries to come. He calls it, understandingly, 
his grain of mustard-seed; which, however, is to grow, he declares, and overshadow the 
whole earth. But the courage of Jesus, counting a thousand years to be only a single 

*And yet it has been asserted that Jesus' conception of his Messianic mission was nothing more than a reflec- 
tion of the popular opinions of his day, more or less modified by his own individualityl Of all the attempts to 
account for the work and character of Christ on natural grounds, denying the Divine element, this is the most 
unscrupulous and absurd. For nothing can be proved more irrefutably than this, that Jesus' conception of his 
Messianic mission was diametrically opposed to the Messianic ideas which prevailed among the Jewish people. 



102 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



day, is equal to the run of his work. He sees a rock of stability where men see only' 
frailty and weakness. Peter himself, the impulsive and rather-unreliable Peter, turns 
into a rock and becomes a good foundation, as he looks upon him. 'On this rock,' he 
says, 'I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.' His 
expectation, too, reaches boldly out beyond his own death; that, in fact, is to be the seed 
of his great empire; 'Except a corn of wheat fall into the gi'ound and die, it abideth,' he 
says, 'alone.' And if we will see with what confidence and courage he adheres to his 
plan, when the time of his death approaches — how far he is from giving it up as lost, or as 
an exploded vision of his youthful enthusiasm — we have only to observe his last interview 
with the two sisters of Bethany, in whose hospitality he was so often comforted. When, 
the box of precious ointment is broken upon his head, he justifies her against the mur- 
muring disciples, and says, 'Let her alone. She has done what she could. She is come 
aforehand to anoint my body to the burying. Verily, I say unto you, wheresoever this Gos- 
pel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that this woman has done shall 
be told for a memorial of her.' Such was the sublime confidence he had in a plan that 
was to run through all future ages, and would scarcely begin to show its fruit during his 
own lifetime. Is this great idea, then, which no man ever before conceived — the raising 
of the whole human race to God, a plan sustained with such evenness of courage and a 
confidence of the world's future so far transcending any human example— is this a merely- 
human development? Eegard the benevolence of it, the universality of it, the religious 
grandeur of it, as a work readjusting the relations of God and his government with 
men — the cost, the length of time it will cover, and the far-off date of its completion. For 
a Nazarene carpenter, a poor, uneducated villager, to lay out a project which can not be 
completed in many thousands of years, and transcends all human ability, doing it in all 
the airs of sobriety, entering on the performance without parade, and yielding life to it 
firmly as the inaugural of its triumph, is, we may safely affirm, more than human." 

The unparalleled universality of the mind of Jesus, and the perfect symmetry of his 
character, are comprehensively set forth by Dr. Schaff in the following remarks: "History 
exhibits to us many examples of commanding geniuses, who stand at the head of their 
age and nation, and furnish material for the intellectual activity of whole generations 
and periods, till they are succeeded by other heroes at a new epoch of development. As 
rivers generally spring from high mountains, so knowledge and moral power rises and is 
continually nourished from the hights of humanity. . . . But they never represent 
universal, but only sectional humanity; they are identified with a particular people or 
age, and partake of its errors, superstitions, and failings almost in the same proportion 
in which they exhibit their virtues. Moses, though revered by the followers of three 
religions, was a Jew in views, feelings, habits, and position, as well as by parentage; 
Socrates never rose above the Greek type of character; Luther was a German through- 
out, and can only be properly understood as a German; Calvin, though an exile from 
his native land, remained a Frenchman; and Washington, the purest and noblest type 
of the American character, can be to no nation on earth what he is to the American. 
Their influence may and does extend far beyond their respective national horizon, yet 
they can never furnish a universal model for imitation. . . . What these representa- 
tive men are to particular ages, or nations, or sects, or particular schools of science and 
art, Christ was to the human family at large in its relation to God. He, and he alone, is 
the universal type for universal imitation. Hence he could, without the least impro- 
priety or suspicion of vanity, call upon all men to follow him. He stands above the 
limitations of age, school, sect, nation, and race. Although a Jew according to the flesh, 
there is nothing Jewish about him which is not at the same time of general significance. 
The particular and national in him is always duly subordinated to the general and 
human. Still less was he ever identified with a party or sect. He was equally removed 
from the stiff formalism of the Pharisees, the loose liberalism of the Sadducees, and the 



THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 103 

inactive mysticism of the Bssenes. He rose above all the prejudices, bigotries, and 
superstitions of his age and people, which exert their power even upon the strongest and 
otherwise most liberal minds. Witness his freedom in the observance of the Sabbath, by 
which he offended the scrupulous literalists, while he fulfilled the true spirit of the law 
in its universal and abiding significance; his reply to the disciples, when they traced the 
misfortune of the blind man to a particular sin of the subject, or his parents; his liberal 
conduct toward the Samaritans as contrasted with the inveterate hatred and prejudice of 
the Jews, including his own disciples, at the time; and his charitable judgment of the 
slaughtered Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices, and the 
eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and slew them. All the words and all the 
actions of Christ, while they were fully adapted to the occasions which called them forth, 
retain their force and applicability undiminished to all ages and nations. . . . He 
was free from all one-sidedness, which constitutes the weakness as well as the strength 
of the most eminent men. He was not a man of one idea, nor of one virtue, towering 
above all the rest. The mental and moral forces were so well tempered and moderated by 
each other that none was unduly prominent, none carried to excess, none alloyed by the 
kindred failing; each was checked and completed by the opposite grace. His character 
never lost its even balance and happy equilibrium, never needed modification or read- 
justment. It was thoroughly sound and uniformly consistent from the beginning to the 
end. We can not properly attribute to him any one temperament. He was neither san- 
guine like Peter, nor choleric like Paul, nor melancholy like John, nor phlegmatic as 
James is sometimes represented to have been ; but he combined the vivacity without the 
levity of the sanguine, the vigor without the violence of the choleric, the seriousness 
without the austerity of the melancholic, the calmness without the apathy of the phleg- 
matic temperaments. He was equally far removed from the excesses of the legalist, the 
pietist, the ascetic, and the enthusiast. With the strictest obedience to the law, he moved 
in the element of freedom; with all the fervor of the enthusiast, he was always calm, 
sober, and self-possessed; notwithstanding his complete and uniform elevation above the 
affairs of this world, he freely mingled with society, male and female, dined with publi- 
cans and sinners, sat at the wedding feast, shed tears at the sepulcher, delighted in God's 
nature, admired the beauties of the lilies, and used the occupations of the husbandman 
for the illustration of the sublimest truths of the kingdom of heaven. His zeal never 
degenerated into rashness, nor his constancy into obstinacy, nor his tenderness into sen- 
timentality. His unworldliness was free from indifference and unsociability, his dignity 
from pride, his affability from undue familiarity, his self-denial from moroseness, his 
temperance from austerity. He combined childlike innocence with manly strength, all- 
absorbing devotion to God with untiring interest in the welfare of man, tender love to 
the sinner with uncompromising severity against sin, commanding dignity with winning 
humility, fearless courage with wise caution, unyielding firmness with sweet gentleness. 
He is justly compared with the lion in strength, and with the lamb in meekness. He 
equally possessed the wisdom of the serpent and the simplicity of the dove. He brought 
both the sword against every form of wickedness, and the peace which the world can not 
give. He was the most effective, and yet the least noisy, the most radical, and yet the 
most conservative, calm, and patient of all reformers. He came to fulfill every letter of 
the law, and yet he made all things new. The same hand which drove the profane traf- 
fickers from the Temple, blessed little children, healed the lepers, and resuscitated the 
sinking disciple; the same ear which heard the approbation from heaven, was open 
to the cries of women in travail ; the same mouth which pronounced the terrible woe on 
the hypocrites, and condemned the impure desire and unkind feeling as well as the open 
crime, blessed the poor in spirit, announced pardon to the adulteress, and prayed for his 
murderers; the same eye which beheld the mysteries of God and penetrated the heart of 
man, shed tears of compassion over ungrateful Jerusalem, and tears of friendship at the 



104 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



grave of Lazarus. These are indeed opposite, yet not contradictory traits of character — 
as little as the different manifestations of God's power and goodness in the tempest and 
the sunshine, in the towering Alps and the lily of the valley, in the boundless ocean and 
dew-drops of the morning. They are separated in imperfect men, indeed, but united in 
Christ, the universal model for all." * 

Though the above sketch comprises all the elements which constitute mental and 
moral perfection,* we can not refrain from adding a few lineaments drawn by Bushnell, 
when he considers him as a teacher, his method and manner, and other characteristics, 
apart from his doctrine which does not come into consideration in our present investi- 
gation : 

"First of all, we notice the perfect originality and independence of his teaching. 
We have a great many men who are original within a certain boundary of educated 
thought. But the originality of Christ is uneducated. That he draws nothing from the 
stores of learning can be seen at a glance. The impression we have in reading his 
instructions justifies to the letter the language of his cotemporaries, when they say, 
'This man hath never learned.' There is nothing in any of his allusions, or forms of 
speech, that indicates learning. Indeed, there is nothing in him that belongs to his age 
or country — no one opinion, or taste, or prejudice. If he is simply a man, he is most 
certainly a new and singular kind of man, never before heard of, one who is quite as 
great a miracle in the world as if he were not a man. 

"Neither does he teach by the human methods. He does not speculate about God, as 
a school-professor, drawing out conclusions by a practice on words, and deeming that the 
way of proof; he does not build up a frame of evidence from below, by some construct- 
ive process, such as the philosophers delight in ; but he simply speaks of God and spir- 
itual things as one who has come out from him to tell us what he knows. And his 
simple telling brings us the reality; proves it to us in its own sublime self-evidence; 
awakens even the consciousness of it in our own bosom, so that formal arguments or 
dialectic proofs offend us by their coldness. Indeed, he makes even the world luminous 
by his words— fills it with an immediate and new sense of God, which nothing has ever 
been able to expel. 

"At the same time, he never reveals the infirmity so commonly shown by human 
teachers, when they veer a little from their point, or turn their doctrine off by shades of 
variation, to catch the assent of multitudes. He never conforms to an expectation, even 
of his friends. When they look to find a great prophet in him, he offers nothing in the 
modes of the prophets. When they ask for places of distinction in his kingdom, he 
rebukes their folly, and tells them he has nothing to give but a share in his reproaches 
and his poverty. When they look to see him take the sword as the Great Messiah of 
their nation, calling the people to his standard, he tells them he is no warrior and no 
king, but only a messenger of love to lost men ; one that has come to minister and die, 
but not to set up or restore the kingdom. Every expectation that rises up to greet him 
is repulsed ; and yet, so great is the power of his manner, that multitudes are held fast, 
and can not yield their confidence. 

"Again, the singular balance of character displayed in the teachings of Jesus, indi- 
cates an exemption from the standing infirmitj' of human nature. Human opinions are 
formed under a law that seems to be universal. First, two opposite extremes are thrown 
up in two opposite leaders or parties; then a third party enters, trying to find what truth 
they both are endeavoring to vindicate, and settle thus a view of the subject that includes 
the truth and clears the one-sided extremes. It results, in this manner, that no man, 

*We are aware that we anticipate in part the subject-matter of the subsequent section on the moral perfec- 
tion of Christ; but it is impossible to consider mental entirely apart from moral perfection. Besides, the moral 
perfection of Christ will bo viewed for itself, as sinlessnese. Here we consider only his moral as well as mental 
greatness. 



THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 105 

even the broadest in his apprehensions, is ever at the point of equilibrium as regards all 
subjects. Even the ripest of us are continually falling into some extreme and losing our 
balance, afterward to be corrected by some others who discover our error, or that of our 
school* But Christ was of no school or party, and never went to any extreme — -words 
could never turn him to a one-sided view of any thing. This is the remarkable fact that 
distinguishes him from any other teacher of the world. Having nothing to work out in 
a world-process, but every thing clear in the simple intuition of his superhuman intelli- 
gence, he never pushes himself to any human eccentricity. It does not even appear that 
he is trying, as we do, to balance opposites and clear extravagances, but he does it as one 
who can not imagine a one-sided view of any thing. He will not allow his disciples to 
deny him before kings and governors ; he will not let them renounce their allegiance to 
Csesar. He exposes the oppressions of the Pharisees in Moses' seat, but, encouraging no 
factious resistance, says, 'Do as they command you.' His position as a reformer was 
universal — according to his principles almost nothing, whether in Church, or State, or in 
social life, was right — and yet he is thrown into no antagonism against the world. With 
all the world upon his hands, and a reform to be carried in almost every thing, he is yet 
as quiet and cordial, and as little in the attitude of bitterness or impatience, as if all 
hearts were with him, or the work already done; so perfect is the balance of his feeling, 
so intuitively moderated is it by wisdom not human. . . . 'Judge not,' he says, in 
holy charity, 'that ye be not judged;' and, in holy exactness, 'Whosoever shall break, or 
teach to break one of these least commandments, shall be least in the kingdom of God;' 
in the same way, 'He that is not with us is against us;' and, 'he that is not against us is 
for us;' 'Ye tithe mint, anise, and cummin;' and, 'These things ought ye to have done, 
and not to leave the other undone.' So magnificent and sublime, so plainly Divine is the 
balance of Jesus! Nothing throws him off the center on which truth rests; no prejudice, 
no opposition, no attempt to right a mistake, or rectify a delusion, or reform a practice. 
If this be human, I do not know, for one, what it is to be human. 

"Again, it is a remarkable and even superhuman distinction of Jesus, that, while he 
is advancing doctrines so far transcending all deductions of philosophy, and opening 
mysteries that defy all human power of explication, he is yet able to set his teachings iu 
a form of simplicity that accommodates all classes of minds; and this for the reason 
that he 'speaks directly to men's convictions themselves, without and apart from any 
learned and curious elaboration, such as the uncultivated can not follow. No one of 
the great writers of antiquity had even propounded, as yet, a doctrine of virtue which the 
multitude could understand. But Jesus tells them directly, in a manner level to their 
understanding, what they want, what they must do and be, to inherit eternal life, and 
their inmost convictions answer to his words. 

"Call him then, who will, a mere man; what human teacher ever came down thus 
upon the soul of the race as a beam of light from the skies — pure light, shining directly 
into the visual orb of the mind, a light for all that live, a full, transparent day, in which 
truth bathes the spirit as an element? Others talk and speculate about truth, and those 
who can may follow; but Jesus is the truth, and he lives it; and if he is a mere human 
teacher, he is the first who was ever able to find a form for truth at all adequate to the 
world's uses. And yet the truths he teaches outreach all the doctrines of all the philoso- 
phers of the world. He excels them, a hundredfold more, in the scope and grandeur of 
his doctrine, than he does in his simplicity itself. Is this human, or is it Divine? 

"Once more, it is a high distinction of Christ's character, as seen in his teachings, that 
he is never anxious for the success of his doctrine. Fully conscious of the fact that the 

*It is worthy of note, that, while all other teachers have been refuted in something, no errors in science, 
theology, or morals, or no inconsistency with his own system has ever been, even plausibly, charged upon Jesus, 
though his sayings anticipate the sanction or condemnation of all religious thought, civilization, and philosophy. 



106 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



world is against him, scoffed at, despised, hated, alone too in his cause, and without par- 
tisans that have any public influence, no man has ever been able to detect in him the 
least anxiety for the final success of his doctrine. The consciousness of truth, we are not 
about to deny, has an effect of this nature in every truly -great mind. But when has it 
had an effect so complete? "What human teacher, what great philosopher has not shown 
some traces of anxiety for his school that indicated his weakness? But here is a lone 
man, a humble, uneducated man, finding all the world against him, and yet the world 
does not rest on its axle more firmly than he upon his doctrine. Questioned by Pilate 
what he means by truth, it is enough to answer, 'He that is of the truth heareth my 
voice.' If this be not more than human, no other man of the race, we are sure, has ever 
dignified humanity by a like example. 

"Such is Christ as a teacher. When has the world seen a phenomenon like this? A 
lonely, uninstructed youth, coming forth amid the moral darkness of Galilee, even more 
distinct from his age, and from every thing around him, than a Plato would be rising up 
alone in some wild tribe in Oregon, assuming thus a position at the head of the world, 
and maintaining it for eighteen centuries by the pure self-evidence of his life and doc- 
trine! Does he this by the force of mere human talent or genius? If so, it is time that 
we begin to look to genius for miracles; for there is really no greater miracle." 

• "We close this section with some remarks of Dr. TJllmann in regard to the hypothesis, 
that the wonderful character of Christ was not drawn from actual life, but from the mind 
of those who record his life: "Modern criticism holds the opinion, that the picture of 
the personality of Jesus was the work of the fancy of the earliest Christian Church, who 
invented, after his death, this description of the founder of their religion. But this runs 
counter to all historical analogy. The great revolutions of history have not been effected 
by fictitious personages, but by living men ; and those men must have possessed within 
themselves a real power corresponding to, and accounting for, the influence they pos- 
sessed. Then, it is not conceivable that a community — that is, a number of individuals 
differently constituted — should have succeeded in producing so harmonious a character. 
Or, is it imagined that one man was the author of this image? In that case, we are at a 
loss to understand how that individual could produce so rare a work. "We must, more- 
over, have to rank him higher than the object which called forth his inventive power ; 
to him we must accord the meed of wonder and praise which we withhold from Jesus. 
But we should not thus find an explanation of the problem, which has indeed only 
become more difficult and involved. For in this case, as well as in the former, the first 
question which we put is still this, How is it, that an ideal of so perfect a kind ever 
came into the mind of man, whether of many men or of one individual? . . . How 
could a form of a sublime majesty, such as mankind had till then no conception of, and 
would not have at this day if it had not been here presented to us; how could that 
appear upon the bounded horizon of a Jewish mind? Or could the idea of him who was 
the first to embrace, in his boundless love, the whole human race, arise within the narrow 
consciousness of an Israelite? Further, the incredibility of all this will be fully appar- 
ent, if we take into consideration the education and mental training of the first disciples. 
They were plain, simple men; untrained as authors; the large proportion of them were 
any thing but men of fancy and imagination. They were, moreover, men of sincerity 
and simplicity in their religious belief; hence they would not have invented had they 
been able. And even if they would, it is certain that they could never have succeeded 
in achieving, with the means at their disposal — humanly speaking, so insignificant — 
what the masters of thought and of discourse, a Plato and a Xenophon, had, in their 
account of Socrates, failed to accomplish. Let criticism show us that any thing similar 
occurs elsewhere in the page of history ! Till it does so — and it never will be able to do 
so — we shall continue to maintain — what seems so abundantly evident to every healthy 

mind — that the reason why the disciples have been able to place before our eye in such 



THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 107 

vivid reality so great a majesty of moral character, is, tliat they themselves had seen in 
real life one who manifested those qualities. The inimitable nature of the Gospel picture 
must ever remain one of its leading characteristics. But the fact that it can not be imi- 
tated is a pledge of the truth of its contents." 

§ 29. The Sinlessness of Jesus, the Idea op which could not have been conceived 

by the Evangelists, if they had not seen it Actualized in the Life of 

Jesus — incontestably pboving that He was not a Mebe Man. 

Before we proceed to apply sinlessness to the person of Jesus, it is proper to define 
the term, and to make some remarks on the scope and importance of the investigation 
before us, in doing which we give a condensation of the elaborate argumentation of Ull- 
mann. The idea of sinlessness is, in the first instance, a negative one. It is the absence 
of antagonism to the moral law, and to the Divine will, of which that law is the exjn'es- 
sion; and this not only in relation to separate acts of will and outward actions, but also 
in relation to the tendency of the whole moral nature, and to its most deep-seated dispo- 
sition. Doubtless this conception is in itself of great importance, inasmuch as it marks 
off, more distinctly than any other, the line of demarkation between moral purity and 
any trace of moral pollution. Yet it is not sufficient to regard sinlessness as the absence 
of all opposition to the moral law. For the conception of sinlessness is one which, like 
that of sin, can be apj)lied only to natures such as have been appointed to will and to do 
in the capacity of moral agents; in the case of which, therefore, the omission of such 
willing and doing is itself a deviation from the divine law of life. Sinlessness must, 
therefore, imply positive goodness — goodness of nature, and goodness in action. It is in 
this sense of the word, not as negative merely, but as essentially positive, that we apply 
the epithet "sinless" to Jesus. By this epithet he is characterized as not only free from 
all sin, but as holy. By it is meant that he was filled at every moment of his life with 
the spirit of obedience, and with a love to God which surrendered itself unconditionally 
to his will, and with those powers which flow from an uninterrupted communion with 
God. Such sinlessness can be predicated only of an individual in whose case, on the one 
hand, the impossibility of sinning does not follow at once from a necessity of his nature, 
who, in other words, is susceptible of being tempted,* and whom, on the other hand, we 
may believe endowed with an integrity of moral nature, by the right use of which the 
possibility of not sinning becomes an impossibility of sinning. In a case where both 
these conditions are fulfilled, the development of a life altogether pure and holy is con- 
ceivable; a life it would be which we should have to regard as at once typically perfect — 
raised far above every thing which history tells us of, and, at the same time,, as truly 
human ; and this is what we hold the moral character and life of Jesus to have been. 

Hitherto the doctrine of the sinless character of Christ has been almost invariably 
contemplated in the light of an immediate postulate of faith, as a necessary consequence 

* The question, how far it can be affirmed, from a dogmatical or speculative stand-point, that sinfulness or 
actual transgression in Christ is a priori inconceivable, is out of the scope of our present investigation. It will be 
fully considered in our comments on the temptation of Christ, (Matt, iv.) It is sufficient here to remark, that we 
must be careful to distinguish the possibility of sinning from a leaning or bent toward sin. Sin may be possible 
where it has not existed in the faintest degree; but a penchant toward sin is inconsistent with sinlessness, for it 
involves a germ, a minimum of sin. The possibility of sin must be presupposed in Jesus, ere we can conceive that 
Jesus could be tempted. A liability to be tempted does not in itself imply the existence of any evil ; for even the 
purest virtue, if it dwells in a finite nature, is liable to be tempted. The impossibility of sinning, in the abstract, 
can be ascribed to the infinite God alone ; of him it is true in the absolute necessity of his nature — a necessity 
which is identical with the highest liberty. Had Jesus been endowed with an absolute impossibility of sin, he 
could not have been a true man ; his temptation is, therefore, presented to us in the Scriptures as one of the most 
marked features of his history, and as the indispensable condition of his typical character, while, at the same 
time, the possibility of sin in him never became actual fact. 



108 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



of the incarnation, or as an indispensable condition of the work of Christ as Eedeemer; 
and those who have thus treated it, have not proceeded from this stand-point to a more 
detailed investigation and proof of the fact itself. "We, on the contrary, will leave out 
of account this immediate conviction of the truth of the doctrine — without, at the same 
time, calling it in question, or denying that it may be right and valid in its own place — ■ 
and begin by seeking to establish and vindicate our belief in the sinlessness of Christ. 
In the mode of proof that we shall adopt in so doing, our arguments will be drawn from 
the historical appearance of Christ. We do not say: Because Christ was the Son of God, 
he could not be subject to sin; or, because he was the Eedeemer, he must have been free 
from sin. "What we say is: Because he was free from sin, and showed himself in all 
respects perfectly pure and holy, we are warranted in believing that he was the Son of 
God, the deliverer from all sin, the author of true redemption, and the revealer of 
redeeming truth. Now, while we follow this historical and apologetical course, we do 
not mean to assert that the dogmatical or philosophical course is valueless. "We are per- 
suaded that, if both methods are rightly pursued, they must lead to the same result. 
Doctrinally to maintain the sinlessness of Christ were to believe an empty form, if that 
doctrine had no basis of historical reality; and the historical reality would lie on some- 
thing fragmentary and detached, were it not organically united with the sum total of the 
Christian system. But while the two methods mutually presuppose and require one 
another, still, in their practical treatment, they must be carefully distinguished. 

The apologetical mode of presenting the sinlessness of Jesus has a very peculiar 
import, in that it appeals to the moral consciousness of men. The truly-convincing evi- 
dences for Christianity are those which are at once theoretical and practical; for the 
object is not only by the use of argument to convince the understanding, but at the same 
time to touch the conscience, to move the will, and to give a decided impulse to the 
spirit, and a new direction to the whole life. The entrance into the domain of Chris- 
tianity is not to be gained by a mere process of thought, but can only be attained by 
undergoing a new process of life, a radical change of the moral nature. Now, the sub- 
ject which we have here to consider speaks directly to the conscience. The image of 
Jesus rises up before the soul as a thing that has really been, in all its clear and stainless 
purity. True, it can never be reproduced as a living reality in us, without shivering and 
shattering all our virtuous conceits, without casting us, as sinful men, prostrate in the 
dust before the Holy One. But while it thus humbles us, it exalts us too, and draws us 
with an inwardly-overpowering might into the communion of holy and compassionate 
Divine love, shining forth on us from him as the brightest mirror. If Jesus is holy, free 
from sin, and true to the exclusion of all error, and thus stands upon a platform elevated 
high above the common fate of mortals, all of whom, without exception, are subject to 
error and to sin — then we are both entitled and enjoined to reverence in him — in his 
whole manifestation upon earth, in all that he did and all that he taught — the exponent 
of the will of God concerning man; then we have every warrant to look to him, the Sin- 
less One, as the author of our deliverance from sin, to him, being one with the Father, as 
the restorer of true union with God. It is thus that the apologetical mode of presenting 
the sinlessness of Jesus, while it vindicates belief, is at the same time fitted to call forth 
and increase the same. 

After these preliminary remarks, let us contemplate the portrait of the moral perfection 
of Christ. "We find it most comprehensively drawn by Dr. Schaff, and give it — detached 
from other traits of his character which we have dwelt upon in the preceding section, 
and from considerations to which we shall draw the attention afterward. He says: 

"The first impression which we receive from the life of Jesus, is that of its perfect 
innocency in the midst of a sinful world. He, and he alone, carried the innocency of a 
pure childhood untarnished through his youth and manhood. ... Of the boyhood 
of Jesus we know only one fact, recorded by Luke ; but it is in perfect keeping with the 



THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 109 

peculiar charm of his childhood, and foreshadows at the same time the glory of his public 
life, as one uninterrupted service of his Heavenly Father. When twelve years old we find 
him in the Temple, in the midst of the Jewish doctors, not teaching and offending them, 
as in the apocryphal Gospek, by any immodesty or forwardness, but hearing and asking 
questions, thus actually learning from them; and yet filling them with astonishment at 
his understanding and answers. There is nothing premature, forced, or unbecoming his 
age, and yet a degree of wisdom and an intensity of interest in religion which rises far 
above a purely-human youth. 'He increased,' we are told, 'in wisdom and stature, and 
in favor with God and man;' he was subject to his parents, and practiced all the virtues 
of an obedient son; and yet he filled them with a sacred awe as they saw him absorbed 'in 
the things of his Father,' and heard him utter words which they were unable to under- 
stand at the time, but which Mary treasured up in her heart as a holy secret. Such an 
idea of a harmless and faultless, heavenly childhood, of a growing, learning, and yet sur- 
prisingly-wise boyhood, as it meets us in living reality at the portal of the Gospel history, 
never entered the imagination of biographer, poet, or philosopher before. On the con- 
trary, as has been justly observed by Horace Bushnell, 'in all the higher ranges of char- 
acter, the excellence portrayed is never the simple unfolding of a harmonious and perfect 
beauty contained in the germ of childhood, but it is a character formed by a process of 
rectification in which many follies are mended and distempers removed, in which confi- 
dence is checked by defeat, passion moderated by reason, smartness sobered by expe- 
rience. Commonly a certain pleasure is taken in showing how the many wayward sallies 
of the boy are, at length, reduced by discipline to the character of wisdom, justice, and 
public heroism so much admired. Besides, if any writer, of almost any age, will under- 
take to describe, not merely a spotless, but a superhuman or celestial childhood, not 
having the reality before him, he must be somewhat more than human himself if he does 
not pile together a mass of clumsy exaggerations, and draw and overdraw, till neither 
heaven nor earth can find any verisimilitude in the picture.' This unnatural exaggera- 
tion, into which the mythical fancy of man, in its endeavor to produce a superhuman 
childhood and boyhood, will inevitably fall, is strikingly exhibited in the apocryphal 
Gospels, which are related to the canonical Gospels as the counterfeit to the genuine coin, 
or as a revolting caricature to the inimitable original, but which, by the very contrast, 
tend, negatively, to corroborate the truth of Evangelical history. While the Evangelists 
expressly reserve the performance of miracles to the age of maturity and public life, and 
observe a significant silence concerning the parents of Jesus, the pseudo-evangelists fill 
the infancy and early years of the Savior with the strangest prodigies. 

"In vain we look through the entire biography of Christ for a single stain, or the 
slightest shadow on his moral character. There never lived a more harmless being on 
earth. He injured nobody, he took advantage of nobody, he never spoke an improper 
word, he never committed a wrong action.* The manner of expelling the profane traf- 
fickers from the Temple is the only instance which modern criticism has dared to quote 
against his freedom from the faults of humanity. But the very effect which it produced 
shows that, far from being the outburst of passion, the expulsion was a judicial act of a 
religious reformer, vindicating in just and holy zeal the honor of the Lord of the Temple, 
and that with a dignity and majesty which at once silenced the offenders, though superior 
in number and physical strength, and made them submit to their well-deserved punishment 
without a murmur, and in awe of the presence of a superhuman power. The cursing 
of the unfruitful fig-tree can still less be urged, as it evidently was a significant symbolical 

*"No vice that has a name can be thought of in connection with Jesus Christ. Ingenious malignity looks in 
vain for the faintest trace of self-seeking in his motives ; sensuality shrinks abashed from his celestial purity; 
falsehood can leave no stain on him who is incarnate truth ; injustice is forgotten beside his errorless equity; the 
very possibility of avarice is swallowed up in his benignity and love ; the very idea of ambition is lost in his 
Divine wisdom and Divine self-abnegation." (Bayne.) 



HO GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



act, foreshadowing the fearful doom of the impenitent Jews in the destruction of Jeru- 
salem* . . . But this freedom from the common sin and guilt is, after all, only the 
negative side of his character, which rises in magnitude as we contemplate the positive 
side, namely, his moral and religious perfection. It is universally admitted, even by 
Deists and rationalists, that Christ taught the purest and sublimest system of ethics, 
which throws all the moral precepts and maxims of the wisest men of antiquity far into 
the shade. The Sermon on the Mount alone is worth infinitely more than all that Con- 
fucius, Socrates, and Seneca ever said or wrote on duty and virtue. But the difference is 
still greater if we come to the more difficult task of practice. While the wisest and best 
of men never live up even to their own imperfect standard of excellency, Christ fully 
carried out his perfect doctrine in his life and conduct. He is the living incarnation of 
the ideal standard of virtue and holiness, and universally acknowledged to be the highest 
model for all that is pure, and good, and noble in the sight of God and man. We find 
him moving in all the ordinary and essential relations of life, as a son, a friend, a citizen, 
a teacher, at home and in public; we find him among all classes of society, with sinners 
and saints, with the poor and the wealthy, with the sick and the healthy, with little chil- 
dren, grown men and women, with plain fishermen and learned scribes, with despised 
publicans and honored members of the Sanhedrim, with friends and foes, with admiring 
disciples and bitter persecutors, now with an individual, as Mcodemus or the woman of 
Samaria, now in the familiar circle of the twelve, now in the crowds of the people; we 
find him in all situations, in the synagogue and the Temple, at home and on journeys, in 
villages and the city of Jerusalem, in the desert and on the mountain, at the wedding 
feast and the grave, in Gethsemane, in the judgment-hall and on Calvary. In all these 
various relations, conditions, and situations, as they are now crowded- within the few 
years of his public ministry, he sustains the same consistent character throughout, with- 
out ever exposing himself to censure. He fulfills every duty to God, to man, and to 
himself, without a single violation of duty, and exhibits an entire conformity to the law, 
in the spirit as well as the letter. His life is one unbroken service of God in active and 
passive obedience to his holy will, one grand act of absolute love to God and love to man, 
of personal self-consecration to the glory of the Heavenly Father and the salvation of a 
fallen race. In the language of the people who were 'beyond measure astonished at his 
works,' we must say, the more we study his life: 'He did all things well.' In a solemn 
appeal to his Heavenly Father, in the parting hour, he could proclaim to the world that 
he had glorified him in the earth and finished the work he gave him to do. 

"The first feature in this singular perfection of Christ's character which strikes our 
attention, is the perfect harmony of virtue and piety, of morality and religion, or of love 
to God and love to man. The ground-work of his character was the most intimate and 
uninterrupted union and communion with his Heavenly Father, from whom he derived, to 
whom he referred every thing. Already, in his twelfth year, he found his life-element and 
delight in the things of his Father. It was his daily food to do the will of Him that sent 
him, and to finish his work. To him he looked in prayer before every important act, and 
taught his disciples that model prayer, which, for simplicity, brevity, comprehensiveness, 
and suitableness can never be surpassed. He often retired to a mountain or solitary 
place for prayer, and spent days and nights in the blessed privilege. But so constant 

*Theso and a few other instances in the life of Jesus — namely, the charge of disobedience toward his parents 
for remaining behind in the Temple, of interference with the rights of property in permitting the demons to rush 
among the herd of swine, his selection of Judas to the apostleship, the appearance of untruth in John vii, 8-10 — 
though frivolous and scarcely worthy of notice in connection with a nature so elevated as that of Jesus, will be 
fully considered in our comments upon the respective passages. They certainly leave not the minutest stain on the 
purity of Jesus. The argument against the sinlessness of Jesus, drawn from a pretended impossibility of sinless- 
ness in a finite nature, is a mere petitio principii, and can not fall within the scope of this investigation, which 
proposes to deal only with facts. 



THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. Ill 

and uniform was his habit of communion with the great Jehovah, that he kept it up 
amid the multitude, and converted the crowded city into a religious retreat. But the 
piety of Christ was no inactive contemplation, or retiring mysticism and selfish enjoy- 
ment, but thoroughly practical, ever active in works of charity, and tending to regen- 
erate and transform the world into the kingdom of God. 'He went about doing good.' 
His life is an unbroken series of good words and virtues in active exercise, all proceeding 
from the same union with God, animated by the same love, and tending to the same end, 
the glory of God and the happiness of man. 

"Finally, as all the active virtues meet in him, so he unites the passive. No char- 
acter can become complete without trial and suffering. The ancient Greeks and Romans 
admired a good man struggling with misfortune as a sight worthy of the gods. Plato 
describes the righteous man as one who, without doing any injustice, yet has the appear- 
ance of the greatest injustice, and proves his own justice by perseverance against all 
calumny unto death ; yea, he predicts that, if such a righteous man should ever appear, 
he would be 'scourged, tortured, bound, deprived of his sight, and after having suffered 
all possible injury, nailed on a post.' (Politicus, p. 74, ss. ed., Ast., p. 361, E. ed., Bip.) 
No wonder that the ancient Fathers saw in this remarkable passage an unconscious 
prophecy of Christ. But how far is this ideal of the great philosopher from the actual 
reality, as it appeared three hundred years afterward ! The highest form of passive vir- 
tue attained by ancient heathenism or modern secular heroism is that stoicism which 
meets and overcomes the trials and misfortunes of life in the spirit of haughty contempt 
and unfeeling indifference, which destroys the sensibilities, and is but another exhibition 
of selfishness and pride. Christ has set up a far higher standard by his teaching and 
example, never known before. . . . His passive virtue is not confined to the closing 
scenes of his ministry. As human life is beset at every step by trials, vexations, and 
hinderances, which should serve the educational purpose of developing its resources and 
proving its strength, so was Christ's. During the whole state of his humiliation he was 
'a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief,' and had to endure 'the contradiction of 
sinners.' He was poor, and suffered hunger and fatigue. He was tempted by the devil. 
His path was obstructed with apparently-unsurmountable difficulties from the outset. 
His words and miracles called forth the bitter hatred of the world, which resulted at last 
in the bloody counsel of death. The Pharisees and Sadducees forgot their jealousies and 
quarrels in opposing him. They rejected and perverted his testimony; they laid snares 
to him by insidious questions ; they called him a glutton and wine-bibber for eating and 
drinking like other men, a friend of publicans and sinners for his condescending love 
and mercy, a Sabbath-breaker for doing good on the Sabbath day; they charged him 
with madness and blasphemy for asserting his unity with the Father, and derived his 
miracles from Beelzebub, the prince of devils. The common people, though astonished 
at his wisdom and mighty works, pointed sneeringly at his origin; his own country 
and native town refused him the honor of a prophet. Even his brothers, we are told, 
did not believe in him, and, in their impatient zeal for a temporal kingdom, tl»ey found 
fault with his unostentatious proceeding. His apostles and disciples, with all their pro- 
found reverence for his character, and their faith in his Divine origin and mission as the 
Messiah of God, yet by their ignorance, their carnal, Jewish notions, and their almost 
habitual misunderstanding of his spiritual discourses, must have constituted a severe 
trial of patience to a teacher of far less supei'iority to his pupils. 

"But how shall we describe his passion, more properly so called, with which no other 
suffering can be compared for a moment! Never did any man suffer more innocently, 
more unjustly, more intensely than Jesus of Nazareth. Within the narrow limits of a 
few hours we have here a tragedy of universal significance, exhibiting every form of 
human weakness and infernal wickedness, of ingratitude, desertion, injury, and insult, 
of bodily and mental pain and anguish, culminating in the most ignominious death then 



112 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



known among the Jews and Gentiles. The Government and the people combined against 
him who came to save them. His own disciples forsook him; Peter denied him; Judas, 
under the inspiration of the devil, betrayed him. The rulers of the nation condemned 
him, the furious mob cried, 'Crucify him,' and rude soldiers mocked him. He was seized 
in the night, hurried from tribunal to tribunal, arrayed in a crown of thorns, insulted, 
smitten, scourged, spit upon and hung like a criminal and a slave between two robbers 
and murderers ! 

"How did Christ bear all these little and great trials of life, and the death on the 
cross? Let us remember first, that, unlike the icy Stoics in their unnatural and repulsive 
pseudo-virtue, he showed the keenest sensibility in the agony of the garden, and the 
deepest sympathy Avitk human grief in shedding tears at the grave of a friend, and pro- 
viding a refuge for his mother in the last dying hour. But with this truly -human ten- 
derness and delicacy of feeling he ever combined an unutterable dignity and majesty, a 
sublime self-control and imperturbable calmness of mind. There is a grandeur in his 
deepest sufferings, which forbids a feeling of pity and compassion on our side as incom- 
patible with the admiration and reverence for his character. We feel the force of his 
words to the women of Jerusalem, when they bewailed him on the way to Calvary: 
'Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and your children.' We never hear him 
break out in angry passion and violence, although he was at war with the whole ungodly 
world. He never murmured, never uttered discontent, displeasure, or resentment. He 
was never disheartened, discouraged, ruffled, or fretted, but full of unbounded confidence 
that all was well ordered in the pi-ovidenee of his Heavenly Father. He moved serenely, 
like the sun above the clouds as they sailed under him. He was ever surrounded by the 
element of peace, and said in his parting hour: 'Peace I leave with you; my peace I 
give unto you; not as the world giveth give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, 
neither let it be afraid.' He was never what we call unhappy, but full of inward joy, 
which he bequeathed to his disciples in that sublimest of all prayers, ' that they might 
have his joy fulfilled in themselves.' With all his severe rebukes to the Pharisees, he 
never indulged in personalities. He ever returned good for evil. He forgave Peter for 
his denial; and would have forgiven Judas, if, in the exercise of sincere repentance, he 
had sought his pardon. Even while hanging on the cross, he had only the language of 
pity for the wretches who were driving the nails into his hands and feet, and prayed in 
their behalf, 'Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.' He did not seek or 
hasten his martyrdom in morbid enthusiasm or ambitious humility, but quietly and 
patiently waited for the hour appointed by the will of his Heavenly Father. But when 
it came, with what self-possession and calmness, with what strength and meekness, with 
what majesty and gentleness did he pass through its dark and trying scenes !* Here 
every word and act are unutterably significant, from the agony in Gethsemane, when 
overwhelmed with the sympathetic sense of the entire guilt of mankind, and in full view 

*0n tW6 point Dr. Bushnell makes the following profound remarks: "It will be observed that his agony, the 
scene in which his suffering is bitterest and most evident, is, on human principles, wholly misplaced. It comes 
before the time, when as yet there is no arrest, and no human prospect that there will be any. He is at large to go 
where he pleases, and in perfect outward safety. His disciples have just been gathered round him in a scene of 
more than family tenderness and affection. Indeed, it is but a few days since that he was coming into the city, at 
tho head of a vast procession, followed by loud acclamations, and attended by such honors as may fitly celebrate 
the inaugural of a king. Yet here, with no bad sign apparent, wo see him plunged into a scene of deepest dis- 
tress, and racked in his feeling with a more than mortal agony. Coming out of this, assured and comforted, he i' 
shortly arrested, brought to trial, and crucified; where, if there be any thing questionable in his manner, it is in 
the fact that ho is even moro composed than some would have him to be, not even stooping to defend himself or 
vindicate his innocence. . . . By the misplacing of his agony thus, and the strange silence ho observes when 
the real hour of agony is come, wo are put entirely at fault on natural principles. But it was not for him to wait. 
. . . He that was before Abraham, must also bo before his occasions. In a time of safety, in a cool hour of 
retirement, unaccountably to his friends, he falls into a dreadful contest and struggle of mind. . . . Why now 
this so great intensity of sorrow? Why this agony? Was there not something unmanly in it, something unworthy 



THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 113 

of the terrible scenes before him — the only guiltless being in the world — he prayed that 
the cup might pass from him, but immediately added, 'Not my, but thy will be done,' to 
the triumphant exclamation on the cross, 'It is finished!' Even his dignified silence 
before the tribunal of his enemies and the furious mob, when, 'as a lamb dumb before 
his shearers, he opened not his mouth,' is more eloquent than any apology, and made 
Pilate tremble. Who will venture to bring a parallel from the annals of ancient or mod- 
ern sages, when even a Rousseau confessed, 'If Socrates suffered and died like a philoso- 
pher, Jesus Christ suffered and died like a God !' The passion and crucifixion of Jesus, 
like his whole character, stands without a parallel, solitary and alone in its glory." 

In the portraiture of the character and life of Jesus which we have been contem- 
plating, we find all the different lineaments which lie scattered up and down the pages 
of the Gospel narrative in the most artless simplicity, without any trace of forethought 
and design, gathered together into one whole. It is evident that the picture of Jesus 
which the Gospels present to us, and which the apostles every -where describe, is such 
that, even if it had not been expressly stated in Scripture that Jesus was without sin, we 
could never have conceived of sin, of separation from God, of moral obliquity, as forming 
a feature in that picture, without being sensible that we should thus materially disfigure 
and deface it, nay, destroy it altogether. Nevertheless, it has been called in question on 
the ground that, in order to pronounce concerning any one that he is absolutely free 
from sin, a perfect knowledge of his heart is above all things requisite; and the apostles 
could not see into the heart of Jesus even in the time of their intercourse with him, 
while of the earlier period of his life they had no personal knowledge. In meeting this 
question, Ullmann proves the verity of the picture which the New Testament presents 
of the sinlessness of Jesus, by the following unanswerable arguments, which we will give 
in his own language, though not in the order in which he discusses the subject: 

1. It is unquestionably true that the disciples of Jesus could not look immediately 
into his heart like the omniscient Searcher of Hearts; but what is a man's life but the 
index and revelation of his spirit; and is it possible to account for a perfectly-moral life 
otherwise than on the supposition of a perfectly-moral soul which it represents? Can we 
explain purity of action otherwise than as flowing from purity of heart? What circum- 
stance is there in the life of Jesus to favor the idea that he ever acted in a manner 
merely legal and external, while in heart he was not truly good, or that his inmost dis- 
position was in conflict with his actions? The principle on which the objection is based 
would, if applied generally, abolish all faith in human virtue and spiritual greatness. 

2. If Jesus had not unfolded before the eyes of those with whom he was surrounded a 
character of perfect purity and sinless holiness, his apostles could not have made a repre- 
sentation of such a character; for the idea of sinlessness in a human nature had never 
been thought of previous to the appearing of Christ; or, where the thought occurs, we find 
inseparably connected with it the conviction that it could not be realized in actual life, 

of a really-great soul? Take him to be only a man, and there probably was. But this one thing is clear, that no 
one of mankind ever had the sensibility to suffer so intensely; even showing the body, for the mere struggle and 
pain of the mind, exuding and dripping with blood. Evidently there is something mysterious here. What, we 
begin to ask, should be the power of a superhuman sensibility ? And how far should the human vehicle shake 
under such power? How, too, should an innocent and pure spirit be exercised, when about to suffer in his own 
person the greatest wrong ever committed? Besides, there is a vicarious spirit in love; all love inserts itself vica- 
riously into the sufferings, and woes, and, in a certain sense, the sins of others, taking them on itself as a burden. 
How, then, if perchance Jesus should be Divine, an embodiment of God's love in the world — how should he feel, 
and by what signs of feeling manifest his sensibility, when a fallen race are just about to do the damning sin that 
crowns their guilty history ; to crucify the only perfect being that ever came into the world ; to crucify even him, 
the messenger and representative to them of the love of God, the deliverer who has taken their case and cause 
upon him? Whosoever duly ponders these questions, will more and more distinctly see that what he looks upon to 
be the pathology of a superhuman anguish. It stands, he will perceive, in no mortal key. It will be to him the 
anguish, not of any pusillanimous feeling, but of holy character itself; nay, of a mysteriously-transcendent, or, 
somehow, Divine character." 



114 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



that a perfectly-sinless human being never did or could exist on earth. Plato, it is true, 
draws a sketch of a righteous man, in which he represents perfect virtue as necessarily 
conjoined with suffering; but the idea of the virtue he describes is entirely restricted to 
uprightness; no reference is made to that inward religiousness by which virtue rises into 
holiness, and, what is a still more important consideration, the sketch of Plato is only a 
conception of his mind, without any intimation that it was ever realized in actual life. 
Perhaps there is no man of antiquity with whom men would have associated the idea 
of moral perfection more readily than Socrates; and yet, although we possess such glori- 
ous descriptions of that great man, drawn by his revering disciples, neither they nor 
any one else, least of all Socrates himself, have ventured to maintain that he was entirely 
free from moral blemishes, a perfect man. The prevalent conviction in the heathen 
world, that moral perfection is a thing which it is impossible for man to attain, is clearly 
expressed by Epictetus, who, after setting forth the idea of moral stainlessness with more 
clearness than any preceding philosopher, asks the question, whether it be possible that 
it should ever be realized, and answers: "No, it is impossible; all that is possible is con- 
stantly to strive after a state of not sinning." The same sentiment we find in Judaism; 
its ruling principle was a consciousness of sin produced by a law given by a God of holi- 
ness; for although the Jew had, along with this consciousness of sin, also the belief in 
grace— still he felt himself under the curse of sin, which the law was incapable of remov- 
ing. Neither the founder of the Old Testament dispensation laid any claim to the posses- 
sion of spotless righteousness, nor that greatest prophet of the ante-Christian age, who had, 
indeed, an anticipation that the idea of moral purity would be realized, but not till it should 
be seen in him whom he announced. But, behold! here stand the plain, simple-minded 
apostles, themselves reckoned neither among the poets nor the philosophers, in whom we 
find only the idea of sinless holiness most clearly defined, and whose faith in its actual 
realization in the person of Jesus has become such a certainty that they could sacrifice 
for its sake all that men usually hold dear; further, we find that they have given a 
description of the pure and holy life of Jesus, in which the subsequent moral develop- 
ment of nineteen centuries has discovered no fault or blemish, in which men of the pres- 
ent day still recognize a picture of the most perfect character in the domain of religion 
and morality that can any where be found. From all this we certainly can not draw 
any other conclusion than this : If an idea arose in all its clearness in the minds of the 
apostles, which the great thinkers and poets of antiquity were entirely ignorant of, or 
saw but dimly, this can be accounted for only by the manifestation of a real life ; and if 
those who till then had regarded faultlessness as a thing unattainable by man, had now 
the strongest belief in the reality of a sinless life, the cause for the change could only lie 
in the overpowering impression produced by that life itself, seen unfolding itself before 
their eyes. 

3. The testimony of the apostles receives its full confirmation and its proper validity 
from the testimony of Jesus himself. The two must be taken together, for only together 
do they form a satisfactory proof. He, whom others regarded as a spotless and holy 
being, must be fully conscious in himself of perfect freedom from sin; and again, this 
consciousness of his must be corroborated by the impression which he produces upon 
others; thus united, alone, can either testimony receive its full import. In considering 
the testimony of Jesus concerning himself, let us first contemplate its negative aspect. 
He who had so keen an eye for the sins of others must, if we will not suppose him to 
have been self-blinded, have seen as clearly sin in himself, if it was there. But we find 
no where in his history, as we do in the case of the best of men, even the most occasional 
expression of consciousness of sin; there is no humbling of himself before God on 
account of sin, there is no prayer for the forgiveness of sin. Does not this inevitably 
lead to the conclusion, that the source from M r hence those feelings, which we find pre- 
cisely in the men of highest moral character, proceed, had in him no existence whatever? 



THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 115 

It follows, likewise, from what he said on the occasion of his baptism, that he felt con- 
scious that he needed for himself no repentance or regeneration. But more than this. 
So far was Jesus from standing in need of forgiveness for himself, that the position he 
held with reference to sinful men was that of a pardoner of sin. He came not onl}- to 
preach forgiveness, he came to bestow it; and could this have been done by one who felt 
guilt and sin in himself? To forgive sin belongs to God only; hence, Jesus could claim 
that right only on the ground of a deep consciousness of oneness with God, a conscious- 
ness based upon a feeling of perfect freedom from sin. 

But the positive testimonies are much stronger. Here we have, first of all, to notice 
that most conclusive saying of Jesus, which we find in John's Gospel: "AVhich of you 
convinceth me of sin?"* When we read this question, the feeling forces itself upon us, 
that its author must have been a personality of a moral character most peculiar; a feel- 
ing greatly strengthened by the recollection that he who spoke these words was one who 
in his whole life presents to us a picture at once of purest truthfulness and most divine 
humility. Every man, too, must at once be fully convinced, that to apply these words to 
himself would only prove him a vain fool or a miserable hypocrite. Last of all could 
this happen in a community from the midst of which Ave hear that same apostle, avIio has 
preserved us the saying of Jesus, exclaim: "If we say that we have no sin we deceive 
ourselves, and the truth is not in us." It is certainly a fact of the highest significance, 
that, in opposition to this attestation of universal sinfulness, which every one without 
exception must indorse, there is One who steps forth from the ranks of humanity and 
exclaims: "Who convinceth me of sin?" That Jesus by these words did not intend to 
say of himself simply, what any honest man, who led a life in conformity with the law, 
might say — "Nobody could point to any sin he had committed " — is self-evident. That he, 
on the contrary, meant positively to affirm the purity of his moral consciousness, that his 
conscience was free from guilt, his inner as well as outer life unstained by sin, is irrefuta- 
bly proved from those other sayings which John records of Christ, and whose meaning it 
is impossible to explain away, when he declares himself to be the way, the truth, and the 
life; when he says that it is his meat to do the will of Him that sent him; when he testi- 
fies that he does at all times the things which please the Father, that he never seeks his 
own will, but always the will of the Father. These are expressions which present to us 
the picture of a life which not only had in it no place for sin, but, more than this, which 
can only be thought of as an actually-perfect life. There are, especially, two significant 
passages which come under consideration here. The first is: "I and my Father are one." 
(John x, 30.) It matters not, for our purpose, whether the unity spoken of is to be 
understood as a unity of nature, or a moral unity, a unity of will; for where perfect 
unity with the Divine will exists, there must also, of necessity, be not only perfect freedom 

*'This passage has by some commentators been translated: "Which of you convinceth me of error?" We shall 
show in our comment on John viii, 46, that this translation is not correct. But supposing it were correct, even in 
that case these words of Jesus would be of great importance for our purpose, for they would at least contain an 
indirect testimony to the religious and moral purity of Jesus. For if he claims exemption from error in that prov- 
ince which alone comes under consideration in this passage — namely, the domain of morality and religion — this 
must imply that he lays claim to purity of inward nature and of outward conduct. For freedom from sin presup- 
poses freedom from error, and vice versa; the two act'and react upon each other. The human mind, whatever 
divisions psychology may make of its powers, is not in reality separated into different departments. It is abso- 
lutely one and undivided, manifesting itself, however, in various ways, and exerting itself in different directions. 
The threads of our whole intellectual life are so subtilely and finely interwoven, that to touch one is to move the 
- whole ; that every impression affects in some way the whole spirit, and every action is the result of the complicated 
cooperation of the most different energies of the mind. The man as thinking can not be sundered from the man as 
feeling; nor the man as willing from the man as knowing. In consequence of this undivided unity of the soul, it is 
inconceivable that a person should be perfect in regard to volitions and acts, and yet be defective and imperfect in 
moral and religious knowledge. When our knowledge has the purity of truth, it acts with a purifying power on 
the life; and purity of life tends to enlighten, and to preserve the enlightenment of the intellect. From this it 
follows, that the necessary presupposition and result of the sinlessness of Jesus was the entire absence of error in 
respect of things religious and moral. 



116 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 

from sin, but perfect goodness. Similar is the case with regard to the other passage: 
"He that has seen me has seen the Father." (John xiv, 9.) Certainly we are not to 
restrict these words so as to mean merely that there was in Jesus something Divine along 
with what was imperfect and sinful, as there is in every man. They must be taken in 
the full sense, that Jesus was morally and mentally an image of the invisible God, an 
expression of the Divine nature. But it is only a character of stainless purity and 
unsullied holiness that can be a spiritual reflection of God; where sin exists, the Holy 
One can not be seen ; where the Holy One is seen, there neither sin nor any imperfection 
can exist. 

There can, therefore, be no doubt that Jesus bore within him the consciousness of 
being sinless and holy; and that to this consciousness he gave repeated expression. If 
we will not acknowledge the validity of a self-testimony of so peculiar a character, there 
remains nothing but to declare Jesus to have been either a fanatic or a hypocrite. If we 
declare him a fanatic, we must suppose that he drew no clear line of demarkation 
between good and evil ; that he did not examine every fold of his heart, or know all the 
motions of his will; nay, we must believe that he was a victim to the vainest self-decep- 
tion when he uttered those memorable words. And is this conceivable in the case of one 
who on every other occasion could distinguish with such incomparable precision between 
good and evil, whose keen vision pierced to the remotest depths of the nature of men, 
and whose feelings on all moral subjects were so singularly refined? Is it possible that he 
who knew others so well should have been ignorant of himself? He would thus form a 
strange exception even to human knowledge. For no other man, even the most darkened, 
would ever entertain a doubt that he is a sinner; was Jesus then a sinner, and alone 
ignorant of the fact? Or, if such conclusions are too absurd to be entertained, we must 
be prepared to accept the other more fearful alternative. He was conscious of trans- 
gressing against the Divine law, we must suppose, in thought, word, and deed, and yet 
he expressly denied it. But who is there that would dare to undertake the defense of 
such a position, to maintain that he, who in all the circumstances of his life acted from 
the purest conscientiousness, and who at last died for his testimony upon the cross, was, 
after all, nothing more than an abject hypocrite? How could it be that he, of whom 
even the least susceptible must confess that there breathed around him an atmosphere of 
purity and faith, should have fallen into an antagonism so deep and so deadly? Into 
such absurd and revolting self-contradictions we must land, if we refuse to acknowledge 
the truth of the Divine self-testimony of Jesus concerning his sinlessness. 

4. There is still another argument that establishes the certainty of the perfect holiness 
of Jesus beyond the possibility of a reasonable doubt. The moral effects produced upon 
mankind by Christianity are such that the sinlessness of Jesus is their necessary condi- 
tion or originating cause. In other words, it can be shown that there have been, since 
the appearance of Christ on earth, actual manifestations, which can be explained ration- 
ally only on one assumption ; namely, that the Author of Christianity was a being of sin- 
less holiness; and that, if we refuse to make this assumption, these manifestations must 
remain entirely inexplicable. 

An unbiased investigation will place beyond a doubt the following facts: that Chris- 
tianity produced in individual believers — that is, in those who were deservedly so called — 
a rich supply of virtues; and that these were, partly, virtues of which men had previ- 
ously no conception whatever, or, at all events, no idea, so high and pure as Christianity 
imparts. Such virtues are humility, meekness, and the self-denial of compassionate love. 
Nor has Christianity exercised a less salutary moral influence upon the common relations 
of human life. In marriage and the family, in the condition of civil and political life, in 
the relation of ranks, castes, and nations to one another, and, in a word, in the whole 
condition of the race, it has laid the foundation of a state of society essentially different 
from what it was before. All these moral manifestations disclose to us the grand truth. 



THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. H7 



that Christianity has produced something new in the moral world, that the individual 
character which is molded by its influence, and also the humanity which it forms, is a 
new moral creation. This the apostle Paul expresses in a most forcible manner, when he 
says: "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away, 
behold, all things are become new." Let us now inquire what must be the originating 
cause of that new creation which we find in the moral life of the Christian world. In 
seeking an answer to this question, we will naturally be inclined to point first to the 
moral ideas peculiar to Christianity — that is, to Christian ethics. Christianity has, 
undoubtedly, an ethical system of incomparable purity, depth, and completeness; it far 
transcends everything that the heathen world has to point to; its principle and spirit far 
excel the loftiest ideas of the Old Testament economy, and there can be no doubt that 
this of itself is a fact of great importance for our purpose. For these ideas of Christian 
ethics are the expression and result of the moral spirit which existed in the Founder of 
Christianity, and thus they afford a testimony to the purity and dignity of his moral 
teaching. But if we are thus compelled to argue from the doctrine to its Author, this is 
still more the case when we look beyond the doctrine to the original source of those 
influences which have jiroduced so mighty a revolution in the moral world. And this 
primary source is not the doctrine of Jesus, but his person. This is necessarily the case ; 
for it is not any doctrine which calls into being a new life; it is only life which can gen- 
erate life. For this we have the most decisive testimony of Christian experience. The 
same apostle who uttered the sublime saying concerning the new creation, says, also, 
when he wishes to describe the primary source and fountain of his life: "I live; but not 
I, but Christ liveth in me." He affirms that any one is a new creature, not because he 
walks according to the doctrine of Christ, but because he is "in" Christ — that is, person- 
ally united to him; and in this the apostle expresses only what is the experience of every 
true Christian in every age. 

The question now arises : In what way must such a personality have been constituted 
to make it capable of imparting a regenerating power to Paul, and to all those whose 
experience has been like his? And to this question we must answer: It can not have 
been a personality in itself sinful, for then it would have differed from other men only in 
degree. It would still have partaken of the old nature. It would not have realized in 
itself an entirely new creation; and thus it could not have prepared the way for a new 
moral birth. On the contrary, it must have been a personality raised above all connec- 
tion with the old nature; one in which the power of sin was entirely broken; which was 
itself in the highest sense a new creation, and was thus in a condition to produce the deep 
renovating effects Avhich a perfect ideal alone could produce.* Thus, on the supposition 
that the Founder of Christianity was not without sin, it is impossible to understand how 
a morality of so pure and perfect a stamp as that which characterizes our religion could 
derive its origin from such a being, or how it could express its peculiar character in such 
words as these: "Old things are passed away, all things are become new." If, on the 
other hand, we suppose the Author of Christianity to have been altogether without sin, 
then it is easy to perceive how, within its sphere, a new creation could come to perfection 
in the moral world by his being formed within the individual believer. 

Again, if the Christian feels in his inmost soul a consciousness that morally he is a 
new man, that old things are passed away and all things are become new, then his position 

*In reply to the objection, that the sinlessness of Jesus should have produced also in those who come within 
his renovating influence a perfect freedom from transgression, Ullmann observes : " We find that, in all true Chris- 
tians, the principle of sin is in fact broken, and that they feel assured of its complete and final overthrow. If, in 
spite of this conquest of the principle of sin, it is still found operating in their lives, this circumstance only leads 
us to conclude that, in order to be ever more and more and at length perfectly freed from sin, all that is required is 
a complete surrender to the renovating influence of Christ; a conviction which can rest upon nothing else than a 
certainty of the fullness and boundless efficacy of that holy, sinless life which dwells in the person of Jesus." 



118 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 

with reference to God must have been changed. The dominion of sin can not be broken, and 
the power of a new life can not be attained, unless its guilt has been first abolished, and 
the foundation laid of a right standing in relation to the holy God. Now, the words 
which express all that belongs to this circle of ideas are these two: Reconciliation and 
Redemption. These two things constitute the fundamental consciousness of the Christian 
world; for the Christian world is what it is essentially because it is conscious of being 
reconciled and redeemed. Now, if we find this consciousness in the Christian religion 
alone, if Christianity is the only religion which can effect a true reconciliation between 
man and God by an actual redemption from sin, then it is not difficult to discover that 
the author of such a religion must himself be of a perfectly-sinless and holy character. 
The true relation of man to God can find its realization only in one in whom sin, which is 
the ground of separation between man and God, has no place. The real manifestation of 
Divine grace can exist only in one in whom the one spring of action is the fullness of 
love which he derives from perfect fellowship with God, and in whom this forms the 
principle which regulates his whole life. Were there not at the head of the Christian 
religion such a being, it were inconceivable how it could be the religion of reconciliation 
and redemption, or how the deep-rooted consciousness of being reconciled and redeemed 
should have come to form the fundamental belief of the Christian world. "With such a 
being at the head of Christianity, this is at once explained. Now, if the consciousness 
of being reconciled and redeemed, possessed by the Christian world, has any reality, then 
that from which it emanated must also have had a real existence. And that that con- 
sciousness had a real foundation rests equally upon an actual fact — on a fact which every 
Christian practically experiences. The doctrine of the sinless holiness of Jesus is, there- 
fore, as secure as is the truth of the efficacy of his work of reconciliation and redemption. 

One point more remains to be noticed. Not only have morality and religion been 
both presented under a new aspect by Christianity, but it has effected an interpenetration 
of the moral and religious elements such as formerly did not exist. This blending of the 
moral and religious, which we call holiness, can only be accounted for, that it was fully 
realized in the person of Christ. It is Christianity alone which combines religion and 
morality into one, though giving each its full due; for it knows nothing of a piety which 
does not sanctify, which is not of an entirely ethical character, seeking to subdue and 
transfuse the whole life ; or of a morality which does not rest upon a living faith, which 
is not thoroughly religious. This union gives, as has been remarked above, the idea of 
holiness. But it is something more than the idea that Christianity gives; it sets forth 
holiness not as something unattainable, far beyond the grasp of humanity, but as already 
really implanted in humanity — as an idea which, from the time of its first perfect mani- 
festation in the person of its Founder, is destined to be realized ever more and more 
within the Christian Church. It is self-evident that the idea of holiness and the belief 
of its attainability by man could not proceed from any thing else than from the great 
fact of the life manifestation of the sinless and perfect character of Jesus. 

5. When we endeavor to bring before our minds the image of the personality of Jesus 
in direct connection with the influences and works which originated in him, three things 
strike us as peculiar — unlimited perfection, unapproachable dignity, and unconditional 
power of action. The character of Jesus is so constituted that we can not take away one 
single trait from it, or add one to it, without at once being sensible that we have not only 
altered but disfigured it. He includes in himself, in fact, all perfection ; and, along with 
the highest energy, and an inexhaustible fountain of life, there is a harmony so perfect 
that we are compelled to exclaim: Here no improvement can be suggested by the loftiest 
idealizing, for the ideal itself has become real, and the life itself is stamped with the seal 
of perfection ! In its perfection we feel, moreover, that something attaches to the person 
of Jesus which our thoughts and words are incapable of grasping. Art has striven in 
vain to find an adequate expression for the image of Christ; and so, to describe his 



THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 119 

spiritual nature and character, is a task which never has been, and never will be, accom- 
plished to our complete satisfaction. We feel ever that he is possessed of a dignity which 
is unapproachable by man, of a fullness which, the more we draw from it, the greater do 
its treasures appear. This is perceived not only by separate individuals, but by humanity 
as a whole. The higher and truer the inner life of an individual becomes, the more clearly 
does he discern and realize the image of Jesus; and at every new step in the development 
of humanity the form of the Nazarene is illuminated by a fuller light. At the same time 
there is a distinct consciousness that it is not the image of Christ which increases by 
means of us, but that we, by living more deeply into it, grow in our capacity of under- 
standing it. And however nearly we may approximate toward him, we always feel that 
he towers above us at a bight to which no man will ever be able fully to rise — that there 
is a distance between him and us which none can traverse. This eminence of Jesus is 
further evidenced by the unbounded power of influencing men which he manifests. The 
image of the serene and holy One of Golgotha sinks to the very depths of our heart, and 
presents itself before the soul — sometimes as a conscience warning us of sin and evil, at 
other times like a word of consolation coming directly from our compassionate God. 
And while its influence is thus felt in our own inmost life, it is no less perceptible in the 
ordinary course of the history of mankind. The traces there are alike notorious and 
indelible, and the whole development of humanity, especially in its highest aspects, 
would be inexplicable apart from the recognition of the presence of such a power. We 
can conceive it to be possible that all the great men of history should pass into utter 
oblivion, but we must hold it to be impossible that the memory of this image should 
depart, because it has become part and parcel of the inmost and truest life of humanity. 
Nothing like this can be affirmed of any other man. The capacity and perfection of all 
others are conjoined with limitation and sinfulness; eminence in every other instance is 
explicable on human grounds, and can be represented in human forms; all other influ- 
ence on humanity, even that which deserves to be called world-wide, has its limits. 
The only exception is Jesus, the sinlessly-holy One. 

The question now arises, whether the explanation of this phenomenon can be found 
within the sphere of that which is merely human; or whether it does compel us to 
recognize in Jesus a principle which lies beyond human nature and human powers? ~We, 
surely, can have no hesitation in denying the former and affirming the latter. If sinless- 
ness or moral perfection were within the reach of man in his present condition, how has 
it come to pass that experience only furnishes one example of perfect freedom from sin? 
AVhy have not persons risen up among men, from time to time, who could lay claim to 
the same superiority, and compel others to acknowledge the justice of their pretensions? 
The only rational ground of the fact is, that a principle of sin is implanted in human 
nature — not, indeed, by original constitution,* but certainly, in its present state, that sin, 
although not the true, is still the second nature of man — that it penetrates and rules the 
whole race. The principle of sin being in such a manner ingrafted in human nature, in 
the condition in which experience presents it to us, only one supposition can render 
intelligible the existence of a sinless man; namely, that the chain of sin has been broken, 
and that, in consequence, a personality has arisen in the midst of the sinful race, whose 
nature is thoroughly whole and sound, to which have been given powers perfectly pure 
and amply sufficient for the realization of the higher life. But this is only possible as 
the result of a Divine creation. Such a person could not be the product of a race sub- 
jected to sin. In this aspect he, in whom the possibility of being sinless has become a 

*'" Never was there a man so purely man as the second Adam, the Lord from heaven. Never man spoke so 
humanly, felt so humanly, loved so humanly, lived so humanly, died so humanly. Bone of our bone, and flesh of 
our flesh, he had a more genuine humanity than any of the other sons of Adam, inasmuch as it was free from that 
demoniac adulteration which had been produced by sin. Hence he is so emphatically called, and delights to call 
himself, the Son of man. The term has more meaning than it seems at first view to possess. In the Syriac it is 
the name for humanity itself." (Tayler Lewis's "The Divine Human of the Scriptures," p. 6.) 



120 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



reality, must be considered a totally new man, a second Adam. But this second Adam, 
with whose humanity begins a new career, although like the first as respects the sound- 
ness and integrity of the higher powers of life, stands in an entirely-different position 
toward the world. The first man was put in a world where as yet sin was not, and he 
had only to decide for obedience or disobedience to the plain Divine command which had 
been given him. The second Adam was born as a child into a world which was already 
under the dominion of sin, and, through all the stages of the development of his life, was 
exposed to its influence. In the course of such a development, independently of any 
natural bias in a man, sin comes upon him from all sides; it takes possession of him 
when he is as j-et in an unconscious, or only half-conscious state; and when he awakens 
up to full consciousness it is already in the field, and has gained a power with which he 
has to struggle, not only outwardly but inwardly. Hence the impossibility of conceiving 
of a development, actually free from sin, being accomplished in a natural way under 
existing circumstances. But if, as we have found in Jesus, such a development has, not- 
withstanding all influences to the contrary, been brought to pass, we can not feel any 
hesitation in assuming the presence of something over and above, and in union with, the 
integrity of constitution originally given. In him whose development was thus sinless, 
there must have been an infallible sureness enabling him during its whole course, and 
even at those stages of it when he was not as yet awakened to full consciousness, to 
reject every thing impure, untrue, and sinful, and to appropriate for his inner life only 
the pure, true, and good, from that which the surrounding world presented to him. It 
must therefore be conceded that a Divine principle conditioned the original integrity of 
Jesus, and was a constituent element of his personality, and that it grew and progressed 
in perfect symmetry and in harmony with the human element; and that, consequently, 
so far from hindering, it really promoted the natural development of the latter, and 
secured its perfect purity and orderliness. Clearly, however, we can not understand by 
this Divine principle merely something akin or bearing resemblance to God, such as is in 
every man; for sin can and actually does coexist therewith in every man, while the sin- 
lessness of Jesus separates him from, and constitutes him superior to, all other men. We 
must, therefore, consider that principle to be Divine in its uncorrupted and true essence. 
In this way we are led from the sinless Son of man to the Son of God, and the recognition of 
the pure humanity of Jesus ends in the conviction of his true Divinity. His personality is so 
constituted that, as we attentively regard it, we find it marked by those very character- 
istics of truth, righteousness, holiness, and love, which constitute the essential nature of 
God. Our thoughts, therefore, unavoidably ascend to God. "We are utterly unable to 
understand or account for his personality otherwise. The conviction is forced upon us 
that, so far as it is possible to see God in human form, we have him before us in the 
person of Jesus. And, inasmuch as Jesus presents humanity and Divinity in complete 
union and interpenetration, we can not conceive of him otherwise than as God-man. 

§ 30. The Miracles wrought on and performed by Jesus the Natural and Neces- 
sary Outflow of his Historically-proved Personality, and, at the same 
time, the Ground and "Warrant of all other True Miracles, pre- 
ceding AND SUCCEEDING HIS APPEARANCE ON EARTH. 

We take it for granted that the miracles of the Gospel history are meant to be real 
miracles, according to the definition which we have given of a miracle in § 22. All 
attempts to explain them away, by putting language to the rack, or by resolving them 
into effects from natural causes, have so utterly failed, that those who made such attempts 
are ridiculed by infidelity itself. Again, the testimony of so credible men as the Evan- 
gelists, (see §§ 24, 25, 26,) maybe considered sufficient to satisfy a reasonable inquiry after 
the verity of the miracles they record, more especially when we take into consideration 



THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 121 

that, according to their testimony, Christ himself claimed the power to work miracles, 
and appealed to it as a proof of his Divine mission ; for the supposition that Jesus should 
have given a false testimony concerning himself, we have seen to be utterly inconceiva- 
ble; and if the testimony of the Evangelists on this point were false, if the miracles 
they attribute to Jesus were mere fables, the product of their age, the question arises, 
how was it possible for them to preserve such a character as that of Christ in its perfect 
proportions? "If there be a greater miracle," observes Bushnell, "or a tax on human 
credulity more severe, we know not where it is. Nothing is so difficult, all human lit- 
erature testifies, as to draw a character, and keep it in its living proportions. How much 
more to draw a perfect character, and not discolor it fatally by marks from the imperfec- 
tion of the biographer! How is it, then, that four humble men have done this, while 
loading down the history of Christ with marvels and fables?" 

The verity of the Gospel miracles, however, as we remarked in the introduction to 
this chapter, rests not simply nor chiefly on the credibility of the Evangelists. It is the 
moral perfection of Jesus, unparalleled and never having been conceived of by man 
before, that furnishes the unassailable voucher of his having performed miracles. Very 
boldly, but truly, Bushnell remarks: "It is no ingenious fetches of argument that we 
want ; no external testimony, gathered here and there from the records of past ages, 
suffices to end our doubts; but it is the new sense opened in us by Jesus himself — a sense 
deeper than words and more immediate than inference — of the miraculous grandeur of 
his life — a glorious agreement felt between his works and his person, such that his mira- 
cles themselves are proved to us in our feeling, believed in by that inward testimony. 
On this inward testimony we are willing to stake every thing, even the life that now is, 
and that which is to come. If the miracles, if revelation itself can not stand upon the 
superhuman character of Jesus, then let it fall. If that character does not contain all 
truth and centralize all truth in itself, then let there be no truth. If there is any thing 
worthy of belief not found in this, we may well consent to live and die without it. 
Before this sovereign light, streaming out from God, the deep questions, and dark sur- 
mises, and doubts unresolved, which make a night so gloomy and terrible about us, hurry 
away to their native abyss. God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, 
has shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the 
face of Jesus Christ. This it is that has conquered the assaults of doubt and false learn- 
ing in all past ages, and will in all ages to come. No argument against the sun will 
drive it from the sky. No mole-eyed skepticism, dazzled by its brightness, can turn 
away the shining it refuses to look upon. And they who lung after God will be ever 
turning their eyes thitherward, and, either with reason or without reason, or, if need 
be, against manifold impediments of reason, will see and believe." 

"We have shown, by a full and critical examination of the character of Jesus, that it 
can not have been an invention, but that such a person must have lived, else he could 
not be described, and that he plainly was not a mere man. This historically-proved per- 
son — a being who has broken into the world, and is not of it, but has come out from 
God — is himself the one central and grandest miracle that occurred in the history of the 
world, the ground and warrant for all other true miracles, preceding and succeeding his 
appearance on earth, and all the miracles, wrought on and performed by him, are only 
the natural outflow of that which is already contained in his personality. They are of 
the same significance in respect of the natural powers as sinlessness is in respect of the 
moral powers. A perfectly-sinless man is no whit less miraculous a phenomenon in the 
moral world than a man raised from the dead is in the natural world. To recognize 
Jesus as sinlessly holy, and yet to deny the miraculous element in his life, would be self- 
contradictory. It is inconceivable that he should have entered or left the world like 
other men. Sinful humanity could not produce out of itself the Son of Man, whom to 
see was to see God the Father, and the historical development of his earthly life would 



122 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



have had no fitting completion, if he had not risen from the dead and ascended to 
heaven. His supernatural conception, his resurrection and ascension can be called in 
question only by one who attempts to blot from the record of history the earthly life and 
character of Jesus, the words spoken and the influences on the minds of men exercised 
by him. Whoever admits these irrefutable facts of history, must expect supernatural 
works to proceed from this supernatural personality. The contrary would be unnatural. 
"Since Jesus is shown," says Bushnell, "to be a superhuman being, manifestly Nature 
will have a relation to him under and by her own laws, such as accords with his super- 
human quality, and it would be very singular if he did not do superhuman things; nay, 
it is even philosophically incredible that he should not. . . . Nay, it would be itself 
a contradiction to all order and fit relation if he could not. To suppose that a being out 
of humanity will be shut up within all the limitations of humanity, is incredible and 
contrary to reason. The very laws of nature themselves, having him present to them as 
a new agent and higher first term, would require the development of new consequences 
and incidents in the nature of wonders. Being a miracle himself, it would be the great- 
est of all miracles if he did not work miracles." 

Another highly-gifted American writer of our day, Tayler Lewis, in his " The Divine 
Human in the Scriptures," says to the same purpose : " In the Bible even the supernat- 
ural — we may say it without a paradox — is most natural. It is in such true keeping with 
the times, with the events and doctrines it attests, with all the surrounding historical cir- 
cumstances as they are narrated, that we almost lose the feeling of the supernatural in 
the admirable harmony and consistency of the ideas and scenes presented. It seems to 
be just what might have been expected; it would be strange that it should be otherwise; 
the marvelous here is the presumptive, the extraordinary becomes the easy of belief." 
After illustrating this thought by every part of the Old Testament, where the super- 
natural appears, he continues:* "But it is in the history of Christ that the idea on which 
we are dwelling receives its most powerful verification. A life so unearthly, so heavenly, 
so spiritual, so transcending nature, so full of a Divine power manifesting itself in every 
word and act, so spent in nights of prayer, and days of sublimest teachings — how out of 
all keeping does it seem, that to a state so earth-transcending in its spirituality, there 
should be no corresponding witness of the supernatural ! . . . There is a demand for 
its presence, as not only a fitting but an indispensable accompaniment. The idea can not 
be complete without it. Such power over the soul! it must extend to the body and the 
physical life; absence of this healing energy would have been the difficulty to be ex- 
plained, the feature in the narrative not easy of belief. Such a life and such a death ! 
the resurrection is the only appropriate sequence of a career on earth, yet so unearthly; 
the ascension into heaven is the only appropriate finale to a drama so heavenly and 
divine. — The serious reader can not help feeling that in the life of Christ, as given to us 
by the Evangelists, there is something more than a supernatural gift, or the occasional 
power of working miracles, as something imparted from without, or only exercised by 
himself through special effort in each particular case. We are impressed, rather, with 
the idea of the constant supernatural, as a vailed power, not so much requiring an effort 
for its manifestation as a restraint to prevent it beaming forth before unholy eyes that 
could not bear, or might profane the sight. In that earthly tabernacle there was the con- 
stant dwelling of the Shekinah, more powerfully present when alone, perhaps, or with a 
few chosen ones. . . . 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,' is an excla- 
mation called out more by the overpowering effect of this constant presence, than by any 
great public displays of miraculous power. It is this, more than any thing else, that is 
attested by the holy apostle John in the words: 'That which was from the beginning, 
which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which our hands have handled 

* We quote, leaving out all that would interrupt our argument or weaken its force. 



THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 123 



of the "Word of Life, for the Life was manifested and we saw it, and we testify, and tell 
unto you of that eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested unto us.' 
The reference is not so much to striking outward displays as to the constant spiritual 
effulgence ever beaming on the soul of the spiritual disciple, and sometimes, even to the 
eye of sense, surrounding the person of Christ with an outward glory. From the inward 
supernatural, as from a never intermitting fountain, proceeded the outward miracle- 
working power, as exhibited in distinct acts. . . . Thus, too, are we told of a constant 
virtue dwelling in the Savior's person; as in the story of the woman who 'touched the 
hem of his garment that she might be healed.' Her spiritual state, that is, her pure 
faith, brought her in a living relation to this power so vailed to the unbelieving or merely 
curious multitude; and the Savior sanctions her thought when he says: 'I know that 
power has gone forth from me.' . . . It is credible, it is even to be expected that the 
supernatural should shine out through a natural so elevated above the ordinary condition 
of humanity. There is a deep mystery even in our common physical energy. The 
strength of the body is, in its' ultimate resolution, a power of the quiescent spirit. Ac- 
tivity, force, yea, even in some sense, motus or outgoing energy are attributes of soul, even 
when at rest, as much as thought, or will, or emotion. The present bodily organization, 
instead of a necessary aid, may be, in fact, a limiting, a restraint upon a tremendous 
power, that needs to be confined as long as it is joined to a selfish or unholy will, even as 
we chain the madman in his cell. Sometimes, even in common life, there are fearful 
exhibitions of the loosening of these material bonds. In the last stages of bodily weak- 
ness, apparently, some delirium of the soul, if we may call it such, brings out a power of 
nerve and muscle irresistible to any ordinary strength, inexplicable to any ordinary phys- 
iological knowledge. The cases, indeed, are vastly different, and yet there is some analogy. 
Such views of the common organism do not at all account for the higher power that may 
dwell in a perfectly holy spirituality; but they render it credible; they prepare us to 
believe in it, yea, to feel it as a spiritual dissonance if there be wholly lacking some high 
command of nature, in connection with a perfect faith and holy will ever in harmony 
with the divine. It is the Scriptures, however, that must furnish our only reliable ground 
of argument on this mysterious subject; and here we find no small proof of such a con- 
stant indwelling glory of the supernatural as distinguished from an occasional miraculous 
gift. In certain passages there is the strongest expression of Christ's unwillingness to 
gratify curiosity by the display of an outward sign; in others there is shown an evident 
reluctance to have this holy influence the subject of any profane or gossiping rumor. 
But again, he exhibits it of his own accord to chosen disciples, and then it has the ap- 
pearance of a manifestation, to favored souls, of a power and a spiritual glory ever more 
truly present in his retired than in his public life. Such is the impression left upon the 
mind by the account of the transfiguration. . . . Something, too, of the same feeling 
comes over us as we read the account of Christ walking on the waters. . . . Why 
walking thus at that deep time of night over the wild and lonely waves? It was not 
needed, in addition to his other miracles, for the confirming of the disciples' faith. It 
seems, rather, the unearthly act of one filled with unearthly thoughts, and seeking a cor- 
respondence to them in the more unearthly, or, as we might even call them, supernatural 
aspects of the natural world. If the answer can not well be given in any thing out of 
himself, why should we fear to say that it was a rapt physical state, in harmony with an 
elevated spiritual frame, that demanded it as its fitting outward action? The ecstasy of 
the soul lifts up the body. There is something of this in the mere earthly human expe- 
rience. There is a spiritual condition that seems comparatively, if not absolutely, to 
loosen the power of gravity, to set volition free, and release even the flesh from the hold 
of earthly bonds. How much more of this ethereal soaring must there have been in the 
ecstasies of Jesus? In the human spiritual power, as known to us, there is, indeed, noth- 
ing that can- be strictly compared with it; and yet there is enough to render credible 



124 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



such an absolute triumph over matter in the case of one so holy and so heavenly as 
Christ. . . . We think there is no irreverence in such thoughts. At all events, with- 
out any special reasoning about spiritual and physical conditions, there is in Scripture 
itself good evidence that the human nature in Christ was ever in connection with the 
supernatural, and that the special miraculous acts were unvailings of a constant hidden 
power, rather than special enablings or special efforts in each particular case. Christ's 
own words convey this thought: ' He is the resurrection and the life.' Even when vailed 
in human flesh, he is still the brightness of the Father, the express image of his hypostasis. 
' We beheld his glory,' says John, ' the glory of the Only-Begotten, full of grace and 
truth.' The humanity, too, is a true humanity ; no one was ever more perfectly human ; 
and yet so wondrous is he, even in his manhood, that it forces the idea of the superhu- 
man and the supernatural as not only the casual explanation of such an existence, but its 
own fitting, yea, necessary accompaniment." 

While we have, as we think, presented sufficient grounds in support of our proposi- 
tion, that all the miracles wrought on and performed by Christ were the natural and 
necessary outflow of that which is implied in his historically-proved personality — that is, 
that we can not, as we are compelled to do, recognize Jesus as sinlessly holy, and yet 
consistently deny the miraculous element in his life — we are, of course, far from permit- 
ting the unauthorized inference, that the exercise of miraculous powers necessarily 
involves or depends upon sinlessness on the part of every person possessed of miraculous 
powers. We have, on the contrary, referred to the fact that, while with all other persons 
to whom the Scriptures ascribe the performance of miracles, it is represented as a super- 
natural gift, as a power imparted from without, and exercised only occasionally through 
a special effort, the personality of Christ is the only one that stood in such constant con- 
nection with the supernatural ; that the special miraculous acts performed by him or 
wrought on him were only the unvailings of a constant hidden power, requiring not so 
much an effort for its manifestation as a restraint to prevent its beaming forth before 
unholy eyes. The relation, therefore, which we have discovered between the sinlessness 
of Jesus and the miracles ascribed to him, admits of no application to other men who 
wrought miracles, except in so far as, wherever the miraculous element appears in the 
Holy Scriptures, it appears, in the popular sense of the word, natural, that is, "in such 
true keeping with the times and occasions by which it is called forth, and in such admi- 
rable harmony with the events and doctrines which it attests, that we almost lose the 
feeling of the supernatural." But not only this, we have remarked above that Christ 
himself, being the one central and grandest miracle that occurred in the history of the 
world, is at the same time the ground and warrant for all other true miracles, preceding and 
succeeding his appearance on earth. 

This is a truth which is too much overlooked in the discussion of miracles. In sec- 
tion 22 we showed that miracles are not a disruption of the divinely-established order of 
the world, but a demonstration of Divine agency for the purpose of restoring the order 
of the world, which had been disordered by sin, the act of created free agents. Had 
there not taken place a disorder of the world by sin, there would, indeed, seem to be no 
demand or even place for that especial Divine agency which we call miraculous. This 
miraculous agency of God culminated in the incarnation of his Son, the Eedeemer from 
sin, and it is self-evident that he, being the greatest miracle himself, should work mira- 
cles. But it is equally evident why Divine Wisdom did not see fit to confine to his person 
the manifestation of the miraculous agency necessary for the restoration of the moral 
order of the world. Mankind was to be prepared for the reception of the greatest mira- 
cles by the less. The history of the nation in which the Son of God should be born, 
especially the bringing the people of Israel out of the bondage of Egypt, and consti- 
tuting the covenant people of God, bore, therefore, the stamp of the immediate operation 
of God ; the Divine messengers, especially the great legislator and mediator of the first 



THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 125 

covenant, Moses, needed the authentication by miracles, and the spirit of prophecy, the 
continuous and most irrefutable miracle of the Old Testament, had, with the types and 
the shadows of the law, to point out the coming Messiah. Nor was it proper that the 
manifestation of supernatural power, preparing for and culminating in the appearance 
of the Son of God in the flesh, should at once terminate with his ascension to heaven; 
for, in this case, men would have been still more slow, than they are, to believe that 
the greatest of all miracles had taken place. The apostles, preaching Jesus and the 
resurrection, needed God to bear them witness with signs and wonders and with divers 
miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, and we have credible testimony that the power of 
working miracles continued with the Church, to some extent, during several centuries.* 
A consideration of the peculiar nature, significance, importance, and design of the 
miracles performed by Christ does not properly fall within the scope of our present 
investigation. We shall consider the miracles of Christ in these practical aspects in our 
introductoiy remarks to the eighth chapter of Matthew, where we meet the first record 
of a Gospel miracle. How we can distinguish true, Divine miracles from false ones, 
wrought by diabolic agency, we shall discuss in our comment on Matthew vii, 22. 

* In connection with these remarks it is proper to consider the question : Whether miracles are now discontinued ; 
and, if so, why ? This question we know not how to answer better than Dr. Bushnell has done : " The Scriptures no 
where teach, what is often assumed, the final discontinuance of miracles ; and it is much to be regretted that such 
an assumption is so commonly made. There is no certain proof that miracles have not been wrought in every age 
of the Christian Church. There is certainly a supernatural and Divine causality streaming into the lives and blend- 
ing with the faith of all good men, and there is no reason to doubt that it may sometimes issue in premonitions, 
results of guidance and healing, endowments of force, answers to prayer that closely approach in many cases, if 
they do not exactly meet, our definition of miracles. Again, if miracles have been discontinued, even for a thou- 
sand years, they may yet be revived in such varieties of form as a different age may require. They will be revived 
without fail whenever the ancient reason may return, or any new contingency may occur, demanding their instru- 
mentality. And yet good and sufficient reasons may be given why the more palpable miracles of the apostolic age 
could not be continued, or must needs be interspaced by agencies of a more silent character. It may have been 
that they would by and by corrupt the impressions and ideas even of religion, setting men to look after signs and 
prodigies with their eyes, and so, instead of attesting God to them, making them unspiritual and even incapable 
of faith. Traces of this mischief begin to appear even in the times of the apostles themselves. Christianity, it is 
very obvious, inaugurates the faith of a supernatural agency in the world. Hence, to inaugurate such a faith, it 
must needs make its entry into the world through the fact of a Divine incarnation and other miracles. In these 
we have the pole of thought, opposite to nature, set before us in distinct exhibition. And then the problem is, 
having the two poles of nature and the supernatural presented, that we be trained to apprehend them conjunc- 
tively, or as working together in silent terms of order. For, if the miracles continue in their palpable and staring 
form of wonders, and take their footing as a permanent institution, they will breed a sensuous, desultory state of 
mind, opposite to all sobriety and all genuine intelligence. At a certain point the miracles were needed as the 
polar signs of a new force — but, for the reason suggested, it appears to be necessary, also, that they should not be 
continuous ; otherwise, the supernatural will never be brought into any terms of order, as a force conjoined with 
nature in our common experience, but will only instigate a wild, eccentric temper, closely akin to unreason, and to 
all practical delusions. And yet there may be times, even to the end of the world, when some outburst of the 
miraculous force of God will be needed to break up a lethargy of unbelief and sensuous dullness, equally unrea- 
soning and desultory." 



126 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



PART IV. 

THE ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM OJST THE IKSPI 
RATIOS' OF THE FIRST THREE GOSPELS. 



§ 31. The Relation which the Authenticity and Credibility of the Gospel Records 

bear to their inspiration. 

The arguments by which we have established the authenticity or apostolical origin of 
the Gospel records, and the Divine as well as human attestations of their credibility 
involve also their inspiration. To prove the trustworthiness of the Scriptures from their 
assumed inspiration, and then to deduce the inspiration from the testimony of the Scrip- 
tures, would be a begging of the question. Instead of this we have proved the authen- 
ticity and credibility of the Gospels, without any reference to an assumed inspiration, on 
simply historical grounds, and this historical argumentation is the only outward proof 
needed for their inspiration. With regard to outward proofs of inspiration Mr. "Westcott 
remarks very justly: "To speak of the proof of the inspiration of the Scriptures in- 
volves, indeed, an unworthy limitation of the idea itself In the fullest sense of the word 
we can not prove the presence of life, but are simply conscious of it; and inspiration is 
the manifestation of a higher life. The words of Scripture are spiritual words, and as 
such are spiritually discerned. The ultimate test of the reality of inspiration lies in the 
intuition of that personal faculty — nvevfia — by which inspired men once recorded the 
words of God, and are still able to hold communion with him. Every thing short of this 
leaves the great truth still without us; and that which should be a source of life is in 
danger of becoming a mere dogma." (Introduction to the Study of the Gospels, p. 45.) 
In Parts II and III we have met all the attacks that have been made upon the authen- 
ticity and the credibility of the Gospels, with the exception of the objections, which 
modern criticism has deduced from the peculiar relation, in which the three first (synop- 
tic) Gospels stand to one another and to that of John. These objections lie, indeed, not 
against the authenticity and credibility of the synoptic Gospels, but would, if sustained, 
invalidate their inspiration. For while in ordinary historians the strictest integrity is 
compatible with slight inaccuracy, divergence of testimony — the least discrepancy — ap- 
pears formidable in a work written by Divine inspiration. It is, therefore, proper to ex- 
amine these critical difficulties in connection with the question of inspiration — a question 
which of itself deserves a separate consideration. 

Before we, however, enter upon this examination, let us glance at some of the general 
chai-acteristics of the Gospel records, which, as Mr. "Westcott remarks, can only be ac- 
counted for on the assumption of their inspiration. "They are fragmentary in form. 
Their writers make no attempt to relate all the actions or discourses of our Lord, and 
show no wish to select the most marvelous series of his mighty works, and probably no 
impartial judge will find in any one of them a conscious attempt to form a narrative sup- 
plementary to those of the others. But if we know by the ordinary laws of criticism 
that our Gospels are the only authentic records of the Savior's life, while we believe that 
Providence regards the wellbeing of the Christian Church, are we not necessarily led to 
conclude that some Divine power overruled their composition, so that what must other- 



THE ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM ON THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 127 

wise seem a meager and incomplete record should contain all that is fittest historically to 
aid our progress and determine our faith? Nor can it be unworthy of notice that while 
the Gospels evidently contain so small a selection from the works and words of Christ, so 
few details unrecorded by the Evangelists should have been preserved in other ways. . . . 
The numerous witnesses of our Lord's works and teaching must have treasured up with 
affection each recollection of their past intercourse; but the cycle of the Evangelic narra- 
tive is clearly marked, and it can not but seem that the same Power which so definitely 
circumscribed its limits determined its contents. Again, the Gospels are unchronological 
in order. We are at once cautioned against regarding them as mere history, and encour- 
aged to look for some new law of arrangement in their contents, which, as I shall en- 
deavor to prove, must result from a higher power than an unaided instinct or an enlight- 
ened consciousness. Once more, the Gospels are brief and apparently confused in style. 
There is no trace in them of the anxious care or ostentatious zeal which mark the ordi- 
nary productions of curiosity or devotion. The Evangelists write as men who see through 
all time, and only contemplate the events which they record in their spiritual relations. 
But, at the same time, there is an originality and vigor in every part of the Gospels, 
which become a Divine energy in the Gospel of John. As mere compositions they stand 
out from all other histories with the noble impress of simplicity and power; and it is as 
if the faithful reflection of the image of God shed a clear light on the whole narrative. 
The answer was once given to the Pharisees, when they sought to take Jesus, that never 
man spoke like that man, and those who assail the authority of the Gospels have been 
constrained to confess that never was history written as in them." (Introd., pp. 46—48.) 
On the characteristic differences of the four Gospels Mr. Westeott says further: "The 
three synoptic Gospels are not mere repetitions of one narrative, but distinct views of a 
complex whole. The same salient points reappear in all, but they are found in new com- 
binations and with new details, as the features of a landscape or the outlines of a figure 
when viewed from various points. . . . The only conception which we can form of 
the inspiration of a historic record lies in the Divine fitness of the outward dress in which 
the facts are at once embodied and vailed. No record of any fact can be complete. The 
relations of the most trivial occurrence transcend all power of observation, and the truth- 
fulness of special details is no pledge of the truthfulness of the whole impression. The con- 
nection and relation and subordination of the various parts, the description and suppression 
of particular incidents, the choice of language and style, combine to make a history true 
in its higher significance. This power the Evangelists possessed in the fact that they 
were penetrated with the truth of which they spoke. The Spirit which was in them 
searched the deep things of God, and led them to realize the mysteries of the faith. . . . 
The contrast between the Gospel of John and the synoptic Gospels, both in substance and 
in individual character, is obvious at first sight; but the characteristic differences of the 
synoptic Gospels, which are formed on the same foundation and with common materials, 
are less observed. Yet these differences are not less important than the former, and 
belong equally to the complete portraiture of the Savior." (Introd., pp. 218-220.) The 
individual character of each of the four Gospels the reader will find delineated in the 
special introductions to the respective Gospels. 

§ 32. The Peculiar Agreement and Disagreement of the First Three Evangelists 
in their Narratives, and the Various Explanations op this Singular Phenomenon. 

The striking difference in contents and character of the first three Gospels from the 
fourth presents no difficulty. It is easily and satisfactorily accounted for by the differ- 
ence of the individuality and scope of the Synoptists from that of John, as will be shown 
in the introduction to each Gospel, as well as by the fact of the later origin of John's 
Gospel. Owing to this later origin, we may take it for granted that the synoptical 



128 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



Gospels were already generally known when John wrote; that he, therefore, purposely 
abstaining from writing anew what they had at sufficient length recorded, only sought 
to complete them by narrating those portions of the life of Jesus which had been omitted 
by the Synoptists. The peculiar difficulties which claim our attention present themselves 
when we compare the synoptical Gospels with each other. 

There is in them a great amount of agreement. If we suppose the history that they 
contain to be divided into sections, in forty -two of these all the three narratives coincide; 
twelve more are given by Matthew and Mark only; five by Mark and Luke only, and 
fourteen by Matthew and Luke. To these must be added five peculiar to Matthew, two 
to Mark, and nine to Luke, and the enumeration is complete. But this applies only to 
general coincidence as to the facts narrated; the amount of verbal coincidence, that is, 
the passages either verbally the same, or coinciding in the use of many of the same 
words, is much smaller. Without going minutely into the examination of examples, the 
leading facts connected with the subject may be thus summed up: The verbal and mate- 
rial agreement of the first three Evangelists is such as does not occur in any other 
authors who have written independently of one another. The verbal agreement is 
greater where the spoken words of others are cited than where facts are recorded, and 
greatest in quotations of the Avords of our Lord. But in some leading events, as in the 
call of the first four disciples, in that of Matthew, and in the transfiguration, the agree- 
ment even in expression is remarkable; there are also narratives where there is no 
verbal harmony in the outset, but only in the crisis or emphatic part of the story. 
(Matt, viii, 3, Mark i, 41, Luke v, 13; and Matt xiv, 19, 20, Mark vi, 41-43, Luke ix, 16, 
17.) The narratives of our Lord's early life, as given by Matthew and Luke, have little 
in common, while Mark does not include that part of the history in his plan. The 
agreement in the narrative portions of the Gospels begins with the baptism of John, and 
reaches its highest point in the account of the Passion of our Lord and the facts that 
preceded it; so that a direct ratio might almost be said to exist between the agreement 
and the nearness of the facts that sustain a close relation to the Passion. After this 
event, in the account of his burial and resurrection, the coincidences are few. The lan- 
guage of all three is Greek, with Hebrew idioms; the Hebraisms are most abundant in 
Mark, and fewest in Luke. In quotations from the Old Testament the Evangelists, or 
two of them, sometimes exhibit a verbal agreement, although they differ from the He- 
brew and from the Septuagint version. (Matt, iii, 3, Mark i, 3, Luke iii, 4; and Matt, iv, 
10, Luke iv, 8; and Matt. ori, 10; Mark i, 2; Luke vii, 27, etc.) Except as to twenty-four 
verses, the Gospel of Mark contains no principal facts which are no,t found in Matthew 
and Luke; but he often supplies details omitted by them, and these are often such as 
would belong to the graphic account of an eye-witness. There are no cases in which 
Matthew and Luke exactly harmonize, where Mark does not also coincide with them. 
In several places the words of Mark have something in common with each of the other 
narratives, so as to form a connecting link between them, where their words slightly 
differ. The examples of verbal agreement between Mark and Luke are not so long or so 
numerous as those between Matthew and Luke, and Matthew and Mark; but, as to the 
arrangement of events, Mark and Luke frequently coincide where Matthew differs from 
them. These are the leading particulars; but they are very far from giving a complete 
notion of a phenomenon that is well worthy of that attention and reverent study of the 
sacred text by which alone it can be fully and fairly apprehended. 

The three Gospels exhibit themselves as three distinct records of the life and works 
of the Pedeemer, but with a greater amount of agreement than three wholly -independent 
accounts could be expected to exhibit. The agreement would, be no difficult]/ without the differ- 
ences; it would only mark the one Divine source from which they all are derived, the 
Holy Spirit who spoke by the prophets. The difference of form and style without the agree- 
ment would offer no difficulty, since there may be a substantial harmony between accounts 



THE ATTACKS OF MODEKN CRITICISM ON THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 129 

that differ greatly in mode of expression, and the very difference might be a guarantee 
of independence. The harmony and the variety, the agreement and the differences, 
together, form the problem with which Biblical critics have occupied themselves for a cen- 
tury and a half. To ascribe the verbal differences of the Evangelists, in their reports of 
sayings of our Lord and of events, in the midst of their general and substantial agree- 
ment, simply and directly to the dictation of the Holy Spirit, would make the difficulty 
greater instead of less. The singular phenomenon can be naturally accounted for only 
by assuming the interdependence of one Evangelist upon the other, or some common source, 
written or oral, or a combination of these elements. 

I. The first and most obvious theory has been, that the narrators made use of each 
other's works. Accordingly, Grotius, Mill, Wetstein, G-riesbach, and many others, have 
endeavored to ascertain which Gospel is to be regarded as the first; which is copied first; 
and which is copied from the other two. It is remarkable that each of the six possible 
combinations has found advocates, and that for the support of each hypothesis the same 
phenomena have been curiously and variously interpreted. This of itself proves the 
uncertainty of the theory. It is thoroughly refuted by Alford. If one or two of the 
Evangelists borrowed from the other, we must adopt one of the following suppositions: 
1. That the later Evangelist, finding the earlier Gospel, or Gospels, insufficient, was anx- 
ious to supply what was wanting. But no possible arrangement of the three Gospels will 
suit the requirements of this supposition. The shorter Gospel of Mark can not be an 
expansion of the more complete Gospels of Matthew or Luke. No less can these two 
Gospels be considered as exj)ansions of Mark; for his Gospel, although shorter, and nar- 
rating fewer events and discourses, is, in those which he does narrate, the fullest and 
most particular of the three. And again, Luke could not have supplemented Matthew; 
for there are most important portions of Matthew which he has altogether omitted, (e. g., 
chapter xxv, and much of chapters xiii and xv;) nor could Matthew have supplemented 
Luke, having omitted almost all of the important matter recorded by Luke, from ix, 51- 
xviii, 15. Moreover, this supposition leaves all the difficulties of different arrangement 
and minute discrepancy unaccounted for. We pass on, 2. To the supposition that the 
later Evangelist purposed to improve the earlier one, especially in point of chronological 
order. If it were so, nothing could have been done less calculated to answer the end 
than that which our Evangelists have done. For in no material point do their accounts 
differ, but only in arrangement and completeness; and this latter difference is such that 
no one of them can be cited as taking any pains to make it appear that his own arrange- 
ment is chronologically accurate. No fixed dates are found in those parts where the dif- 
ferences exist; no word to indicate that any other arrangement had ever been published. 
3. Neither does the supposition that the later Evangelists wished to adapt their Gospels 
to a different class of readers — incorporating, at the same time, whatever additional mat- 
ter they possessed — in any way account for the phenomena of our present Gospels. For, 
even taking for granted the usual assumption, that Matthew wrote for Hebrew Christians, 
Mark for Latins, and Luke for Gentiles in general, we do not find any such consistency 
in these purposes as a revision and alteration of another's narrative would necessarily 
presuppose. We have the visit of the Gentile Magi exclusively related by the Hebraizing 
Matthew; the circumcision of the child Jesus, and his frequenting the Passovers at Jeru- 
salem, by the Gentile Evangelist Luke. Had the above purposes been steadily kept in 
view in the revision of the narratives before them, the resjiective Evangelists could not 
have omitted incidents so entirely subservient to their respective designs. Or, 4. It may 
be supposed that, receiving one or two Gospels as authentic, the later Evangelist bor- 
rowed from them such parts as he purposed to narrate in common with them. But this 
does not represent the matter of fact. In no case does any Evangelist borrow from an 
other any considerable part of even a single narrative. For such borrowing — unless it 
was with the intent of fraudulently plagiarizing from them, slightly disguising the 



130 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



common matter so as to make it appear original — would imply verbal coincidence. It is 
inconceivable that one writer, borrowing from another matter confessedly of the very 
first importance, in good faith and with approval, should alter his diction so singularly and 
capriciously as, on this hypothesis, we find the text of the parallel sections of our Gospels 
altered. Let the question be answered by ordinary considerations of probability, and let 
any passage common to the three Evangelists be put to the test. The phenomena pre- 
sented will be more or less as follows : First, perhaps, we shall have three or five or more 
words identical; then as many wholly distinct; then two clauses or more expressed in the 
same words, hut differing in order; then a clause contained in one or two, and not in the third; 
then several words identical; then a clause not only wholly distinct, but apparently 
inconsistent; and so forth, with recurrences of the same anomalous alterations, coinci- 
dences and transpositions. Nor does this description apply to verbal and sentential 
arrangement only, but also, with slight modifications, to that of the larger portions of 
the narratives. Equally capricious would be the disposition of the subject-matter. 
Sometimes, while coincident in the things related, the Gospels place them in the most 
various order, each in turn connecting them together with apparent marks of chronolog- 
ical sequence — e. g., the visit to Gadara, in Matthew viii, 28, as compared with the same 
in Mark v, 1, and Luke vii, 26, sq. Let any one say, divesting himself of the commonly- 
received hypotheses respecting the connection and order of our Gospels, whether it is 
within the range of probability that a writer should thus singularly alter the subject- 
matter and diction before him, having no design in so doing, but intending, fairly and 
with approval, to incorporate the work of another into his own? Can an instance be 
any where cited of undoubted borrowing and adaptation from another, presenting sim- 
ilar phenomena? We see, from the above argumentation, that any theory of mutual 
interdependence of the three Evangelists fails to account for the appearances presented 
by the synoptic Gospels. "We must come to the conclusion that the three Gospels arose 
independently of one another.* 

II. It has been assumed that there existed a written document in the Aramaic language 
as the common original, from which the three Gospels were drawn, each with more or less 
modification. But as this supposition, though it would account for some of the variations 
in the parallel passages, as being independent translations, would offer no solution what- 
ever of the more important discrepancies of insertion, omission, and amendment, the most 
complicated hypotheses have been advanced, all perfectly capricious and utterly inade- 
quate to account for the phenomena. The supposed original is assumed to have been 

* On this point Mr. Norton makes the following remarks : 

" 1. The conclusion that no one of the first three Evangelists copied from either of the other two, is important 
as showing that their Gospels afford three distinct sources of information concerning the life of Jesus. The Evan- 
gelists, therefore, in their striking correspondence in the representations of his character, miracles, and doctrines 
must be considered as strongly confirming each other's testimony. Nothing but reality, nothing but the fact that 
Jesus had acted and taught, as they represent, would have stamped his character and life so definitely and vividly 
on the minds of individuals ignorant of each other's writings, and enabled them to give narratives, each so con- 
sistent with itself, and all so accordant with one another. A false story concerning an imaginary character would 
have preserved no uniform type. It would have varied in its aspects, according to the different temperaments and 
talents, the conceptions and purposes of its various narrators. 

"2. If the notion that one Evangelist copied from another is proved to be untenable, then the accordance 
among the first three Gospels proves them all to have been written at an early period, when the sources of authen- 
tic information were yet fully accessible, and before any interval had elapsed, during which exaggerations, per- 
versions, and fables, to which the wonderful history of Jesus was exposed, had had time to flow in and to change 
its character. 

" 3. If the Evangelists did not copy one from another, it follows that the first three Gospels must have all been 
written about the same period, since if one had preceded another by any considerable length of time, it can not be 
supposed that the author of the later Gospel would have been unacquainted with the work of his predecessor, or 
would have neglected to make use of it; especially when we take into view that its reputation must have been well 
established among the Christians. Whatever antiquity, therefore, we can show to belong to any one of the first 
three Gospels, the same, or nearly the same, we may ascribe to the other two." 



THE ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM ON THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 131 

translated, altered, and annotated by different hands, and the synoptic Gospels are said to 
have been drawn from one or the other of these different forms into which the original 
had passed, or from a combination of them. A theory so prolific of assumptions would 
be admissible only if it could be proved that no other solution is possible. 

The " original Gospel" is supposed to have been of such authority as to be circulated 
every-where, yet so defective as to require annotation from any hand, and so little rever- 
enced that no hand spared it. If the three Evangelists agreed to draw from such a 
work, it must have been widely, if not universally, accepted in the Church; and yet 
there is no record of its existence; if of lower authority, it could not have become the 
basis of the three canonical Gospels. Moreover, the state of literature in Palestine, at 
that time, was not such as to make the assumed, repeated editing, translating, and anno- 
tating of a history a natural and probable process. (Compare §§ 5 and 6.) Happily, 
this hypothesis of an original Gospel, which, if true, would overthrow the Divine author- 
ity of the Gospel records, has been found so untenable on historical and critical grounds, 
that it has been given up by its own inventors. 

III. Having found the assumption of a common original Gospel as untenable as that 
of the interdependence of one Evangelist upon the other, let us examine that solution of 
the problem, which explains the relationship of the synoptical Gospels by deriving them 
from a common oral source, that is, froni the common oral teaching of the apostles; which, 
from the nature of the case, we may assume to have been chiefly historical, giving an 
account of the discourses and acts of Jesus of Xazareth. That the written Gospels were 
the result, not the foundation, of the apostolical preaching, will not be called in question. 
On similar grounds, as the bajDtism of infants, in the nature of the case, was preceded by 
the baptism of adults, it may be said that the experience of oral teaching was required 
in order to commit to writing the vast subject of the life of Christ. In the first period 
of the apostolic age the powerful working of the Holy Spirit in the Church supplied the 
place of those records, which, as soon as the brightness of his presence began to be with- 
drawn, became indispensable, in order to prevent the corruption of the Gospel history by 
false teachers. The great commission given to the apostles was to preach the Gospel, and 
it was only the subsequent want of the Church, established by their preaching, which 
furnished an adequate motive for adding a written record to the testimony of their living 
words. Of the great majority of the apostles all that we know certainly is, that they 
were engaged in instructing, orally, the multitudes who were waiting to receive their 
tidings. The place of instruction was the synagogue and the market-place, not the stu- 
dent's chamber. "The elders refrained from writing," it is said by Clemens, "because 
they would not interrupt the care which they bestowed in teaching orally, by the care of 
composition." Besides, the icritten evidence for the facts of the Gospel was found already 
in the Old Testament. All the prophets spoke of Christ, and to them the apostles con- 
stantly referred, by showing them fulfilled in the life of Christ. That the apostolic 
preaching consisted chiefly in relating the wondrous life, the teaching and the acts, the 
suffering, death, and resurrection of our Lord, we learn from the conditions of apostle- 
ship propounded by Peter himself, (Acts i, 21, 22;) that, in order to give a proper testi- 
mony of the resurrection of Christ, an apostle must have been an eye and ear-witness of 
what had happened from the baptism of John till the ascension, that is, during the whole 
official life of our Lord; and, accordingly, Paixl claims to have received an independent 
knowledge, by direct revelation, of at least some of the fundamental parts of the Gospel 
history, (Galatians i, 12; 1 Cor. xi, 23; xxv, 3.) to qualify him for his calling as an 
apostle. That the apostolic preaching was chiefly historic, is confirmed by Luke, who, 
in the preface to his Gospel, expressly designates the oral apostolical testimony as the 
source of the Evangelical narratives, which many had taken in hand to draw up; and, as 
far as the records of apostolic preaching in the Acts of the Apostles go, they confirm this 
view. Peter, at Csesarea, and Paul, at Antioch, preach alike the facts of the Eedeemer's 



132 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



life and death. As to the Epistles, they were evidently not designed for primary instruc- 
tion, but for the further instruction of those who were familiar with the great outlines of 
the "mystery of godliness," (1 Tim. iii, 16,) and had professed their belief by baptism. 

We are then led to the inquiry, in what manner the synoptic Gospels are connected 
with the oral Gospel preached by the apostles? Before showing the relation of the writ- 
ten to the oral Gospel, we remind the reader that the Gospel history was first orally deliv- 
ered by the apostles at Jerusalem, where they formed the mother Church, and remained 
till dispersed by the first persecution. And is it not to be presumed that the very por- 
tions of that Gospel history, which form the common subject-matter of the synoptical 
Gospels, would be more frequently and fully dwelt upon by the apostles in their preach- 
ing at Jerusalem, than those incidents which had taken place there, and were therefore 
well known to those to whom the apostles first addressed themselves? This explains to 
us, in part, (compare the introductory remarks to § 8 in the Gospel of Matthew,) why 
it is that the ministry of Jesus in Galilee is almost exclusively recorded to us by the 
three Evangelists in a manner so singularly similar. There is nothing unnatural in the 
supposition that the oral narratives of the apostles at Jerusalem, concerning the words 
and deeds of our Lord, would be delivered, for the most part, in the same form of words; 
on the contrary, it was in the highest degree desirable for the teachers whom the apostles 
were sending forth into the world, and it became the most fitting means to secure and 
make manifest the purity of the subsequent written Gospel. The particular points, 
especially in sayings of Christ, were always reproduced; unusual expressions were the 
more firmly retained, since, when they were uttered, they had the more strongly attracted 
the attention of the disciples. Sermons and sayings were naturally retained with more 
care, and reported with more uniformity than incidents; although even in the latter, in the 
same degree that the incident was surprising and peculiar, a fixed type of narration had 
involuntarily formed itself. Thus it was that the authors had often heard the points, both 
of incidents and sayings, narrated in substantially the same words. There were, more- 
over, peculiar circumstances which naturally contributed to the uniformity in question. 
While modern taste aims at a variety of expression, and abhors a repetition of the same 
phrases as monotonous, the simplicity of the men, and their language, and their educa- 
tion, would all lead us to expect that the apostles would have no such feeling. They were 
from the humblest ranks of society in a nation destitute of polite literature. Their abil- 
ities and education were nearly alike. Their susceptibilities for apprehending the scenes 
they had witnessed were similar, while the poverty of the Aramaic Greek, in which they 
reported what they had seen and heard, did not admit of much variety. The first 
preachers aimed at fidelity and truth in their reports of the events they had witnessed, 
rather than at ornament. They had no wish to dress out their descriptions, even if they 
had been capable of doing so, and the genius of the dialect they employed had allowed 
a wider scope and variety. Besides, they had been accustomed, as Jews, to treasure up 
and hand down traditionally the interpretations of their fathers respecting the law, and 
must have been disposed to follow the same method in regard to the Christian religion. 
]STor would the immediate disciples desire to depart from the expressions they had learned 
from their instructors. On the contrary, they would studiously attach themselves to the 
form in which the Gospel narratives had orally been delivered to them. Such were the 
circumstances that contributed to produce and perpetuate a stereotype form of the Evan- 
gelical history, and to bring the oral narratives into an archetypal form, which was sub- 
sequently transferred to the written Gospels. It is supposed, then, that the preaching cf 
the apostles, and the teaching whereby they prepared others to preach, as they did, 
Avould tend to assume a common form, more or less fixed; and that the portions of the 
three Gospels which harmonize most exactly owe their agreement to the fact that the 
apostolic preaching had already clothed itself in a settled or usual form of words, to 
which the writers inclined to conform without feeling bound to do so; and the differ- 



THE ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM ON THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 133 

ences which occur, often in the closest proximity to the harmonies, arise from the feeling 
of independence with which each wrote what he had seen and heard, or, in the case of 
Mark and Luke, from what apostolic witnesses had told them. But if the uniformity of 
the synoptic Gospels is ascribed to the oral narratives of the apostles, it may be asked why 
the accounts of the death and resurrection of Christ given in the three Gospels present so 
few correspondences compared with the other narratives? Was not this history of the 
highest interest and importance? Could it have failed to be repeated and dwelt upon? 
Should it not, therefore, have presented the most marked similarities in the historic 
cycle? Whence, then, arise the very great discrepancies running through the descrip- 
tion of this event in the four canonical Gospels? To this it may be answered, that 
these facts took place at Jerusalem, and were so well known that the apostles could insist 
upon them as indubitable facts without dwelling on the minor circumstances. And, as 
regards the resurrection, it is possible that the divergence arose from the intention of 
each Evangelist to contribute something toward the weight of evidence for this central 
truth. Accordingly, each of the four Evangelists mentions distinct acts and appearances 
of the Lord to establish that he was risen indeed. 

The supposition that the singular correspondence in matter and language, which 
exists among the first three Gospels, is to be attributed to the oral teaching of the 
apostles is strikingly confirmed by Luke, who, in his preface, expressly declares the 
information derived from the eye-witnesses of the ministry of Christ, that is, the oral 
narratives of the apostles, to be the only authentic source of his own Gospel, and of the 
other narratives that had been attempted. While Matthew, the apostle, committed to 
writing the narratives as he and the other apostles had been accustomed to communicate 
them orally, Mark and Luke, who derived their knowledge from the apostles, would 
record those narratives as they had heard them. There would, of course, be variations 
of language, and minor circumstances would be omitted or inserted, as it was orally 
related by different individuals, or by the same individual at different times. It is not 
probable that the apostles recited in a systematic series of discourses all the transactions 
of the ministry of Jesus related by any one of the first three Evangelists. According to 
the particular occasion presented, or the special object which they had in view, they 
would group together events, sayings, and discourses particularly adapted to their pur- 
pose. They would class their accounts of the life of Christ, but they did not narrate 
them chronologically. Thus we may account for the agreements and disagreements in 
the chronological arrangement of the Synoptists. 

As an objection to the foregoing explanation of the coincidence of language among 
the Synoptists, it has been urged as highly improbable that the apostles, whose native 
language was Hebrew, or rather its Aramaic dialect, would have addressed the Jews at 
Jerusalem in Greek. But we must remember that many Hellenists — Jews born and edu- 
cated in foreign countries, to whom the Greek was more familiar than the language of 
their own nation — dwelt in Jerusalem, or resorted thither during the great national 
feasts, and that the Greek was at the time so widely spread, (Josephus, Antiq., XVII, 
11, 4; Bell. Jud., Ill, 9, 1,) that most of the natives of Palestine were sufficiently 
acquainted with it. Though the apostles may, at first, have preached the Gospel at 
Jerusalem, more or less, in Aramaic, it is evident that the Greek language was soon sub- 
stituted; for it is certain that a considerable portion of the early Christians in Jerusalem 
was composed of Hellenists, (Acts vi, 1;) with Hellenists Paul disputed after his conver- 
sion, (Acts ix, 29;) we find mention of various synagogues in that city of foreign Jews 
who associated together according to the countries from which they came, (Acts vi, 9.) 
As the Hellenists, with the converts from Greek Gentiles, soon outnumbered the Chris- 
tians of Palestine, the Greek language was opted as the regular medium of the Church 
to promulgate the Gospel. That this could be done even in Jerusalem without provoking 
popular prejudice, appears from the circumstance that, when Paul spoke in Hebrew, 



134 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



(Acts xxii, 2,) it was unexpected, and produced unusual attention. From this the infer- 
ence may be drawn, that public addresses were commonly made in Greek. 

It is now generally admitted that the oral teaching of the apostles was the archetype, 
the original source of the common parts of the synoptic Gospels; but, at the same time 
it has been considered as not of itself sufficient to account for all the phenomena which 
they present, without assuming the existence of some written documents embodying por- 
tions of that oral teaching, such as Luke refers to. Of this opinion is Alford, who says: 
"I believe that the apostles, in virtue not merely of their having been eye and ear-wit- 
nesses of the Evangelical history, but especially in virtue of their office, gave to the vari- 
ous Churches their testimony in a narrative of facts; such narrative being modified in 
each case by the individual mind of the apostle himself, and his sense of what was 
requisite for the particular community to which he was ministering. While they were 
principally together, and instructing the converts at Jerusalem, such narrative would 
naturally be for the most part the same, and expressed in the same, or nearly the same 
words; coincident, however, not from design or rule, but because the things themselves were 
the same, and the teaching naturally fell for the most part into one form. It would be 
easy and interesting to follow the probable origin and growth of this cycle of narratives 
of the words and deeds of our Lord in the Church at Jerusalem — for both the Jews and 
the Hellenists — the latter under such teachers as Philip and Stephen, commissioned and 
authenticated by the apostles. In the course of such a process some portions would natu- 
rally be written down by private believers for their own use or that of friends. And as 
the Church spread to Samaria, Caesarea, and Antioch, the want would be felt, in each of 
these places, of similar cycles of oral teaching, which, when supplied, would thencefor- 
ward belong to and be current in those respective Churches. And these portions of the 
Evangelic history, oral or partially documentary, would be adopted under the sanction of the 
apostles, who were as in all things, so especially in this, the appointed and Divinely- 
guided overseers of the whole Church. This common substratum of apostolic teaching, I 
believe to have been the original source of the common part of our three Gospels. . . . De- 
livered, usually, in the same or similar terms to the catechumens in the various Churches, 
and becoming the text of instruction for their pastors and teachers, it by degrees under- 
went those modifications which the various Gospels now present to us. And I am not 
now speaking of any considerable length of time, such as might suffice to deteriorate and 
corrupt mere traditional teaching, but of no more than the transmission through men apos- 
tolic, or almost apostolic, yet of independent habits of speech and thought, of an account which 
remained in substance the same. Let us imagine the modifications which the individual 
memory, brooding affectionately and reverently over each word and act of our Lord, 
would introduce into a narrative in relating it variously and under differing circum- 
stances; the Holy Spirit, who brought to their remembrance whatever things he had said 
to them, (John xiv, 26,) working in and distributing to each severally as he would; let us 
place to the account the various little changes of transposition or omission, of variation 
in diction or emphasis, which would be sure to arise in the freedom of individual teach- 
ing, and we have, I believe, the only reasonable solution of the arbitrary and otherwise 
unaccountable coincidences and discrepancies in these parts of our Gospels." 

§ 33. A Consideration of the Inspired Character of the Synoptical Gospels, on 

the Ground of their being chiefly the Result of the 

Oral Teaching of the Apostles. 

It is a postulate of reason to assume that, if the Author and Object of our Christian 
faith was, as is historically proved, God manifest in the flesh, the Son of man in whom 
dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily, this fact involves another fact; namely, that the 
records of his life, his discourses, and acts were written under Divine direction and pre- 



THE ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM ON THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 135 

served to us by Divine Providence. That they were written under Divine direction, or 
by inspiration, is, moreover, a necessary inference from the promise of the gift of the 
Holy Spirit, given by Christ to his apostles in connection with their commission to preach 
the Gospel to all the world, and to build up his Church. 

It was at their first mission (Matt, x) that Christ referred his apostles to the assistance 
of the Holy Spirit in certain emergencies of their apostolical calling; namely, when they 
should be called upon to give an account of their doctrine and ministry. In such cases 
he would teach them what and how they should speak, (Luke xii, 11, 12;) yea, their 
Father's Spirit would speak in them, (Matt, x, 19, 20.) It was in his last conversations 
with them, preparatory to the time when they should carry on his work on earth with- 
out his personal presence, that he promised them the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, who 
should not only bring his teaching to their remembrance, but complete it, and guide 
them into all truth, even into those truths which they could, as yet, not bear. (John 
xiv-xvi.) Announcing to them after his resurrection their future mission in the words, 
"As my Father has sent me, even so send I you/' and granting them the power to forgive 
and retain sins, he breathed upon them— an act emblematical of the Holy Ghost, which 
they were to receive, (John xx, 21-23;) but while instructed to become his witnesses in 
Jerusalem, in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth, they are commanded to 
tarry at Jerusalem till they should be endued with the Spirit from on high. (Luke xxiv, 
49; Acts i, 8.) This promise was fulfilled to its whole extent on the day of Pentecost, 
and from this day we see the hitherto timid apostles engage in the public preaching of 
the Gospel with power and success through the Holy Ghost, that had been sent them 
from heaven. (Acts ii, 33; 1 Peter i, 12.) To the Holy Ghost they ascribe their doc- 
trines and precepts. (Acts xv, 28; v, 3, 4; 1 Cor. xiv, 37; Eph. iii, 5; 1 Thess. ii, 13; 
iv, 8.) They claim (1 Cor. ii) that they do not speak in human wisdom and skill, but in 
a higher wisdom given unto them from God, through his Spirit, that searches all things, 
(v. 10;) that the Holy Ghost imparts unto them a knowledge which is altogether foreign 
to the world and the natural man, (vs. 8, 14.) being part of that knowledge with which 
God knoweth himself, (vs. 11, 12,) but by which they are enabled to know the mind of 
the Lord as such that have the mind of Christ, (v. 16 ;) that what they know in this way 
they speak not in words which human wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost 
teacheth, (v. 13,) comparing spiritual things with spiritual. For this very reason the 
apostles place themselves not only on an equal footing with, but even above " the proph- 
ets," the sacred writers of the Old Testament. (2 Peter iii, 2; Pom. xvi, 25, 26; 1 Cor. 
xii, 28; Eph. iv, 11; ii, 20.) 

From all this we learn two truths: First, that the men chosen by Christ for the 
preaching of his Gospel acted, both in their oral teachings and in their writings, not in 
the capacity of merely-human witnesses, but that their testimony was united with that 
of the Holy Ghost, (John xv, 26, 27;) secondly, that the Spirit promised and given by 
Christ personally to the eleven had reference not so much to them individually, but to 
the apostolical office and all its functions, as we clearly see in the case of the apostle Paul, 
inclusive of those assistants in their work whom the Lord raised up, and who were also 
partakers of the gifts of the Holy Ghost. 

The Holy Ghost must be conceived of as the Agent, who begets, guides, and governs 
the Church. In this capacity he is Christ's representative on earth. For this very 
reason it was necessary that he should preeminently manifest his power in those who 
were to be the chief organs through which the new life was to flow from the head into 
the whole body ; that is, in those who were, to use Paul's expression, the apostles of Jesus 
Christ by the will of God. But from the relation of the Holy Ghost to the apostolic office 
we learn, also, why we may place the writings of the Evangelists, Mark and Luke, on an 
equal footing with those of the apostles, and consider them as inspired. We need not attach 
much importance to the tradition that they belonged to the seventy whom Jesus first 



136 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



sent forth to preach in Judea, or to the one hundred and twenty disciples on whom the 
Holy Ghost fell on the day of Pentecost. It is enough to know that the apostles had 
received the power to impart the gift of the Holy Spirit by the imposition of their hands, 
and that they made use of this power. (Acts viii, 14-17; xix, 6.) Are we, then, not 
authorized to take it for granted that Mark and Luke, whom Peter and Paul had chosen 
for their special co-workers out of the great number of Evangelists whom the Lord had 
already raised up from among Jews and Gentiles, received through the apostles the gift 
of the Holy Spirit necessary to give to the Church an inspired record of the discourses 
and acts of the Lord? Besides, though they had not been eye and ear-witnesses of the 
life and ministry of Christ, yet they were the companions of those that had been eye- 
witnesses, and they heard continually from their lips the sayings and doings of Christ, 
having the best opportunity to obtain the fullest information. Again, though they had 
not been commissioned by Christ himself to teach the nations and to feed his lambs, yet 
they had been made by the apostles their partners and fellow-laborers for the kingdom 
of God, (2 Cor. viii, 23; 1 Thess. iii, 2; Philem., 24;) they were engaged in the same 
work of the Lord as the apostles, (1 Cor. xvi, 10,) and had to perform apostolical func- 
tions, (Titus i, 5; 2 Tim. iv, 1-5.) Although they did not plant, yet they did water; 
although they did not lay the foundation, yet they built upon it, and have transmitted to 
us records of unadulterated truth through the same Spirit that was also in them, (2 Tim. 
i, 14,) and we have to honor them next to the apostles as the Divine instruments in the 
building up of his Church, and as stewards of the mysteries of God, (1 Cor. iv, 1.) 
Lastly, it must not be forgotten that the Gospels of Mark and Luke, having been writ- 
ten, if not before the death of Peter and Paul, at least before that of the apostle John, 
must have had the sanction of at least one of the apostles whom the Head of the Church 
had authorized to bind and to loose. 

But the important question arises: In what sense, or to what extent were the historical 
books of the New Testament inspired, especially the records of the two Evangelists who 
were not themselves apostles? There has been much unnecessary controversy on the def- 
inition of the term "inspiration;" different modes and degrees of inspiration have been 
assumed. The most important distinction appears to us that between inspiration and revela- 
tion: two terms which, though totally different, are often used as synonyms. Revelation is a 
purely -Divine act — it is God revealing himself to man, either by supernatural, external facts, 
such as the miracles recorded in Scripture, or by supernatural, internal communications, 
such as when the Spirit of God imparts to man the infallible foreknowledge of future 
events, or reveals to him doctrines which lie beyond the reach of human reason. In the 
reception of such a supernatural, internal communication, the human mind is perfectly 
passive, not thinking its own thoughts, or speaking its own words, but only the thoughts 
and words of the Spirit of God. Not so in inspiration. That demands human as well as 
Divine agency. The Spirit of God in inspiration acts not simply on man but through man, 
using the faculties of man according to their natural law. God, who gives the message, 
selects also the messenger, so that the traits of individual character and the peculiarities 
of manner and purpose, which are displayed in the composition and language of the 
sacred writings, are essential to the perfect exhibition of their meaning. By inspiration 
the human mind is enabled correctly to apprehend, and then authentically and authori- 
tatively to make known, orally or in writing, a revelation which God has given of him- 
self. The duty and qualification authentically and authoritatively to make known a 
self-revealing act of God is evidently to be distinguished from that Divine act. This dis- 
tinction is overlooked when it is assumed that, in recording the facts of revelation, the 
sacred writers wrote down every word just as it was dictated to them by the Holy Ghost, 
in the same manner in which God revealed to the prophets future events. This is what 
is called verbal inspiration in the strict sense of the word ; but the term itself, as we have 
Been, is a misnomer — it would be revelation, not inspiration. Such Divine influence as 



THE ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM ON THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 137 

takes place in revelation was not needed for an authentic and authoritative record of 
revelation, nor do the Evangelists claim it; nor would it have been in accordance with 
Divine "Wisdom to have excluded human agency in the communication of his revelation. 
The very evidences, for instance, of this human agency, which the apparent or trifling 
discrepancies in the statements of the different Evangelists present, answer a wise pur- 
pose; they convince us that they were independent witnesses, and that the whole story 
did not arise from some well-concerted plan to deceive the world; the homely style of 
some of the writers proves to us that they were really fishermen, and not philosophers; 
thus we have a convincing evidence that the deepest system of theology, and the noblest 
code of ethics ever propounded — the one stirring the depth of the whole human heart, 
the other guiding all human life — came, not from the profound speculations of the wisest 
of mankind, but either from God himself, or else from a source more inexplicable and 
absolutely impossible. The theory of what is called verbal inspiration, on the contrary, 
far from being essential to the Divine authority of the Gospel records, is, indeed, as we 
shall further show, the only ground on which an objection can be brought against their 
claim of being authentic and authoritative records of a Divine revelation; and though 
this theory of verbal inspiration has been received as if it were tantamount to plenary 
inspiration, it rests on no Scripture authority and is supported by no historical testimony, 
if we except a few ambiguous metaphors of the Fathers. "Much might be said," says 
Alford, in his Prolegomena to the Gospels, "of the a priori un worthiness of such a 
theory, as applied to a Gospel whose character is the freedom of the spirit, not the bond- 
age of the letter; but it belongs more to my present work to try it by applying it to the 
Gospels as we have them. And I do not hesitate to say, that, being thus applied, its 
effects will be to destroy the credibility of our Evangelists. Hardly a single instance of 
parallelism between them arises where they do not relate the same thing, indeed, in sub- 
stance, but expressed in terms which, if literally taken, are incompatible with each other. 
To cite only one obvious instance : The title over the cross was written in Greek. Ac- 
cording, then, to the verbal-inspiration theory, each Evangelist has recorded the exact 
words of the inscription; not the general sense, but the inscription itself — not a letter less or 
more. This is absolutely necessary to the theory. Its advocates must not be allowed, 
with convenient inconsistency, to take refuge in a common-sense view of the matter 
wherever their theory fails them, and still to uphold it in the main. Another objection 
to the theory is, if it be so, the Christian world is left in uncertainty what her Scriptures 
are, as long as the sacred text is full of various readings. Some one manuscript must be 
pointed out to us which carries the weight of verbal inspiration, or some text whose 
authority shall be undoubted must be promulgated. But manifestly neither of these 
things can ever happen. The fact is, that this theory uniformly gives way before an 
intelligent study of the Scriptures themselves; and is only held, consistently and thor- 
oughly, by those who never have undertaken that study. When put forth by those who 
have, it is never carried fairly through; but while broadly asserted, is in detail abandoned." 

Verbal inspiration, in the sense explained, is utterly irreconcilable with the peculiar 
coincidences and differences which the compositions of the Synoptists present; but, in 
rejecting the verbal dictation of the Gospel records, we are far from calling in question 
their "plenary inspiration." By plenary inspiration we mean such an influence of the 
Holy Spirit on the minds of the Evangelists as prevented them from expressing an error 
or untruth, in any thing essential to the Divine revelation, of which they were to give 
an authentic and authoritative record, both with regard to its facts and the doctrines 
involved in them — yet, so that, on the one hand, the human element was not neutralized 
by the Divine agency, and, on the other hand, the truth of God remained unimpaired by 
the individual mind. The relation of the human to the Divine element in the inspired 
writings is very beautifully and cautiously set forth by Mr. Elliott, (Aids to Faith, page 
479:) "As in the case of the Incarnate Word, we fully recognize in the Lord's humanity 



138 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



all essentially-human limitations and weaknesses — the hunger, the thirst, and the weari- 
ness on the side of the body, and the gradual development on the side of the human 
mind — in a word, all that belongs to the essential and original characteristics of the pure 
form of the nature he vouchsafed to assume, but plainly deny the existence therein of the 
faintest trace of sin, or of moral or mental imperfection — even so in the case of the writ- 
ten Word, viewed on its purely-human side, and in its reference to matters previously 
admitted to have no bearing on Divine Truth, we may admit therein the existence of such 
incompleteness, such limitations, and such imperfections as belong even to the highest 
forms of purely -truthful human testimony, but consistently deny the existence of mis- 
taken views, perversion, misrepresentation, and any form whatever of consciously-com- 
mitted error or inaccuracy." 

Plenary inspiration, then, properly understood, does not forbid the Evangelists to 
draw from natural sources of information, as Luke, in the preface to his Gospel expressly 
asserts to have done, or to quote from other inspired writers without giving their words 
literatim, and according to their individuality to differ from each other in the selection, 
in the manner and in the arrangement of the events which they relate, nor is it incon- 
sistent even with inaccuracies in matters which all agree in regarding as wholly unim- 
portant, which have no reference to the purpose of their writings, to give an authentic 
and authoritative record of Divine revelation. Such alleged inaccuracies have not yet 
been incontestably proved; but even if we admit their existence, they are, like some 
alleged contradictions, (see § 21,) due either to our ignorance of some simple fact, which, 
if known, would explain all; or they furnish only an illustration of one of those very 
conditions and characteristics of human testimony, however honest and truthful, without 
which it would cease to be human testimony at all. Moreover, there is no need of 
ascribing to the insjnred writers a perfect knowledge of geography, profane history, 
science, etc.; it is sufficient for their inspired character to maintain that whatever they 
affirm to be true, if it has the remotest reference to religion, is the truth, the whole truth, 
and nothing but the truth, and that they never declare any thing to be scientifically true 
that is scientifically false. This is a point which concerns not so much the Evangelists as 
the other inspired writers, especially of the Old Testament; yet, as it is a vital point in 
the question of inspiration, we may dwell on it for a moment. Though the writers of the 
Old Testament, compared with the most enlightened sages of heathen antiquity, show a 
superior knowledge of physical science, which nothing short of Divine inspiration can 
account for; and though recent discussions of the subjects of controversy by men of 
acknowledged scientific attainments have tended to show that the oppositions of Scrij)- 
ture and of science are far more doubtful than they are assumed to be ; yet — even if the 
charge of error in matters of human knowledge should be substantiated against any of 
the sacred writers — this would not militate against their plenary insjiuration for the jmr- 
pose of giving us an infallible depository of religious truth. Scripture was not given to 
teach us science; it was, therefore, not needful to render the sacred writers infallible in 
matters of science. 

Alford, who arrives, as we have shown, at substantially the same results with regard 
to the origin of the synoptical Gospels we have tried to reach, lays down the following 
propositions respecting their inspiration, which are in full harmony with the definition 
of inspiration given above, and may serve as a summary of our whole investigation: 

"1. The results of our inquiries may be thus stated: That our three Gospels have 
arisen independently of one another from sources of information possessed by the Evan- 
gelists; such sources of information, for a very considerable part of their contents, being 
the narrative teaching of the apostles; and in cases where their personal testimony was 
out of the question, oral or documentary narratives, preserved in and received by the 
Christian Church in the apostolic age; that the three Gospels are not formal, complete 
accounts of the whole incidents of the sacred history, but each of them fragmentary, 



THE ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM ON THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 139 

containing such portions of it as fell within the notice, or the special design, of the 
Evangelist. 

"2. The important question now conies before us: In what sense are the Evangelists to 
be regarded as having been inspired by the Holy Spirit of God? That they were so, in some 
sense, has been the concurrent belief of the Christian body in all ages. In the second, as 
in the nineteenth century, the ultimate appeal in matters of fact and doctrine has been to 
these venerable writings. It may be well, then, first to inquire on what grounds their 
authority has been rated so high by all Christians? 

"3. And I believe the answer to this question will be found to be: Because they are 
regarded as authentic documents, descending from the apostolic age, and presenting to us the 
substance of the apostolic testimony. The apostles being raised up for the special purpose 
of witnessing to the Gospel history, and these memoirs having been universally received in 
the early Church as embodying their testimony, I see no escape left from the inference 
that they come to us with inspired authority. The apostles themselves, and their co tem- 
poraries in the ministry of the Word, were singularly endowed with the Holy Spirit for 
the founding and teaching of the Church; and Christians of all ages have accepted the 
Gospels and other writings of the New Testament as the written result of the Pentecostal 
effusion. The early Church was not likely to be deceived in this matter. The reception 
of the Gospels was immediate and universal. They never were placed for a moment, by 
the consent of the Christians, in the same category with the spurious documents which 
soon sprang up after them. In external history, as in internal character, they differ 
entirely from the apocryphal Gospels; which, though in some cases bearing the name 
and pretending to contain the teaching of an apostle, were never recognized as apostolic. 

"4. Upon the authenticity, that is, the apostolicity of our Gospels, rests their claim to 
inspiration. Containing the substance of the apostles' testimony, they carry with them 
that special power of the Holy Spirit which rested on the apostles in virtue of their 
office, and also on other teachers and preachers of the first age. It may be well, then, to 
inquire of what kind that power was, and how far extending. 

"5. "We do not find the apostles transformed, from being men of individual character, 
and thought, and feeling, into mere channels for the transmission of infallible truth; we 
find them, humanly speaking, to have been still distinguished by the same characteristics 
as before the descent of the Holy Ghost. We see Peter still ardent and impetuous, still 
shrinking from the danger of human disapproval; we see John still exhibiting the same 
union of deep love and burning zeal; we find them pursuing different paths of teaching, 
exhibiting different styles of writing, taking hold of the truth from different sides. 

"6. Again, we do not find the apostles put in possession at once of the Divine counsel 
with regard to the Church. Though Peter and John were full of the Holy Ghost immedi- 
ately after the ascension, neither at that time, nor for many years afterward, were they 
put in possession of the purpose of God regarding the Gentiles, which in due time was 
specially revealed to Peter, and recognized in the apostolic council at Jerusalem. 

"7. These considerations serve to show us in what respects the working of the Holy 
Spirit on the sacred writers was analogous to his influence on every believer in Christ; 
namely, in the retention of individual character, and thought, and feeling, and in the 
gradual development of the ways and purposes of God to their minds. 

"8. But their situation and office was peculiar and unexampled. And for its fulfill- 
ment peculiar and unexampled gifts were bestowed upon them. One of these, which 
bears very closely upon our present subject, was the recalling by the Holy Spirit of those 
things which the Lord had said to them. This was his own formal promise, recorded in 
John xiv, 26. And, if we look at our present Gospels, we see abundant evidence of its 
fulfillment. What unassisted human memory could treasure up sayings and parables, 
however deep the impression at the time, and report them in full at the distance of sev- 
eral years, as we find them reported, with every internal mark of truthfulness in our 



140 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



Gospels? What invention of man could have devised discourses which, by common con- 
sent, differ from all sayings of men — which possess this character unaltered, notwith- 
standing their transmission through men of various mental organization— which contain 
things impossible to be understood or appreciated by their reporters at the time when 
they profess to have been uttered — which inwrap the seeds of all human improvement 
yet attained, and are evidently full of power for more? I refer to this latter alternative 
only to remark, that all considerations, whether of the apostles' external circumstances, 
or their internal feelings respecting Him of whom they bore witness, combine to confirm 
the persuasion of Christians that they have recorded as said by our Lord what he truly 
did say, and not any words of their own imagination. 

" 9. And let us pursue the matter further by analogy. Can we suppose that the light 
poured by the Holy Spirit upon the sayings of our Lord would be confined to such say- 
ings, and not extend itself over the other parts of the narratives of his life on earth? 
Can we believe that those miracles, which, though not uttered in words, were yet acted 
parables, would not be, under the same gracious assistance, brought back to the minds 
of the apostles, so that they should be placed on record for the teaching of the Church? 

" 10. And, going yet further, to those parts of the Gospels which were wholly out of 
the cycle of the apostles' own testimony, can we imagine that the Divine discrimination 
which enabled them to detect the ' lie to the Holy Ghost,' should have forsaken them in 
judging of the records of our Lord's birth and infancy, so that they should have taught 
or sanctioned an apocryphal, fabulous, or mythical account of such matters ? Some ac- 
count of them must have been current in the apostolic circle ; for Mary, the mother of 
Jesus, survived the ascension, and would be fully capable of giving undoubted testimony 
to the facts. Can we conceive, then, that, with her among them, the apostles should have 
delivered other than a true history of these things ? Can we suppose that Luke's ac- 
count, which he includes among the things delivered by those who were eye-witnesses and 
ministers of the Word from the first, is other than the true one, and stamped with the 
authority of the witnessing and discriminating Spirit dwelling in the apostles? Can we 
suppose that the account in the still more immediately-apostolic Gospel of Matthew is 
other than the history seen from a different side, and independently narrated ? 

"11. But if it be inquired how far such Divine superintendence has extended in the 
framing of our Gospels as we at present find them, the answer must be furnished by no 
preconceived idea of what ought to have been, but by the contents of the Gospels them- 
selves. That those contents are various, and variously arranged, is token enough that in their 
selection and disposition we have human agency presented to us, under no more direct 
guidance, in this respect, than that general leading which, in main and essential points, 
should insure entire accordance. Such leading admits of much variety in points of minor 
consequence. Two men may be equally led by the Holy Spirit to record the events of 
our Lord's life for our edification, though one may believe and record that the visit to the 
Gadarenes took place before the calling of Matthew, while the other places it after that 
event; though one, in narrating it, speaks of two demoniacs — the other only of one. 

"12. And it is observable that in the only place in the three Gospels where an Evan- 
gelist speaks of himself, he expressly lays claim, not to any supernatural guidance in the 
arrangement of his subject-matter, but to a diligent tracing down of all things from 
the first; in other words, to the care and accuracy of a faithful and honest compiler. 
After such an avowal on the part of the writer himself, to assert an immediate revelation 
to him of the arrangement to be adopted and the chronological notices to be given, is clearly 
not justified, according to his own showing and assertion. The value of such arrange- 
ment and chronological connection must depend on various circumstances in each case; 
on their definiteness and consistency; on their agreement or disagreement with the other 
extant records; the preference being, in each case, given to that one whose account is the 
most minute in details, and whose notes of sequence are the most distinct. 



THE ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM ON THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 141 

"13. In thus speaking, I am doing no more than even the most scrupulous of our har- 
monizers have, in fact, done. In the case alluded to in paragraph 11, there is not one of 
them who has not altered the arrangement, either of Matthew or of Mark and Luke, so as to 
bring the visit to the Gadarenes into the same part of the Evangelic history. But if the 
arrangement itself were matter of Divine inspiration, then have we no right to vary it in the 
slightest degree, but must maintain — as the harmonists have done in other cases, but 
never, as I am aware, in this — two distinct visits to have been made at different times, and 
nearly the same events to have occurred at both. I need hardly add that a similar method of 
proceeding with all the variations in the Gospels, which would on this supposition be neces- 
sary, would render the Scripture narrative a heap of improbabilities, and strengthen, 
instead of weakening, the cause of the enemies of our faith. 

"14. And not only of the arrangement of the Evangelic history are these remarks to 
be understood. There are certain minor points of accuracy or inaccuracy, of which 
human research suffices to inform men, and on which, from want of that research, it is 
often the practice to speak vaguely and inexactly. Such are sometimes the convention- 
ally-received distances from place to place; such are the common accounts of phenomena 
in natural history, etc. Now, in matters of this kind, the Evangelists and apostles were 
not supernaturally informed, but left, in common with others, to the guidance of their 
natural faculties. 

" 15. The same may be said of citations and dates from history. In the last apology 
of Stephen — which he spoke, being full of the Holy Ghost, and with Divine influence 
beaming: from his countenance — we have at least two demonstrable historical inaccura- 
cies. And the occurrence of similar ones in the Gospels does not in any way affect the 
inspiration or the veracity of the Evangelists. 

"16. It may be well to mention one notable illustration of the principles upheld in 
this section. What can be more undoubted and unanimous than the testimony of the 
Evangelists to the resurrection of the Lord? If there be one fact rather than another of 
which the apostles were witnesses, it was this; and in the concurrent narratives of all 
four Evangelists it stands related beyond all cavil or question. Yet, of all the events 
which they have described, none is so variously put forth in detail, or with so many minor 
discrepancies. And this was just what might have been expected on the principles above 
laid down. The great fact that the Lord was risen — set forth by the ocular witness of the 
apostles, who had seen him — became from that day first in importance in the delivery of 
their testimony. The precise order of his appearances would naturally, from the over- 
whelming nature of their present emotions, be a matter of minor consequence, and per- 
haps not even of accurate inquiry till some time had passed. Then, with the utmost 
desire on the part of the women and apostles to collect the events in their exact order of 
time, some confusion would be apparent in the history, and some discrepancies in versions 
of it which were the results of separate and independent inquiries; the traces of which 
pervade our present accounts. But what fair-judging student of the Gospel ever made 
these variations or discrepancies a ground for doubting the veracity of the Evangelists 
as to the fact of the resurrection, or the principal details of the Lord's appearances after 
it?" (Alford's Prolegomena to the Greek Testament, Ch. I, Sec. 6.) 



142 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



PART Y. 

PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON" THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 



§ 34. The Condition of the "World, Jewish, Greek, and Roman, at the Advent 

of Jesus Christ. 

Christ being "the center and turning-point, as well as key of all history," it seems 
to us not out of place, in an Introduction to the Gospels, to glance at the preparation 
which existed in the moral and religious condition of the world for the appearance of the 
Eedeemer on earth. Upon this process of preparation Neander, the father of modern 
Church history,* threw more light than any of his predecessors; and, upon the founda- 
tion which he had laid, his worthy successors, Guericke, Kurtz, Jacobi, and Schaff, built 
their deeply-interesting researches. The most lucid as well as comprehensive discussion 
of this subject we find in Dr. Schaff' s Church History, and quote, therefore, from him, 
with some modification and abridgment, and with the exception of what is said "on the 
moral and religious state of the pagan world among the Greeks and Eomans," on which 
we have preferred the statement of Guericke. 

"With the incarnation of the Son of God commences, and on it rests, the fullness of 
time. (Gal. iv, 4.) It is the end of the old world, and the beginning of the new, which 
is dated from his birth. The entire development of humanity, especially of the religious 
ideas of all nations, before the birth of Christ, must be viewed as an introduction to this 
great event. The preparation for it began indeed with the very creation of man, who 
was made in the image of God, and destined for communion with him through the eter- 
nal Son, and with the promise of deliverance by the seed of the woman, some vague 
memories of which promise survived in the heathen religions. With the call of Abra- 
ham, some two thousand years before the birth of Christ, the religious development of 
humanity separates into two independent and antagonistic lines, Judaism and heathen- 
ism. In the former the development was influenced and directed by a continuous course 
of Divine cooperation; in the latter it was left to the unaided powers and capacities of 
man. These two parallel lines continued side by side with each other till, in the fullness 
of time, they merged in Christianity, which they were mutually to serve by their appro- 
priate fruits, and results, and respectively-peculiar developments; but with which, also, 
the ungodly elements of both would enter into a deadly conflict. As Christianity is the 
reconciliation and union of God and man in and through Jesus Christ, the God-man and 
Savior, it must have been preceded by a twofold process of preparation— an approach of 
God to man, and an approach of man to God. In Judaism the preparation is direct and 

*"By birth and early training an Israelite, and a genuine Nathanael too, full of childlike simplicity and of 
longings for the Messianic salvation — in youth an enthusiastic student of Grecian philosophy, particularly of Plato, 
who became for him a scientific schoolmaster to bring him to Christ — he had, when in his seventeenth year he received 
Christian baptism, passed through in his own inward experience, so to speak, the whole historical course by which 
the world had been prepared for Christianity; he had gained an experimental knowledge of the workings of Judaism 
and heathenism in their direct tendency toward Christianity; and thus he had already broken his own way to the 
only proper position for contemplating the history of the Church — a position whence Jesus Christ is viewed as the 
object of the deepest yearnings of humanity, the center of all history, and the only key to its mysterious sense." 
'Dr. Schaff 's History of the Apostolic Church, p. 96.) 



PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 143 

positive, proceeding from above downward, and ending with the birth of the Messiah. 
In heathenism it is indirect, and mainly, though not entirely, negative, proceeding from 
below upward, and ending with a helpless cry of mankind for redemption. There wo 
have a special revelation or self-communication of the only true God by word and deed, 
ever growing clearer and plainer, till at last the Divine nature appears in the human to 
raise it to communion with itself; here man, guided indeed by the general providence of 
God, and lighted by the glimmer of the Logos shining in the darkness, (John i, 5,) yet 
unaided by direct revelation, and left to his own ways, (Acts xiv, 16,) if haply he might 
feel after the Lord and find him. In Judaism the true religion was prepared for man- 
kind, and in heathenism mankind was prepared for its reception. There the Divine 
substance is begotten ; here the human forms are molded to receive it. The former is 
like the elder son in the parable, who abode in his father's house; the latter like the 
prodigal, who squandered his portion, yet at last shuddered before the gaping abyss of 
perdition, and penitently returned to the bosom of his father's compassionate love. The 
flower of paganism appears in the two great nations of classic antiquity, Greece and 
Rome. With the language, morality, literature, and religion of these nations Christian- 
ity came directly into contact. These, together with the Jews, were the chosen nations 
of the ancient world, and shared the earth among them. While the Jews were chosen 
for things eternal, to keep the sanctuary of the true religion, the Greeks prepared the 
elements of natural culture, of science and art for the use of the Church, and the Romans 
developed the idea of law, and organized the civilized world in a universal empire, ready 
to serve the spiritual universality of the Gospel. On the one hand God endowed the 
Greeks and Romans with the richest natural gifts, that they might reach the highest civ- 
ilization possible without the aid of Christianity, and thus both provide the instruments 
of human science, art, and law for the use of the Christian Church, and yet at the same 
time show the utter impotence of these alone to bless and save the world. On the other 
hand, the universal empire of Rome was a positive groundwork for the universal empire 
of the Gospel. It served as a crucible, in which all contradictory and irreconcilable 
peculiarities of the ancient nations and religions were dissolved into the chaos of the new 
creation. The Roman legions razed the partition-walls among the ancient nations, 
brought the extremes of the civilized world together in free intercourse, and united 
North and South, and East and West in the bonds of a common language and culture, 
of common laws and customs. Thus they evidently, though unconsciously, opened the 
way for the rapid and general spread of that religion which unites all nations in one 
family of God by the spiritual bond of faith and love. In addition to this general sur- 
vey, let us consider more particularly: 

1. The moral and religious state of the pagan -world among the Greeks and Momans. The 
religious ideas that lie at the bottom of all pagan religions sprang originally from Divine 
revelation, either internal or external. Having been darkened by human apostasy, they 
could not, however, in the distorted form which they assumed in heathenism, avail to 
check even the grossest manifestations of unbelief and superstition. Resting upon 
myths and the vague intimations and feelings of the human soul, the ancient popular relig- 
ion of the Greeks and Momans, in particular, naturally came in conflict with the increasing 
education and refinement of these highly-civilized nations, but could not vanquish the 
skepticism that was engendered thereby. Hence, notwithstanding the efforts of the Gov- 
ernment and the patriotic citizen to prop up the declining State religion, an utter disbe- 
lief in every thing religious and Divine gradually spread among the cultivated and noble 
classes, and passed over from them into the mass of society, bringing with it a dreadful 
corruption of morals and manners. A species of philosophy that set up pleasure as the 
highest good, and wholly denied the reality of any objective truth, became the prevalent 
mode of thinking, and if here and there a man of more earnest religious temper felt con- 
strained to resist the godless spirit of his age in its extreme forms, yet religion even for 



144 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



him lost its vitality, and God himself became the product of the human understanding. 
But on the other hand, this very unbelief, groping about in vain for a satisfying object, 
carried the germ of a reaction. Many, with a sense of inward emptiness and a dim inti- 
mation of a higher world, despairing of any satisfaction from the various conflicting 
philosophical systems, yearned after the old religion of their fathers, and boldly grasped 
it again with glowing zeal, and the "barbaric" religions of Asia and Egypt were brought 
in to impart a new decoration and interest to the effete ancestral system, and amulets, 
talismans, and magicians found a welcome reception. Such was the general state of the 
religion of the Greeks and Eomans at the time of the advent of the Eedeemer. Eecklesa 
infidelity and horrible superstition, both alike fostered by the reigning dissoluteness of 
morals, contended for the mastery, and the great mass of the people lay sunk in absolute 
godlessness. 

A deeper religious need was awakened in some few minds, and these sought satisfaction 
in the two better philosophical systems of the time; neither of which, however, was fitted 
to meet this immortal longing of the heart. The Stoic philosophy, through its ideal of a 
perfect virtue, could indeed flare a clearer light over the prevailing corruption of morals, 
but could give no disclosures respecting the unseen world and man's future relations 
to God. Stoicism, moreover, left its disciples to the isolated strain of their own wills. 
Blindly and coldly they subjected themselves, for life or for death, to the unalterable law 
of the universe ; to despise pleasure and pain, and, in case of necessity, to put an end to 
an existence which had missed its aim — such was the climax of their wisdom. The prin- 
ciples of Platonism did not, indeed, minister to the self-reliant pride of human nature. 
On the contrary, they tended to produce the sense of dependence upon a higher Eower, 
and to lead men to seek communion therewith, as the only source of enlightenment and 
moral excellence. But they could only teach them to seek, not to find. This consumma- 
tion could be effected only by a mediator who "was come from God and went to God." 
Platonism, in thus hinting at a perfect religion that was itself the substance, while all 
others were the shadows, and in spiritualizing the popular religions of the time, dimly 
looked toward Christianity. 

We have to survey, 2. The religious condition of the Jewish people. This wonderful 
people was chosen by Sovereign Grace to stand amid the surrounding idolatry as the 
bearer of the knowledge of Jehovah, the only true God, of his holy law, and of his com- 
forting promise, and thus to become the cradle of the Messiah. It arose with the calling 
of Abraham, and the covenant of Jehovah with him in Canaan, the land of promise ; grew 
to a nation in Egypt, the land of bondage; was delivered, and organized into a theocratic 
State, on the basis of the law of -Sinai, by Moses in the wilderness; was led back into 
Palestine by Joshua; became, after the Judges, a monarchy, reaching the hight of its 
glory in David and Solomon, the types of the victorious and peaceful reign of Christ; 
split into two hostile kingdoms, and, in punishment of internal discord and growing 
apostasy to idolatry, was carried captive by heathen conquerors; was restored, after sev- 
enty years' humiliation, to the land of its fathers, but fell again tinder the yoke of heathen 
foes; yet in its deepest abasement fulfilled its highest mission by giving birth to the 
Savior of the world. Judaism was, among the idolatrous nations of antiquity, like an 
oasis in a desert, clearly defined and isolated ; separated and inclosed by a rigid moral 
and ceremonial law. The Holy Land itself, though in the midst of the three grand divi- 
sions of the ancient world, was separated from the great nations of ancient culture by 
deserts south and east, by sea on the west, and by mountains on the north ; thus securing 
to the Mosaic religion freedom to unfold itself and to fulfill its great work without dis- 
turbing influences from abroad. And Israel carried in its bosom from the first the large 
promise, that in Abraham's seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed. 

The outward circumstances, and the moral and religious condition of the Jews at the 
birth of Christ, would indeed seem, at first and on the whole, to be in glaring contradic- 



PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 145 

tion with their divine destiny. But, in the first place, their very degeneracy proved the 
need of Divine help. In the second place, the redemption through Christ appeared by 
contrast in the greater glory, as a creative act of God. And finally, amid the mass of 
corruption, as a preventive of putrefaction, lived the succession of the true children of 
Abraham, longing for the salvation of Israel, and ready to embrace Jesus of Nazareth as 
the promised Messiah and the Savior of the world. 

Since the battle of Philippi, (B. C. 42,) the Jews had been subject to the heathen 
Romans, who heartlessly governed them by the Idumean Herod and his sons, and after- 
ward by procurators. Under this hated yoke their Messianic hopes were powerfully 
raised, but carnally distorted. Misapprehending the spirit of the Old Testament, vain- 
gloriously boasting themselves to be the people of God, utterly blinded as to the cause of 
the terrible national judgments they were suffering, the mass of the Jewish nation desired 
nothing but deliverance from temporal distresses, and hoped greedily for the advent of a 
Messiah who should free them from the Eoman yoke by supernatural power, and give 
them the supreme dominion on earth. Their morals were outwardly far better than those 
of the heathen; but under the garb of strict obedience to their law they concealed great 
corruption. They are pictured in the New Testament as a stiff-necked, ungrateful, and 
impenitent race, a generation of vipers. Their own priest and historian, Josephus, who 
generally endeavored to present his countrymen to the Greeks and Romans in the most 
favorable light, describes them as at that time a debased and ungodly people, well deserv- 
ing their fearful punishment in the destruction of Jerusalem. As to religion, the Jews, 
especially after the Babylonish captivity, adhered most tenaciously to the letter of the 
law, and to their traditions and ceremonies, but without knowing the spirit and power of 
the Scriptures. They cherished the most bigoted horror of the heathen, and were there- 
fore despised and hated by them as misanthropic. After the time of the Maccabees, (B. 
C. 150,) they fell into two mutually-hostile sects. The Pharisees represented the tradi- 
tional orthodoxy and stiff formalism, the legal self-righteousness and the fanatical bigotry 
of Judaism. The bitter opponents of the Pharisees were the skeptical, rationalistic, and 
worldly-minded Sadducees. Their religious creed was confined to the mere letter of the 
Pentateuch, and contained only such tenets as they deemed to be explicitly taught in it. 
The sect of the Essenes came into no contact with the Gospel history. They were a 
mystic, ascetic sect, and lived in monkish seclusion on the coasts of the Dead Sea. 

Degenerate and corrupt though the mass of Judaism was, yet the Old Testament 
economy was the Divine institution preparatory to the Christian redemption, and as 
such received the deepest reverence from Christ and his apostles, while they sought by 
terrible rebuke to lead its unworthy representatives to repentance. Law and prophecy 
were the two great elements of the Jewish religion by which it was made a direct Divine 
introduction to Christianity. (1.) The law of Moses was the clearest expression of the 
holy will of God before the advent of Christ. It set forth the ideal of righteousness, and 
was thus fitted most effectually to awaken the sense of man's great departure from it, the 
knowledge of sin and guilt. It acted as a schoolmaster to lead men to Christ that they 
might be justified by faith. The same sense of guilt and of the need of reconciliation 
was constantly kept alwe by daily saci*ifices, at first in the Tabernacle and afterward in 
the Temple, and by the whole ceremonial law, which, as a wonderful system of types and 
shadows, perpetually pointed to the realities of the new covenant, especially to the one 
all-sufficient atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross. For, inasmuch as God requires 
absolute obedience and purity of heart, under promise of life and penalty of death, and 
as he can not cruelly sport with man, there is hidden in the moral and ritual law, as in a 
shell, the sweet kernel of a promise, that he will one day exhibit the ideal of righteous- 
ness in living form, and give the miserable sinner power to fulfill the law. Without such 
assurance the law were bitter irony. (2.) The law was, as already hinted, the vehicle of 
the Divine promise of redemption, and became by prophecy a religion of hope. While 

10 



146 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



the Greeks and Romans put their golden age in the past, the Jews looked for theirs in 
the future. Their whole history, their religious, political, and social institutions and cus- 
toms pointed to the coming of the Messiah, and the establishment of his kingdom on 
earth. Prophecy begins with the promise of the Serpent-bruiser immediately after the 
fall. It predominates in the patriarchal age, and Moses, the law-giver, was at the same 
time a prophet pointing the people to a greater successor. Without the comfort of the 
Messianic promise, the law must have driven the earnest soul to despair. From the time 
of Samuel, some eleven centuries before Christ, prophecy took an organized form in a 
permanent prophetical office and order. In this form it accompanied the Levitical priest- 
hood and the Davidic dynasty down to the Babylonish captivity, survived this catas- 
trophe, and directed the return of the people and the rebuilding of the Temple; inter- 
preting and applying the law, reproving abuses in Church and State, predicting the 
terrible judgments and the redeeming grace of God, warning and punishing, comforting 
and encouraging, with an ever plainer reference to the coming Messiah, who should 
redeem Israel and the world from sin and misery, and establish a kingdom of peace and 
righteousness on earth. 

This is the Jewish religion as it flowed from the fountain of Divine revelation and 
lived in the true Israel, the spiritual children of Abraham, in John the Baptist, his 
parents and disciples, in the mother of Jesus, her kindred and friends, in the venerable 
Simeon, and the prophetess Anna, in Lazarus and his pious sisters, in the apostles and 
the first disciples, who embraced Jesus of Nazareth as the fulfiller of the law and the 
prophets, the Son of God and the Savior of the world. 

We have to glance, 3. At the influence which Judaism and heathenism mutually exerted 
upon one another. (1.) The Jews, since the Babylonish captivity, had been scattered over 
all the world. In spite of the antipathy of the Gentiles, they had, by their judgment, 
industry, and tact, risen to wealth and influence, and had built their synagogues in all the 
commercial cities of the Roman Empire. They had thus sown the seeds of the knowledge 
of the true God, and of Messianic hope in the field of the idolatrous world. The Old 
Testament Scriptures were translated into Greek two centuries before Christ, and were 
read and expounded in the public worship of God, which was open to all. Every' syna- 
gogue was, as it were, a mission-station of monotheism, and furnished the apostles an 
admirable place and a most natural introduction for their preaching of Jesus Christ ap 
the fulfiller of the law and the prophets. Then, as the heathen religions had been hope 
lessly undermined by skeptical philosophy and popular infidelity, many earnest Gentiles, 
especially multitudes of women, came over to Judaism either wholly or in part. The 
thorough converts, called "proselytes of righteousness," were commonly still more big- 
oted and fanatical than the native Jews. The half-converts, "proselytes of the gate," or 
"God-fearing men," who adopted only the monotheism, the principal moral laws, and the 
Messianic hopes of the Jews, without being circumcised, appear in the New Testament as 
the most susceptible hearers of the Gospel. (2.) On the other hand, the Grseco-Roman 
heathenism, through its language, philosophy, and literature, exerted no inconsiderable 
influence to soften the fanatical bigotry in the higher and more cultivated classes of the 
Jews. Generally the Jews of the dispersion, who spoke the Greek language, the Hellenists, 
as they were called, were much more liberal than the proper Hebrews, or Palestinian Jews, 
who kept their mother tongue. This is evident in the Gentile missionaries, Barnabas of 
Cyprus, and Paul of Tarsus, and in the whole Church of Antioch, in contrast with that 
at Jerusalem. The Hellenistic-Jewish form of Christianity was the natural bridge to the 
Gentile. The most remarkable example of a traditional, though very fantastic and 
Gnostic-like combination of Jewish and heathen elements meets us in the educated cir- 
cles of the Egyptian metropolis, Alexandria, and in the system of Philo, who was cotem- 
porary with the founding of the Christian Church, though he never came in contact with 
it. This Jewish theologian sought to harmonize the religion of Moses with the philos- 



PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 147 

ophy of Plato by the help of an ingenious but arbitrary allegorical interpretation of the 
Old Testament; and from the books of Proverbs and of Wisdom he deduced a doctrine 
of the Logos so similar to that of John's Gospel, that some have imputed to the apostle 
an acquaintance with the writings of Phiio. But Philo's speculation is to the apostle's 
"Word made flesh," as a shadow to the body, or a dream to the reality. The Theraputse, 
or Worshipers, a mystic, ascetic sect in Egypt, akin to the Essenes in Judea, carried this 
Platonic Judaism into practical life; but were, of course, equally unsuccessful in uniting 
the two religions in a vital and permanent way. Such a union could only be effected by 
a new religion revealed from heaven. 

Thus was the way for Christianity prepared on every side, positively and negatively, 
directly and indirectly, in theory and practice, by truth and by error, by false belief and 
by unbelief, by Jewish religion, by Grecian culture, and by Eoman conquest; by the 
vainly-attempted amalgamation of Jewish and heathen thought, by the exposed impo- 
tence of natural civilization, philosophy, art, and political power, by the decay of the old 
religions, by the universal distraction and hopeless misery of the age, and by the yearn- 
ings of all earnest and noble souls for the unknown God. 

In the fullness of time, when the fairest flowers of science and art had withered, and 
the world was on the verge of despair, the Virgin's Son was born to heal the infirmities 
of mankind. Christ entered a dying world as the author of a new and imperishable life. 

§ 35. The Chronology and Harmony op the Gospel Narratives. 

It is very difficult to arrange in their proper chronological order the events of our 
Lord's life, many of which are narrated by one or more of the Evangelists in a different 
order. Alford thinks that it is impossible to combine the narratives given by the Evan- 
gelists into one continuous history, without doing considerable violence to the arrange- 
ment of some one or more of the Evangelists. We readily acknowledge that we can not 
gather from the Gospel records that knowledge of the real process of the transactions 
themselves, which alone would enable us to give a satisfactory account of the different 
order in which they appear in our Gospels, and with certainty to assign to each event its 
proper chronological place; nevertheless, there is light enough to show us the chronolog- 
ical order of the Gospel narratives in the main, and modern harmonists have arrived at 
the same conclusions on almost every essential point, except with regard to the beginning 
of the Galilean ministry proper and the insertion of Luke ix, 51-xviii, 14. The late Dr. 
E. Robinson has given, in his "Harmony of the Four Gospels," a digest of the many 
learned disquisitions on the various difficult points, and the conclusions which he has 
ai*rived at in common with the leading harmonists of Germany, and upon which he builds 
his harmonistical arrangement of the Gospel narratives, have been accepted by all the 
later commentators; their synoptical and harmonistical table does not vary from that of 
Robinson. But there has now appeared a work whose thorough researches have brought 
out a different and far more satisfactory result with regard to the two important points 
mentioned above. We refer to " The Life of Our Lord upon the Earth, 1 ' by the Eev. Samuel 
J. Andrews, who has done the Church a great and lasting service by setting the design 
of our Tjord's Judean ministry, and its relation to the Galilean, as well as his last journey 
to Jerusalem, in a light which has an important bearing upon the exegesis of the Gospels. 
We have no doubt that, henceforward, Mr. Andrews will be the standard authority on the 
chronology and harmony of the Gospels, as Dr. Robinson has been hitherto. To his 
"Life of Our Lord," our readers will be indebted for much of the light which we have 
been enabled to throw upon the chronological and harmonistical questions in the Gospel 
history. By having adopted the results of Mr. Andrews's researches, and arranging 
them in tabular form, we hope to contribute something toward giving his valuable work 
a more general circulation. The chronology and harmony of the Gospels is of so much 



148 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



importance, that it ought to be made a subject-matter of study for itself, apart from all 
other questions, and the Bible student will find in Mr. Andrews's work all he needs for 
this purpose. 

Referring the reader to that work, and to our comments on the respective passages to 
which the chronological and harmonistical questions refer, for details, and for the reasons 
that have led us to our conclusions, we will here only present Mr. Andrews's synopsis of 
the Gospel history, slightly modified, and arranged in tabular form, preceded by a sum- 
mary of the data we have for ascertaining the year of our Lord's birth, and death, and 
the duration of his ministry, in order to obtain a basis for a chronological arrangement 
of the events narrated in the Gospels. 

A. THE DATE OF THE BIRTH OP CHRIST. 

According to the received chronology, which is that of Dionysius Exiguus, in the 
sixth century, Jesus was born in the year of Rome 754. But it is now admitted, on all 
hands, that this calculation places the nativity some years too late. It can be proved 
satisfactorily that it could not have occurred after 750, nor before 747. 

1. It is certain that Jesus was born before the death of Herod the Great, (Matt, ii, 
1-6.) Almost all chronologists agree in putting his death in the year 750, shortly before 
the Passover, (between the 13th of March and the 4th of April.) But how long before 
Herod's death was Christ born? The answer to this question depends upon the length 
of time which the events between his birth and Herod's death — the presentation of the 
child at the Temple forty days after the nativity, the visit of the Magi, the flight into 
Egypt, and the remaining there till Herod was dead — -may have required. So much is 
certain, that the nativity can not be fixed later than the month of January, 750. 

2. Another note of time occurs in Luke iii, 1, 2, where John the Baptist is said to 
have entered upon his ministry in the fifteenth year of Tiberius. The rule of Tiberius 
may be calculated either from the beginning of his sole reign, after the death of Augus- 
tus, August 19, 767, or from his joint government with Augustus, near the end of 764 or 
the beginning of 765. It is admitted by most chronologists as almost certain, that Luke 
computed the reign of Tiberius from his colleagueship. If so, the fifteenth }*ear of Tibe- 
rius and the beginning of John's ministry is 779. From the fact that the Levites were 
not allowed to enter upon their full service till the age of thirty, (Num. iv, 3,) it has been 
generally supposed — although there is no express law to that effect — that the priests 
began their labors at the same age. Hence it has been inferred that John must have 
reached the age of thirty ere he began his ministry. That his ministry may have con- 
tinued about six months, when the Lord came to be baptized, is in the highest degree 
probable. If, then, John entered upon his ministry in the year 779, being thirty years 
old, and about six months elapsed ere the Lord, whose birth took place six months after 
that of John, came to him to be baptized, it follows that the birth of John is to be fixed in 
the Summer of 749, and that of our Lord toward the close of the same year or in the 
beginning of 750. 

3. The baptism of Jesus was followed by a Passover, (John ii, 13,) at which certain 
Jews mention that the restoration of their Temple had been in progress for forty-six 
years, Jesus himself being at this time "about thirty years of age," (Luke iii, 23.) The 
statement of Luke, "And Jesus himself began to be about (wait) thirty years of age," has 
been variously interpreted. According to some it is to be understood as a round or indef- 
inite number, permitting a latitude of at least two or three years. But this is highly 
improbable. The most natural meaning is, that the Lord was some months more or less 
than thirty. He was not just thirty, nor twenty-nine, nor thirty-one. This is confirmed 
by the remark of the Jews, at the Passover which our Lord visited two or three months 
after his baptism, that the Temple was then in building forty and six years. This build- 
ing, or rather rebuilding, of the Temple was begun by Herod in the eighteenth year of his 



PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 149 

reign, or during the year from Nisan, 734-Nisan, 735. The forty-sixth year following was 
from Nisan, 780-81. If the forty-sixth year is to be taken as completed, it was that 
of 781 ; if it is to be taken as current, it was that of 780. This calculation, like the 
former points, would fix the birth of Jesus toward the close of 749, or beginning of 750. 
But this calculation is made somewhat uncertain by the consideration that Josephus 
assigns the length of Herod's reign at thirty-seven or thirty-four years, according as he 
reckons from his appointment by the Eomans, or from the death of Antigonus. 

4. Astronomy is also brought under contribution to settle the date of the birth of 
Christ. Whether the star seen by the Magi was the conjunction of the planets Jupiter 
and Saturn, which occurred in the year 747, the reader will find discussed in our notes on 
Matthew ii, 1-10. We do not enter here upon this question, because, owing to our not 
knowing whether the first appearance of the constellation was designed to signify the 
annunciation of the incarnation or the actual birth, nor at which of the successive 
appearances of the constellation the Magi set out on their journey, we can not reach any 
precise chronological results, except this, that the conjunction of the planets in 747 define 
the earliest period at which the Lord's birth can be placed. 

In respect to the time of the year when Jesus was born there is still less certainty. 
Mr. Andrews says: "The only direct datum which the Gospels give us is found in the 
statement of Luke, (i, 5,) that Zacharias 'was of the course of Abia.' It is known that 
the priests were divided into twenty-four classes, each of which officiated at the Temple 
in its turn for a week, (1 Chron. xxiv, 1-19.) This order, originally established by 
David, was broken up by the captivity. The four classes that returned from Babylon 
were divided anew by Ezra into twenty-four, to which the old names were given. An- 
other interruption was made by the invasion of Antiochus, but the old order was restored 
by the Maccabees. Of these courses that of Jehojarib was the first, that of Abia the 
eighth. We need, therefore, only to know a definite time at which any one of the courses 
.was officiating, in order to be able to trace the succession. Such a datum we find in the 
Talmudical statements, supported by Josephus, (Bell. Jud., VI, iv, 5,) that, at the destruc- 
tion of the Temple by Titus, on the 5th of August, 823, the first class had just entered on 
its course. Its period of service was from the evening of the 4th of August, which was 
the Sabbath, to the evening of the following Sabbath, on the 11th of August. We can 
now easily compute backward, and ascertain at what time in any given year each class 
was officiating. If we take the year 749 as the probable year of Christ's birth, the 
appearance of the angel to Zacharias announcing John's birth must be placed 748. In 
this year we find, by computation, that the course of Abia officiated during the weeks 
from April 17th to 23d, and again from October 3d to 9th. At each of these periods, 
therefore, was Zacharias at Jerusalem. If the annunciation of the angel was made to 
him during the former, the birth of John may be placed near the beginning of 749, and 
the Lord's birth about six months later, or near the middle of 749; if the annunciation 
was made during the latter, John's birth was near the middle of 749, and the Lord's birth 
near its end. The fact that we do not know how soon after the conviction of the min- 
istry of Zacharias the conception of John is to be placed prevents any vei*y exact state- 
ment of dates. Luke (i, 24) uses only the general expression, 'After those days his wife 
Elizabeth conceived.' Yet the tenor of the narrative leads us to believe that it was soon 
after his return to his home, and may be placed in either of the months, April or October. 
Counting onward fifteen months, we reach June and December, in one of which the birth 
of Christ is thus to be placed." To the month of December the objection is made, that, in 
the night when the Lord was born, shepherds were in the field keeping watch over their 
flocks, and that, if we place the birth of Christ in that season, his baptism would fall in 
January, a month considered by some as unfavorable for the work of baptism. But the 
most reliable testimonies concerning the climate of Palestine show the groundlessness of 
the objection made on this ground. Considering the time most probably required for the 



150 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



events that took place between our Lord's baptism and his first Passover, we are almost 
forced to the conclusion that he was baptized by John early in January, and that, there- 
fore, his birth is to be placed in the month of December. 

B. THE DURATION OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY, AND THE DATE OF HIS DEATH. 

"We have shown the grounds upon which we may assume that the Baptist began his 
ministry in midsummer of the year 779, and that our Lord was baptized about six 
months afterward, that is in January, 780. Immediately after his baptism he was led by 
the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, and was there forty days. From 
John i, 29, we learn that after the temptation he returned to Bethabara the day after 
John had been visited by a deputation of priests and Levites from Jerusalem. As he sees 
Jesus coming he bears witness to him as the Lamb of God. The day following he repeats 
this testimony to his disciples. Two of them — Andrew, and no doubt John, the narrator 
of the fact — followed Jesus and staid with him the whole day. Andrew brings his 
brother Simon to see him also, and he receives the name Cephas. The succeeding day 
Jesus departs to Galilee. Two days seem to have been spent on the way to Cana, during 
which time he meets with Philip and JSTathanael. On the third day (from the departure 
to Galilee) the marriage-feast took place at Cana, where our Lord performed his first 
miracle. From Cana he went down with his mother and brethren, and disciples, to 
Capernaum, and remained there (John ii, 12, 13) till it was time to go up to Jerusalem to 
attend the Passover, which, in the year 780, fell upon the 9th of April; the whole interval 
between his baptism and his first Passover was, consequently, about three months. 

The duration of our Lord's ministry can best be determined by the number of Pass- 
overs which took place between his baptism and death, and which we have to ascertain 
from the Gospel of John. This Evangelist mentions six feasts, at five of which Jesus 
was present; the Passover that followed his baptism, (ii, 13;) a feast of the Jews, (v, 1;) 
a Passover, during which Jesus remained in Galilee, (vi, 4;) the feast of tabernacles to 
which the Lord went up privately, (vii, 2;) the feast of dedication, (x, 22;) and, lastly, 
the Passover at which he suffered. There are, therefore, certainly three Passovers, and 
if the feast mentioned in chap, v, 1, be also a Passover, four. The reasons for regarding it 
as a Passover we shall state in our comments on John v, 1 ; they are so preponderating 
that a great majority of commentators and harmonists have declared in favor of it, and 
we, therefore, assume this conclusion here as the most probable. Accordingly, our Lord's 
ministry from his baptism embraced three years and about three months, and the Pass- 
over on which he died was that of 783. 

With regard to the day of the month on which he died, we meet the much-disputed 
point whether he was crucified on the 14th or 15th Nisan. According to the Synoptists, 
Jesus partook of the Paschal Supper at the same time with the Jews in general, and at 
the time appointed in the law, on the evening following the 14th Nisan, Thursday even- 
ing, and on the next day, Friday, the 15th Nisan, he was crucified. But according to 
John (xviii, 28, and xix, 14) it seems that Christ was crucified on the 14th USTisan, the 
same day on the evening of which the supper was to be legally eaten, and that, conse- 
quently, the supper eaten by him and his disciples the evening previous to his death was 
not the legal Paschal Supper. How John's statement is to be harmonized with that of 
the Synoptists, will be considered at the proper place in the Commentary. This point is 
mentioned here only on account of its bearing on the year in which our Lord died. We 
assume here that our Lord died on the 15th Nisan. As it is almost universally admitted 
that he died on Friday, the question arises, in what year following 780 the 15th Nisan 
fell on a Friday. According to Wieseler this was the case in 783. Those who place the 
crucifixion on the 14th JSTisan, find that it fell on a Friday in 782 and 786. Seyffarth 
contends that he died on the 14th JSTisan in the year 785, and that this day was Thurs- 
day, not Friday. 



PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 151 

Inasmuch as the duration of our Lord's ministry can not be ascertained with absolute 
certainty, from the number of Passovers which took place between his baptism and 
death, the following data have been made the basis of computing the year of the death 
of Christ. 1. The tradition of the Talmudists. that the power to inflict capital punish- 
ment was taken from the Jews forty years before the Temple was destroyed, which 
occurred in 823, is adduced as corroborative of the crucifixion having taken place in the 
year 783. 2. It has been inferred from the parable of the barren fig-tree, (Luke xiii, 
6-9,) that Christ's ministry dated three years from the Passover of 780. 3. The pro- 
phetic half-week of Daniel (ix, 27) has been interpreted as referring to the length of our 
Lord's ministry; but this is a mere conjecture. 4. The great eclipse of the sun, reported 
by Phlegon to have taken place in the fourth year of the 202d Olympiad — from July, 
785 to 786 — has been considered by some as identical with the darkening of the sun at 
the crucifixion; but this supposition is of no weight, because the darkening of the sun 
occurring at the time of the full moon could not have been an eclipse. Besides, the 
eclipse spoken of by Phlegon occurred, according to astronomical calculations, in No- 
vember, 782. 5. Some of the Fathers were induced by the passage, Isaiah lxi, 2, where 
mention is made of "the acceptable year of the Lord," quoted by the Lord at Nazareth, 
(Luke iv, 19,) to limit his ministry to a single year, or a year and some months. But 
this supposition is entirely untenable. No less preposterous is the inference of Irenseus, 
from John viii, 57, and ii, 20, that our Lord was between forty and fifty years old when 
he died. 6. According to Tertullian, Christ suffered under Tiberius Cassar, E. Geminus 
and P. Geminus being Consuls, on the eighth day before the calends of April — March 
25th. This statement, although it seems to have obtained general currency, is inexplica- 
ble. The Gemini were Consuls during the year beginning January, 782. Our Lord's 
death could not have taken place in that year on the 25th of March, for he was crucified 
on the 14th or 15th Nisan; and these days, in 782, fell on the 16th and 17th of April. 
Besides, Tertullian is not consistent with himself, assigning to our Lord's ministry in one 
place, one year, and in another place, three years. 

In consideration of all the data, though none of them leads to absolute certainty, the 
majority of modern commentators and harmonists have arrived at the conclusion that the 
ministry of our Lord embraced four Passovers, having a duration of three years and 
about three months from his baptism in the beginning of January, 780, to the 7th of 
April, 783. 



152 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



C. SYNOPTICAL TABLE OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 

For the sake of reference in the Commentary we have numbered the different items in the Synoptical Table ; and to make 
it at the same time a table of Harmony, showing more clearly how much of each event two or more Evangelists have related 
in common, we have often made of one and the same event more than one item. A. TJ. C, in the first column, is the desig- 
nation of the Roman Chronology, reckoned from the building of the city of Home. C. C. C, in the second column, stands 
for the Common Christian Chronology. 



A.u.C. C. C. c. 



748 



749 



749 



6B. C. 



5B.C 



5B. C 



749 5 B. C. 



749 



MonOi and Day. 



October . 



March or April. 



June or July. 



July. 



5B. C 



December . 



CONTENTS. 



I. Introductory Events. 

The angel Gabriel announces to 
Zacharias, a priest of the course of 
Abia, while burning incense in the 
Temple, that his aged wife, Eliza- 
beth, shall bear him a son, whose 
name shall be John 

After his course had completed its 
ministry, Zacharias returns to his 
own house, Elizabeth conceives a 
son, and spends the five months fol- 
lowing in retirement in the hill- 
country of Judah 

In the sixth month of Elizabeth's 
conception, the angel Gabriel is sent 
to Nazareth in Galilee, to a virgin 
named Mary, who was betrothed to 
a man named Joseph, of the house of 
David, to announce to her that she 
should be the mother of the Mes- 
siah 

Immediately after the visit of the 
angel, Mary left Nazareth, and went 
to the home of Zacharias in the hill- 
country of Judah, and remained 
there about three months 

A little before the birth of John 
Mary returns to Nazareth ; Joseph, 
seeing her condition, is minded to 
put her away privily ; but, in obedi- 
ence to a command of God, which he 
receives in a dream, through an an- 
gel, he takes Mary home as his wife. 

Elizabeth gives birth to a son, who 
is circumcised on the eighth day, 
and named John, in obedience to the 
angel's direction. Zacharias, with 
loosened tongue, and filled with the 
Holy Ghost, praises God and proph- 
esies concerning the mission of his 
son 



II. The Birth, Childhood, and Private 
Life of Jesus. 

In consequence of an edict from 
Ca:sar Augustus concerning taxation, 
Joseph and Mary leave Nazareth to 
go to Bethlehem, the city of David, 
to be taxed there 

Upon their arrival at Bethlehem 
they can find no room at the inn, 
and take refuge in a place where 



1: 18-25 



1: 5-22 



1: 23-25 



1: 26-38 



1: 39-56 



1: 57-79 



2: 1-5 



SYNOPTICAL TABLE OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 



153 



C. C. C. Month and Day. 



CONTENTS. 



MARK. LUKE 



Ch. Ver. Ch. Ver. 



749 



5B. C. 



December . 



750 



750 



4 B.C. 



4B. C 



January .. 
February. 



750 



4B. C, 



May. 



761 



8 A. D 



April 8th. 



779 
780 



26 A. D 
27A.D. 



July 

January. 



10. 



11 



12 



13 



14. 



15. 



16. 



17. 



18. 



19 



cattle were lodged. The babe is 
born, and laid in a manger 

The same night in which he was 
born an angel of the Lord appeared 
to some shepherds who were keeping 
watcb over their flocks, and an- 
nounced to them his birth. Leaving 
their flocks, they hastened to Beth- 
lehem to see the child, and, finding 
him, returned, praising God 

Upon the eighth day following his 
birth the child was circumcised, and 
the name Jesus given to him 

Forty days after his birth Mary 
presented herself with the child in 
the Temple according to the law...... 

Soon after the presentation the 
Wise Men from the Bast came to 
worship the new-born King of the 
Jews. This visit excited the sus- 
picions of Herod, who made diligent 
inquiries of them; but being warned 
of God, in a dream, that they should 
not return to him, they departed to 
their own country by another Way.... 

Immediately after their departure, 
Joseph, warned by God in a dream, 
takes Mary and Jesus and goes down 
into Egypt 

Herod, as soon as he finds himself 
foiled by the Wise Men, gives or- 
ders that all the male children of 
Bethlehem, of two years old and 
under, be slain 

Joseph, with Mary and Jesus, re- 
mains in Egypt till he hears, through 
an angel, of Herod's death. He de- 
signs to return to Judea, but is di- 
rected by God to go to Nazareth 

There Jesus remains during his 
childhood and youth 

Jesus, being twelve years old, goes 
for the first time from Nazareth up 
to Jerusalem to keep the Passover. 
After the expiration of the feast he 
remained behind to converse with 
the doctors, and was found in the 
Temple, three days after, by his 
parents 

Returning to Nazareth, he dwelt 
there in retirement till the time came 
that he should enter upon his public 
work 



2: 6,7 



HI. Announcement and Introduction of 
our Lord's Public Ministry. 

The Baptist's preparation for his 
mission 

He commences to preach and baptize 
After his ministry had continued 
about six months, Jesus comes from 
Nazareth to the Jordan, and is bap- 
tized by John 



2: 8-20 



2: 21 



2: 22-38 



2: 1-12 



2: 13-15 



2: 16-18 



2: 19-22 
2: 23 



2:39,40 



2: 41-51 



2: 52 



3: 1-12 



80 
1-18 



3:13-17 1: 9-11 3:21-23 



151 



GENEEAL INTRODUCTION. 



A.U.C. C. C. C. 



780 



27A.D. 



780 



780 



27A.B 



Mouth and D.ay. 



April llth-18th. 



27A.D. 



December , 



31 



32 



33. 



:;■■! 



35. 



36 



37 



38 



.'!<! 



-Ill 



CONTENTS. 



Immediately after his baptism Je- 
sus was led by the Spirit into the 
wilderness to be tempted of the 
devil, and continued there forty 
days 

The Baptist's declaration to a dep- 
utation of priests and Levites from 
Jerusalem 

The next day Jesus returns to the 
Jordan, and the Baptist points him 
out as the Lamb of God 

The day following he repeats his 
testimony to his disciples 

Two of the Baptist's disciples — 
Andrew and John — seek the ac- 
quaintance of Christ 

The first interview of Christ with 
Peter 

The next da'y our Lord sets out for 
Galilee, and meets Philip and Na- 
thanael 

Three days after he arrives at 
Cana, and performs his first miracle. 

He makes a short visit at Caper- 
naum, and then goes up to Jerusa- 
lem to attend the Passover 



IV. The First Tear of our Lord's Ministry, 

dating from the First Passover he 

attended after his Baptism. 

At the Passover Jesus drives out of 
the Temple the sellers of animals for 
sacrifice, and the money-changers.... 

To the Jews who demand his au- 
thority for doing so, he replies in a 
parable 

During the feast he wrought mir- 
acles which led many to believe on 
him 



He is visited at night by Nicode- 
mus, to whom he explains the nature 
of the new birth 

Afterward he departs from Jerusa- 
lem into the land of Judea, where 
he tarries with the disciples he had 
gained, and who baptized in his 
name 

The Baptist, in reply to the com- 
plaints of his disciples, bears a new 
testimony to Christ 

Jesus, knowing that the Pharisees 
would arouse the jealousy of John's 
disciples, to the injury of the cause, 
ceases to baptize, and retires to Gal- 
ilee 



Passing through Samaria, he holds 
a conversation with a woman at Ja- 
cob's well 

He tells his disciples of the ap- 
proaching harvest ; and many of the 
Samaritans believe on him 

After two days he goes to Galilee, 
and is received there with honor by 



4: 1-11 



1:12,13 



4: 1-13 



1: 19-28 

1: 29-34 
1: 35, 36 

1: 37-40 
1:41,42 

1: 43-51 
2: 1-11 

2: 12, 13 



2: 14-17 



2: 18-22 



2: 23-25 



3: 1-21 



3: 22 
4: 2 



3: 23-36 



4: 1,3 



4: 4-26 



4: 27-42 



SYNOPTICAL TABLE OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 



155 



TIME. 


NO. 


CONTENTS. 


MATT. 


MARK. 


LUKE. 


JOHN. 


A.U.C. 


c c. c. 


Month and Day, 


Ch. Ver. 


Ch. Ver. 


Ch. Ver. 


Ch. Ver. 










the Galileans because of the works 


















which he did in Jerusalem at the 










780 


27A.D. 




41. 










4: 43-45 


Coining to Cana, he heals the no- 
















bleman's son at Capernaum. He 


















afterward lives in retirement till 
called to go up to the next Passover. 

V. The Second Year of our Lord's Public 
Ministry. 






{ 


4: 46-54 
5: 1 






{ 


781 


28A.D. 


Mar. 30th-Apr. 5th. 


42. 
43. 


During the feast he heals an impo- 
tent man at the Pool of Bethesda.... 
This act, done on the Sabbath day, 








5: 2-9 
















arouses the anger of the Jews, who 
















44. 










5: 10-16 


He defends his right to do so upon 














45. 


grounds which still more exasperate 








5: 17-47 


He hears of the imprisonment of 
















the Baptist, and retires to Galilee to 




















4: 12-17 


1:14,15 


4: 14, 15 




[The imprisonment of John took 










place a short time before the Pass- 




















14: 3-5 


6: 17-20 


3:19,20] 










46. 


He comes to Nazareth, and teaches 
















in the synagogue. The people, be- 


















coming enraged at his discourse, at- 


















tempt to kill him ; but he escapes 
out of their hands and fixes his 










781 


28 A. D. 




47. 




4: 13-16 




4: 16-31 




Near Capernaum, on the shore of 
the Galilean lake, he calls Peter and 




























Andrew, James and John, at the 


















time of the miraculous draught of 




















4: 18-22 


1:16-20 


5: 1-11 










48. 


He teaches, and cures a demoniac, 




1: 21-28 


4: 32-37 










49. 


He heals Peter's wife's mother and 


8: 14-17 


1: 29-34 


4: 38-41 










50. 




4: 23-25* 


1:35-39 


4: 42-44 










51. 


[That this healing is not chrono- 
logically placed by Matthew appears 
from the whole arrangement of chap- 
ters viii and ix. Mark connects it 
with the first circuit in Galilee, but 
with no mention of place. Luke in- 
troduces it with no mark of time.] 


8: 2-4 


1:40-45 


5: 12-16 




781 


28A.D. 




52. 


He returns to Capernaum. A par- 
alytic is brought to his house upon a 
bed, whom he heals, forgiving his 
































53. 




9: 2-8 


2: 1-12 


5: 17-26 




The call of Levi (or Matthew) the 








54. 




9: 9 


2: 13, 14 


5: 27, 28 




He defends his disciples for pluck- 








55. 


ing ears of grain on the Sabbath 

Upon another Sabbath he heals a 
man with a withered hand, which in- 
duces the Pharisees to conspire with 
the Herodians to destroy him 


12: 1-8 
12: 9-14 


2: 23-28 
3: 1-6 


6: 1-5 
6: 6-11 






*This passage (Matt, iv, 23-25) seems not bo much 
a description of our Lord's firBt circuit in Galilee as u 
general statement of his itinerancy there. 



156 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



A.U.C. C. C. C. 



Month and Dnv. 



781 



28A.D. 



781 



28A.D 



Autumn 



56. 



57, 



58. 



59. 



60. 



61, 



02. 



63. 



64 



65 



66 



CONTENTS. 



Jesus withdraws to the Lake of 
Galilee, followed by great multitudes 
from all parts of the land. He heals 
many as they press upon him to 
touch him, and then directs that a 
small ship be prepared to wait upon 
him 

He goes into a neighboring mount- 
ain to spend the night in prayer 

On the following morning he or- 
dains the twelve apostles 

The multitudes gathering around 
him, he proceeds to deliver the dis- 
course called " The Sermon on the 
Mount." 

He returns to Capernaum, and 
heals the Centurion's servant 

Crowds continue to follow him, so 
that he has no time even to eat, and 
his friends become alarmed at his 
incessant labors 

On the following day he goes to 
Nain, and there restores to life the 
son of a widow, as they were bear- 
ing him to the grave 

While continuing his ministry in 
that part of Galilee, John the Bap- 
tist sends from his prison a message 
to him by two of his disciples. Jesus 
returns an answer, and addresses the 
multitude respecting John 

[Immediately upon these words 
concerning John, follows, in Mat- 
thew, (ix, 20-30,) an address to the 
cities Bethsaida, Chorazin, and Ca- 
pernaum. Luke gives it, (x, 13-16,) 
in connection with the mission of the 
seventy disciples. In all probability 
our Lord made the same address on 
two different occasions ; if not, the 
time in which Luke places it appears 
to bo more correct; and we must as- 
sume that " a part of what was actu- 
ally spoken to the seventy is given 
by Matthew on account of its affinity 
to what precedes, and because the 
mission of the seventy, as being 
something altogether temporary and 
without distinctive character, is not 
recorded by him."] 

While dining with a Pharisee, 
named Simon, he is anointed by a 
woman who had been a sinner 

He continues his tour, or makes 
another one, through Galilee with 
his disciples, accompanied by cer- 
tain women 

Having returned to Capernaum — 
as is to be inferred from Mark iii, 
22 — he heals one possessed with a 
devil, both blind and dumb. The 
Pharisees charge him with casting 
out devils by tho help of Beelzebub, 



12: 15-21 



10: 1-4 

5: 6: 7: 
8: 5-15 



11: 2-19 



3: 7-12 



3:13-19 



6: 12 
6: 13-16 

6: 17-49 
7: 1-10 



3:20,21 



7: 11-17 



7: 18-35 



7: 36-50 



8: 1-3 



SYNOPTICAL TABLE OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 



157 



A.U.C. C. C. C. Month and Day. 



781 



28 A. D. 



67 



68 



C'.i 



70 



71 



72. 



73 



CONTENTS. 



and some, tempting him, ask a sign 
from heaven. He replies to their 
charge, warning them against com- 
mitting the unpardonable sin, and 
refuses to give them a sign 

[Most of the Harmonists consider 
the healing, and the discourse eon- 
sequent upon it, recorded in Luke xi, 
14-36, as identical with the above 
passages in Matthew and Mark. If 
it is so, the report of Luke is not in 
chronological order. On the other 
hand, notwithstanding the great sim- 
ilarity which it bears to Matthew 
xii, 22, and Mark iii, 22, the healing 
recorded by Luke seems to have been 
a different one, and to stand in its 
proper chronological place. As to 
the similarity of the discourse of our 
Lord with the Pharisees, we must 
remember that, as their blasphemous 
charge was repeated, so our Lord 
may have made essentially the same 
reply.] 

While he is yet speaking it is an- 
nounced to him that his mother and 
brethren stand without, desiring to 
see him. He points to his disciples, 
and says, Behold my mother and my 
brethren 

The same day he left his house 
and sat by the seaside ; and, as the 
multitude gathered to him, he en- 
tered a ship and taught them in a 
series of parables 

At the close of the day he gives a 
commandment to depart to the other 
side 

As they were preparing to go, he 
holds a conversation with a scribe 
and with one of his disciples about 
following him 

He enters the ship with the disci- 
ples and crosses the lake. Upon the 
way a violent tempest arises; Jesus 
stills the wind and waves 

He lands in the country of the 
Gerges^nes, and is met by two men 
possessed by demons, whose dwell- 
ing was in the tombs near by. Be- 
holding Jesus, they run to meet him, 
and he, casting out the demons, per- 
mits them to enter into a herd of 
swine feeding near by. The swine, 
so possessed, run down the hill-side 
into the sea and perish. The inhab- 
itants desire him to depart from 
their coasts 

After directing one of the healed 
demoniacs to proclaim through De- 



* The parallel passage in Luke is not in its chrono- 
logical ordep. 



12: 22^5 



12: 46-50 



13: 1-53 



8: 18-22 



8: 23-27 



8: 28-34 



3: 22-30 



3: 31-35 



4: 1-34 



4: 35 



8: 19-21 



8: 4-18 



8: 22 



9: 57-60* 



4: 36^1 



8: 23-25 



5: 1-17 



8: 26-37 



158 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



A.U.C. C. C. C. 



781 



28 A.D. 



782 



782 



782 



782 



29 A.D. 



29 A.D 



29 A.D 



29 A.D. 



Month and Day. 



January. 
February 
March.... 



April. 



74, 



75, 



70. 



77 



78. 



79, 



80, 



81. 



H2 



CONTENTS. 



oapolis what had been done for him, 
Jesus returns to Capernaum 

After his return to Capernaum he 
was invited by Matthew to a feast in 
his house, where he held a conversa- 
tion with some Pharisees and with 
some of John's disciples 

While yet speaking to them there 
came a ruler of a synagogue, named 
Jairus, to him, praying for the heal- 
ing of his daughter. As Jesus was 
on the way to the house of Jairus, 
he heals a woman of an issue of 
blood. A messenger, meeting him, 
announces the death of the girl ; but 
he proceeds, and, entering the house, 
restores her to life 

Returning homeward from the 
house of Jairus, he is followed by 
two blind men, saying, "Son of Da- 
vid, have mercy on us." They enter 
his house ; and, being healed, he 
charges them that they should not 
speak of what he had done; but 
they, going forth, every-where pro- 
claim it. As they departed a dumb 
demoniac was brought to him, whom 
he healed, to the astonishment of 
the multitude. This gave the Phar- 
isees new occasion to say that he 
east out devils through Satan 

[Some identify Luke xi, 14, 15, 
with Matthew ix, 32-34 ; and, as the 
healing of the dumb demoniac was 
immediately after that of the blind 
men, both miracles are placed, at a 
much later period, after the sending 
of the seventy.] 

Leaving Capernaum he visits, ac- 
companied by his disciples, Nazareth 
again, and is rejected a second time. 

Jesus enters upon a new circuit 
through Galilee, and sends forth the 
twelve 

About this time John is beheaded 
in prison, and the news of his death 
is brought to Jesus by some of John's 
disciples 

Herod hears of Christ, fears that 
he is John risen, and expresses a de- 
sire to see him 

After the return of the twelve to 
him from their missionary tour, Jesus 
prepares to go with them across the 
lake to find seclusion and rest; but, 
being followed by the multitude, he 
feeds upward of five thousand per- 
sons 

Immediately after, he orders the 
disciples to return in the ship to 
Capernaum, while he remains to dis- 
miss the people. He spends the 
night alone in prayer, and early in 



9: 1 



9: 10-17 



9: 18-26 



9: 27-34 



13: 54-58 



,' 9: 35-38 
1 10: 5-42 



14: 6-12 



14: 1, 2 



14: 13-21 



5: 18-20 



2: 15-22 



8: 38, 39 



5: 29-39 



5: 21-43 



8: 40-56 



6: 1-6 



6: 7-13 



6: 21-29 



6: 14-16 



1-6 



9: 7- 



6:30-44 



9: 10-17 



6: 1-14 



SYNOPTICAL TABLE OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 



159 



A.U.C. C. C. C. 



Month and Day. 



CONTENTS. 



782 29 A.D. 



782 



April. 



29 A.D. 



Summer. 



8.3. 



84. 



87. 



0(1 



the morning walks upon the sea to 
rejoin the disciples, who had been 
driven from their course by a storm 
and were unable to make the land. 
Having rescued -Peter, who attempts 
to walk upon the water to meet him, 
they both enter the boat, and imme- 
diately come to the shore in the land 
of Gennesaret 

The people of Gennesaret, when 
they learned that Jesus had landed 
on their coasts, bring unto him their 
sick, who are healed by only touch- 
ing the hem of his garment 

Those whom he had fed, and who 
had spent the night upon the eastern 
shore, return and seek him at Caper- 
naum, whither he goes. In answer 
to his question how he came over the 
sea, he discourses to them concerning 
the bread of life. His words are so 
offensive to many of his followers 
that they henceforth forsake him. 
The twelve continue with him, but 
he declares that one of them is a 
devil 



TI. The Third Tear of our Lord's Public 
Ministry. 

A. HIS STAT IN GALILEE TILL HIS FINAL DE- 
PARTURE FROM THENCE, IMMEDIATELY 
AFTER THE FEAST OF THE 
TABERNACLES. 

He avoids attending the third 
Passover at Jerusalem 

While at Capernaum some of the 
scribes and Pharisees, who had come 
from Jerusalem, see his disciples 
eating with unwashed hands, and 
find fault. This leads to a discus- 
sion of pharisaic traditions, and 
sharp reproofs of their hypocrisy.... 

Leaving Capernaum he goes with 
the twelve into the coasts of Tyre and 
Sidon, avoiding all publicity. But 
he could not be hid; and he answers 
the importunate prayer of a Syrophe- 
nician woman for her daughter 

K,eturning to the region of Decap- 
olis, he heals a man that was deaf and 
had an impediment in his speech, and 
many others, and feeds a multitude 
of over four thousand persons 

The Pharisees and Sadducees again 
demand a sign. He reproves their 
hypocrisy, and declares that no sign 
should be given unto them but the 
sign of the prophet Jonas 

Leaving them he enters a ship, and 
again departs toward the lake toward 
Bethsaida. Upon the way he cautions 
his disciples against the leaven of the 
Pharisees, i.e., against their doctrines. 



14: 22-34 



14: 35, 36 



6: 45-53 



6: 54-56 



6: 15-21 



6: 22-71 



"I: 1 

(Com. 

.6: 4.) 



15: 1-20 



15: 21-28 



15: 29-39 



16: 1-4 



16: 5-12 



7: 1-23 



7: 24-30 



7:31-8:10 



8:11,12 



8: 13-21 



160 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



A.U.C. C. C. C. 



782 



29A.D. 



Summer. 



7*2 



29A.D 



Month and Day. 



Autumn . 



91 



92. 



93. 



94 



95 



97 



100. 



CONTENTS. 



Arriving at Bethsaida he heals a 
blind man and sends him home priv- 

"y 



From Bethsaida he goes with his 
disciples to Cesarea Philippi. On 
the way he asks them, "Who do 
men say that I am?" and, being an- 
swered, he proposes the same ques- 
tion to them. Peter, as spokesman 
of his fellow-apostles, professes their 
faith in Jesus being the Christ, the 
Son of the living God ; and Christ 
gives him the great promise concern- 
ing his Church, and the keys of the 
kingdom of heaven, forbidding them 
at the same time to publish that 
truth 

He now foretells them his ap- 
proaching rejection by the Jews, his 
passion and death, and his resurrec- 
tion after three days, and rebukes 
Peter for being offended at this an- 
nouncement. He then addresses the 
disciples and the people, teaching 
them what is involved in following 
him, and speaking of the rewards he 
would give his followers when he 
should come again in the glory of 
his Father. He adds, that some 
standing before him shall see him 
coming in his kingdom, that is, the 
beginning of his kingdom on earth... 

Six days after he goes to a high 
mountain, taking with him Peter, 
James, and John, and is transfig- 
ured before them 

Descending from the mount, he 
explains, in an answer to their ques- 
tion, how Elias must be the forerun- 
ner of the Messiah 

At the foot of the mountain they 
meet the other apostles, surrounded 
by a multitude, among whom were 
scribes, questioning with them. The 
Lord heals a lunatic child, whom the 
apostles had not been able to heal.... 

Departing thence, Jesus passes 
through Galilee, avoiding, as far as 
possible, public attention, and in- 
structing his disciples again con- 
cerning his death and resurrection ; 
but they do not understand him, and 
are afraid to ask 

After his return to Capernaum he 
provides miraculously for the Temple 
tax 



The disciples contend who should 
be the greatest. Jesus exhorts them 
to humility, forbearance, and broth- 
erly love 

Soon after this he goes up to Jeru- 
salem secretly to attend the Feast of 
Tabernacles 



16: 13-20 



16: 21-28 



17: 1- 



17: 10-13 



17: 14-29 



17:22,23 



17: 24-27 



18: 1-35 



8: 22-26 



8: 27-30 



9: 18-21 



8: 31-9: 1 



9: 2-10 



9: 22-27 



9: 28-36 



9: 11-13 



9: 14-28 



9: 37-42 



9: 30-32 



9: 43^5 



9: 33-50 



9: 46-50 



7: 2-10 



SYNOPTICAL TABLE OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 



161 



A.U.C. C. C. C. 



782 



29 A. D. 



782 



29A.D 



MontL. and Day. 



October llth-18th. 



November. 



101 



102. 



103. 



104 



105 



106, 



107 



108. 



109. 



110 



CONTENTS. 



During the first few days of the 
feast there was much inquiry among 
the people concerning Jesus, and his 
probable appearance at the feast, but 
no one spoke openly through fear of 
the Jews 

After his arrival at Jerusalem he 
went into the Temple and taught. 
His enemies wish to arrest him, but 
do not; and many people believe on 
him 



Upon a subsequent day of the feast 
the Pharisees attempt to arrest him, 
but it fails 

Having spent the night at the 
Mount of Olives, the Lord returns 
in the morning to the Temple. The 
scribes and Pharisees bring an adul- 
teress before him, whom he does not 
condemn, but directs to go and sin 
no more 

He continues his teaching in the 
Temple, reproves the unbelieving 
Jews, and escapes from their hands.. 

As he goes he meets and heals a 
blind man who had been blind from 
his birth, and it was the Sabbath. 
So soon as this miracle was reported 
to the Pharisees, they call him and 
his parents, examine him and cast 
him out. He afterward meets Jesus, 
and believes, and worships him 

Some Pharisees who are present 
ask him a question, to which he re- 
plies in the parable of the Good 
Shepherd. There is a great division 
of sentiment among the Jews in re- 
gard to him 

[From this feast the Lord returned, 
most probably, once more to Galilee 
for a short time ; though there is no 
positive proof of it in the Gospels. 
Most of the harmonists suppose that 
he spent the interval, between the 
feasts of Tabernacles and of Dedica- 
tion, at Jerusalem or in its vicinity. 
See note on Matthew xix, 1.] 

B. OUR LORD'S FINAL DEPARTURE FROM GAL- 
ILEE TO HIS ARRIVAL IN BETHANY. 

The time when he should be re- 
ceived up, approaching — that is, with 
the end of his earthly career before 
him — the Lord prepares to go to Je- 
salem 

He sends messengers before him, 
who, entering a Samaritan village, 
are rejected by the inhabitants. He 
reproves his angry disciples, James 
and John, and departs to another 
village 

He replies to one who proposes to 
follow him 



19: 



10: 



9: 51 



9: 52-56 
9: 61, 62 



7: 11-13 



7: 14-31 



7: 32-53 



i: 1-11 



8: 12-59 



9: 1-38 



9:39- 
10: 21 



11 



162 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



A.U.C. C. C. C. 



782 



29A.D. 



782 



29 A.D. 



Month and Day. 



November. 



December. 



111. 



112. 
113. 



114. 



115. 



116 



117. 



lis 



119. 



120 



121 



122. 



123 



124. 



CONTENTS. 



He now sends out seventy of bis 
disciples to go, two and two, into 
every city and place wbere he him- 
self would eome 

His instructions to them , 

They depart and return again with 
joy, most probably not only once but 
from time to time. Our Lord's reply 

to them 

He follows in their step, journey- 
ing through Perea toward Jerusalem, 
and attended by great multitudes, 

whom he teaches and heals 

On the way he instructs a lawyer 
concerning the love of our neighbor, 
and relates the parable of the Good 

Samaritan 

One of his disciples asks for a form 
of prayer. He teaches his disciples 

again to pray 

He heals a dumb demoniac. The 
Pharisees accuse him of casting out 
devils through Beelzebub. He re 
plies to them, and while he is speak 
ing a woman in the crowd blesses 
him. He continues to discourse to 
the multitude on the desire for signs 
[Compare with remarks on No. 66.] 
He dines with a Pharisee and 
sharply rebukes pharisaical hypoc- 
risy. The Pharisees are greatly en- 
raged 

He admonishes his disciples again 
to beware of the leaven of the Phar- 
isees, and to fear God only 

A certain man desires Jesus to 
induce his brother to divide the in- 
heritance with him. He denies the 

request 

He adds a warning against eovet- 
ousness, and relates the parable of 

the Rich Fool 

He further admonishes his disci- 
ples to watch for the coming of the 
Son of man, and after answering a 
question of Peter proceeds to address 
the people respecting their inability 

to discern the signs of the times 

Being told of the murder of the Gal- 
ileans by Pilate, he replies, and adds 

a parable respecting the fig-tree 

While teaching in the synagogue 
on the Sabbath, he heals a woman 
who had "been sick eighteen years. 
He is rebuked for this by the master 
of the synagogue, but ]outs him to 

shame 

[Luke inserts here the parables of 
the mustard-seed and leaven. It is 
not improbable that our Lord re- 
peated these parables, but why they 
were spoken here is not explained 

to us 



MARK. LUKE. 



Ch. Ver. Cll. Ve 



19: 



10: 1 

10: 2-16 



10: 17-24 



10: 25-37 



11: 1-13 



11: 14-36 



11: 37-54 



12: 1-12 



12:13,14 



12: 15-34 



12: 35-59 



13: 1-9 



13: 10-17 



13:18-21] 



SYNOPTIGAL TABLE OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 



163 



A.U.C. C. C. C. 



Month and Diiy. 



CONTENTS. 



782 



iA.D. 



December. 



7S3 



30A.D. 



February , 



125. 



12ii. 



127, 



128. 



129. 



130. 



131. 

132. 

133, 
134, 



He continues his journey toward 
Jerusalem, and replies to the ques- 
tion of one who asked him, "Are 
there few that be saved?" 

The same day he replies to certain 
Pharisees who warn him against 
Herod's design to kill him 

On his way to the Feast of Dedica- 
tion at Jerusalem he passes through 
the village of Bethany, and visits 
Mary and Martha 

Having reached Jerusalem, and 
walking in the Temple, the Jews de- 
mand that he declare plainly whether 
he is, or is not, the Messiah. He an- 
swers them by referring to his past 
words and works. The Jews, accus- 
ing him of blasphemy, take up stones 
to stone him. But he escapes from 
them, and goes again beyond Jordan 
and abides there. Many resort unto 
him and believe in him 

He is invited to break bread with 
one of the chief Pharisees on the 
Sabbath day, and" there heals a man 
who had the dropsy. After having 
defended the lawfulness of the act, 
he reproves the guests for choosing 
the highest seats, and reminds his 
host of his duty to the poor, and 
speaks the parable of the Great Sup- 
per. As he journeyed on, great mul- 
titudes went with him, and he ad- 
dresses them on self-denial required 
in disciples 

Publicans and sinners coming in 
large numbers to hear him, the scribes 
and Pharisees complain of his re- 
ceiving them. He, therefore, utters 
the parables of the Lost Sheep, of 
the Lost Piece of Silver, and of the 
Prodigal Son 

For his disciples he adds the para- 
ble of the Wasteful Steward, with 
admonitions concerning the faithful 
use of worldly goods 

He rebukes the deriding Pharisees, 
and utters the parable of the Rich 
Man and Lazarus 

He addresses his disciples on of- 
fenses, forgiveness, and faith 

Lazarus, the brother of Mary and 
Martha, being sick, they send a mes- 
sage to the Lord, in Perea, to inform 
him of his sickness. After receiving 
the message he abides still two days 
in the place where he was. Taking 
the disciples with him, he then goes 
to Bethany and raises Lazarus from 
the dead. Many of the Jews pres- 
ent believed on him ; but others, de- 
parting to Jerusalem, tell what had 
occurred to the Pharisees. A council 



13: 22-30 



13: 31-35 



10: 38-42 



10: 22-42 



14: 1-35 



15: 1-32 

16: 1-13 

16: 14-31 
17: 1-10 



164 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



A.U.C. C. C. C. 



Month and D;iy. 



783 



30 A. D. 



March , 



135. 



136, 
137, 

138 
139 

140, 
141, 

112 



143, 

144, 



145, 



146, 



147, 



CONTENTS. 



is summoned, and Caiaphas, the 
high-priest, advises that he should 
be put to death. Jesus, learning 
this, goes with his disciples to a eity 
called Ephraim ; and his enemies 
give a commandment, that if any 
man know where he is, he should 
show it, that they might take him.. 

In Ephraim the Lord abides with 
the disciples till the approach of the 
Passover. A little before the feast 
many went up from the country to 
Jerusalem to perform the necessary 
purifications, and there was much 
discussion as to the probability of 
his presence. He leaves Ephraim 
for Jerusalem, passing along the 
border line of Samaria and Galilee... 

Upon the way he meets and heals 
ten lepers 

Being asked by the Pharisees when 
the kingdom of God should come, he 
gives them a warning admonition of 
his judicial coming 

Jesus exhorts to perseverance in 
prayer 

To certain self-righteous persons 
he speaks the parable of the Phari- 
see and the Publican 

He replies to a question of the 
Pharisees respecting divorce 

He receives and blesses little chil- 
dren 

A rich young ruler inquires how 
he may inherit eternal life. Jesus 
bids him sell all he has, and follow 
him; but he went away sorrowful. 
Our Lord proceeds to address the 
disciples upon the dangers incident 
to riches. In answer to a question 
of Peter, he speaks of the rewards 
that should be given to the twelve, 
and to all faithful disciples 

He adds the parable of the Labor- 
ers in the Vineyard 

He announces to the twelve pri- 
vately, and for the third time, his 
approaching death and resurrection; 
but they do not understand his words, 
being amazed and full of fear 

Afterward James and John, with 
their mother, Salome, ask seats of 
honor in his kingdom. He denies 
their request 

In sight of Jericho — on entering, 
according to Luke, on departing, ac- 
cording to Matthew and Mark — he 
heals two blind men sitting by the 
way, begging, who implore him, as 
the son of David, to help them 

Entering Jericho, he meets Zac- 
cheus, and goes to his house, where 
he remains during the night. In 



19: 3-12 
19: 13-15 



19:16-30 
20: 1-16 

20: 17-19 
20: 20-28 

20: 29-34 



10: 2-12 
10: 13-16 



10: 17-31 



10: 32-34 



10: 35^5 



10:46-52 



17: 11 
17: 12-19 

17: 20-37 
18: 1-1 

18: 9-14 
18: 15-17 



18: 18-30 



18: 31-34 



' 18: 35- 
19: 1 



(11:1-54 
! -57 



11: 55, 56 



SYNOPTICAL TABLE OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 



165 



A.U.C. C. C. C. 



Month and Day. 



CONTENTS. 



783 



30 A.D 



783 



783 



30 A. D, 



30 A. D. 



C Friday ev'n'g, 
•j March 31st, or 
(,8th of Nisan, 



( Saturday ev'g, 
\ April 1st, or 
(9th of Nisan. 



Sunday, April 

2d, or 
10th of Nisan. 



148. 



149. 



150 



783 



30 A.D. 



Monday, April 

3d, or 
11th of Nisan. 



1 01 



152. 



783 



30 A.D. 



( Tuesday, Apr. 
\ 4th, or 
1 12th of Nisan. 



153 



154, 



If) 5. 



156. 



the morning, when about to depart, 
he speaks to the people the parable 
of the Ten Pounds. The same even- 
ing he reaches Bethany 



C. FROM HIS ARRIVAL AT BETHANY TO HIS 
DEATH AND BURIAL. 

Arriving at Bethany, he abides 
there for the night. The next day 
he sups with Simon, a leper — Laza- 
rus, Martha, and Mary being pres- 
ent. . Here he is anointed by Mary, 
while Judas and others murmur at 
so great waste 

That evening many come out of 
Jerusalem to see him and Lazarus. 
The rulers in the city, hearing this, 
consult how they may put Lazarus 
also to death 

Leaving Bethany, he sends to 
Bcthphage for an ass upon which to 
ride, and, sitting upon it, he enters 
Jerusalem amid the shouts of his 
disciples and of the populace. As 
he looks upon the city from the 
Mount of Olives, he weeps over it. 
All the city is greatly moved, and 
the Pharisees desire him to rebuke 
his disciples. He visits the Temple, 
but, after looking around him, leaves 
it, and goes with the twelve to Beth- 
any to pass the night 

Jesus, leaving Bethany early with 
his disciples, was hungry, and, be- 
holding a fig-tree by the way which 
had no fruit, he pronounced a curse 
upon it 

Proceeding to the city, he enters 
the Temple and purifies it. He heals 
there the blind and lame, and the 
children cry, " Hosanna to the Son 
of David!" His reproofs enrage the 
priests and scribes, who seek to de- 
stroy him. In the evening he re- 
turns again to Bethany 

Returning to the city in the morn- 
ing with his disciples, they saw the 
fig-tree dried up from the roots, and 
this leads Jesus to speak to them re- 
specting the power of faith 

As he entered the Temple the 
Pharisees ask him by what author- 
ity he acts. He replies by a ques- 
tion respecting the baptism of John, 
and adds the parable of the Two 
Sons and of the Wicked Husband- 



The Pharisees wish to arrest him, 
but are afraid of the people. He 
utters the parable of the King's Son. 

The Pharisees and Herodians pro- 
pose to him the question concerning 
the lawfulness of tribute to Ctesar.... 



19: 2-28 



26: 6-13 



14: 3-9 



21: 1-11 



21:18,19 



11: 1-11 



11: 12-14 



19: 29-44 



21: 12-17 



21: 20-22 



11: 15-19 



11: 20-26 



19:45-48 



21:23-46 



22: 1-14 



22: 15-22 



11: 27-) 
12: 12) 



12: 13-17 



20: 1-18 



20: 19 



20: 20-26 



12: 1-9 



12:10,11 



12: 12-19 



166 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



A.U.C. C. C. C. 



783 



30 A. D, 



783 



30 A.B. 



783 



30 A. D. 



Month and Day. 



( Tuesday, Apr, 
\ 4th, or 
( 12th of Nisan. 



[Wedn'sd'y, Ap. 5 

fThursd'y, Ap ' 
< 6th, or 

(^ 14th of Nisan 



Thursday evening. 



157 



158, 



159, 



100 



J 01 



162, 



163 



164. 



165, 



L66, 



167. 



168, 



CONTENTS. 



The Sadducees question him re- 
specting the resurrection of the dead 

A lawyer inquires concerning the 
chief commandment , 

He asks the Pharisees how the 
Messiah can both be the son and the 
Lord of David, and they are put to 
silence 

He then denounces the hypocrisy 
of the scribes and Pharisees, and 
pronounces his lamentation over Je- 
rusalem 

After this he watches the people 
casting in their gifts, and praises 
the poor widow who cast in two 
mites 

Some Greeks desiring to see him, 
he prophesies of his death. A voice 
is heard from heaven. He utters a 
few touching farewell admonitions, 
and leaves the Temple 

As he goes out, the disciples point 
out to him the size and splendor of 
the buildings, to whom he replies, 
that all shall be thrown down 

Ascending the Mount of Olives, he 
seats himself and answers the ques- 
tion concerning his coming again, 
and the end of the world 

He adds, that after two days was 
the Passover, when he should be be- 
trayed. He goes to Bethany, and 
the same evening his enemies hold 
a council, and agree with Judas re- 
specting his betrayal 

The Lord seemed to have been in 
seclusion at Bethany.] 

He sends Peter and John from 
Bethany into the city to prepare 
the Passover. He describes a man 
whom they should meet, and who 
should show them a room, furnished, 
where they should make ready for 
the supper. He remains at Bethany 
till toward evening 

Thursday evening he enters the 
city and goes to the room where the 
supper was to be eaten. As the dis- 
ciples are about to take their places 
at the table, he observes a strife 
among them for precedency and 
seats of honor. To rebuke them, 
he arose and, girding himself, pro- 
ceeded to wash their feet 

Afterward, while they were eating, 
he declares one of them should be- 
tray him. The apostles begin to 
ask, anxiously, "Is it I?" The 
Lord describes the traitor as one 
that is eating with him, but with- 
out designating him further. Peter 
makes a sign to John to ask him 
who it was, which he does, and 



22: 23-33 
22: 34^0 

22: 41-46 

23: 1-39 



24: 1, 2 



(24:3-) 
125:46) 



(26:1-5) 
( 14-16 j 



26: 17-19 



26: 20 



12: 18-27 
12: 28-34 

12: 35-37 

12: 38-40 

12: 41-44 



13: 1,2 



13: 3-37 



(14:1, 
110,1 



14: 12-16 



14: 17 



20: 27-40 



20: 41-44 



20:45-47 



21: 1-4 



21: 5,6 



21: 7-36 



22: 1-6 



12: 20-50 



22: 7-13 



22: 14-) 

18; 244 

30j 



13: 1-17 



SYNOPTICAL TABLE OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 



167 



A.U.C. C. C. C. 



Month and Day. 



CONTENTS. 



783 



30 A. D. 



( Thursd'y ev'g, 
I April 6th, or 
(l4th of Nisan. 



169. 



iro 



in 



783 



30 A.D 



Thursday night.. 



172. 



173, 



Jesus gives him privately a sign, 
and, clipping the sop, hands it to 
Judas, who asks, "Is it I?" Jesus 
answers him affirmatively, and he 
immediately goes out to make ar- 
rangements for the arrest of his 
Master. The apostles who do not 
understand the case are surprised... 

After the departure of Judas the 
Lord proceeds to the institution of 
the Eucharist 

After the supper Peter makes prot- 
estations of fidelity ; but the Lord 
announces to him that before the 
cock should crow he should deny 
him. He informs the disciples of 
the perils that await them, and they 
bring to him two swords 

He proceeds to address to them 
words of encouragement, and an- 
swers the questions of Thomas and 
Philip. He adds the promise of the 
Comforter, and, calling upon them 
to arise and depart with him, he 
continues his address to them as 
they stand around him, and ends 
with a prayer 

After they had sung a hymn, Je- 
sus goes with his disciples over the 
brook Cedron to the Garden of Geth- 
semane, where he awaits the coming 
of Judas. Having arrived at the 
Garden, he retires with them to a se- 
cluded spot. Here he begins to be 
heavy with sorrow, and, leaving the 
three, goes alone to pray. Return- 
ing, he finds them asleep. Leaving 
them, he again prays, and in his 
agony sweats a bloody sweat, but is 
strengthened by an angel. Again 
returning to the three disciples, he 
finds them asleep. He goes a third 
time and prays, and, returning, an- 
nounces the approach of Judas 

Upon the arrival of Judas and 
those with him, Jesus, accompanied 
by the apostles, goes forth from the 
Garden to meet him. Judas, com- 
ing forward before the others, kisses 
him as a sign to them. Addressing 
Judas with the words, "Betrayest 
thou the Son of man with a kiss?" 
he advances to the multitude and 
demands of them whom they seek. 
At their reply, " Jesus of Naza- 
reth," he answers, "I am he," and 
they go backward and fall to the 
ground. Again he asks the same 
question, and receives the same reply. 
He now requests that the apostles 
may go free. As they proceed to 
take and bind him, Peter smites a 
servant of the high-priest, but the 



26: 21-25 



26: 26-29 



14: 18-21 



14: 22-25 



22: 21-23 



22:19,20 



13: 18-30 



26: 31-35 



14: 27-31 



22: 31-38 



13: 31-38 



14-17: 



26: 30;) (14: 26;) 
36-46J J 32-42f 



22: 39^6 



18: 1 



168 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



A.U.C. C. C. C. 



783 



30 A. D. 



Monlh and Day. 



' Friday mor'g, ' 
April 7th, or 
15th of Nisan, 
(before the 
break of day.)_ 



783 



I 
30 A.D.I 



f Friday mor'g, 1 
{ (at daybreak.) J 



174 



175 



176, 



177. 



178, 



CONTENTS. 



Lord heals the wound. Beholding 
their Master in the power of his en- 
emies, all the apostles forsake him 
and flee, and also a young man who 
had followed him. He reproaches 
the multitude that they had come to 
arrest him as a thief 

From the Garden Jesus is first 
taken to the house of Annas, and, 
after a brief delay there, to the pal 
ace of Caiaphas, Peter and John fol 
lowing him. Here, while the council 
is assembling, he is subjected to a 
preliminary examination respecting 
his disciples and doctrines. The 
council being assembled, he is put 
on trial. As the witnesses disagree, 
and no charge can be proved against 
them, he is adjured by Caiaphas to 
tell whether he be the Christ. Upon 
his confession, he is condemned as 
guilty of blasphemy. During this 
period Peter, who had followed him 
with John to the high-priest's pal- 
ace, denies him, and, reminded of 
his words by the crowing of the 
cock, goes out to weep 

After the Sanhedrim had pro- 
nounced him guilty of blasphemy, 
and therefore worthy of death, it 
suspends its session to meet at break 
of day. During this interval Jesus 
remains in the high-priest's palace, 
exposed to all the ridicule and in- 
sults of his enemies, who spit upon 
him and smite him 

As soon as it was day the Sanhe- 
drim again assembles, and, after 
hearing his confession that he is the 
Christ, formally adjudges him to 
death. Binding him, they lead him 
away to the Roman Governor, Pon- 
tius Pilate, that he may execute the 
sentence 

Judas Iscariot, learning the issue 
of this trial, and that Jesus was 
about to be put to death, returns the 
money the chief priests had given 
him, and hangs himself 

The members of the Sanhedrim 
who led Jesus to Pilate, refuse to 
enter the judgment hall, lest they 
should be defiled ; and thereupon he 
comes out to them and asks the na- 
ture of the accusation. They charge 
him with being a malefactor, and 
Pilate directs them to take him and 
judge him themselves. As they can 
not inflict capital punishment, they 
bring the charge of sedition, and 
Pilate, reentering the judgment hall, 
and, calling Jesus, examines him. 
Satisfied that he is innocent, Pilate 



26: 47-56 



14: 43-52 



26: 57- 
66; 69 



75J 



26: 67-63 



27: 1, 2 



27: 3-10 



22: 47-53 



(14:53- 

04; 66 
( 72 



14: 65 



15: 



18: 2-12 



22: 54-62 



22: 63-65 



(22: 66) 
1-23: 1} 



18: 13-27 



SYNOPTICAL TABLE OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 



169 



A.U.C. C. C. C. Month and Day. 



CONTENTS. 



783 



30A.D 



Friday mor'g, 
April 7th, or 
15th of Nisan, 
(bef're9o'elk.) 



179 



180. 



181 



783 



30A.D. 



f Friday mor'g, 1 
l(after9o'cl'k.)J 



182 



183 



goes out and affirms that he finds no 
fault in him 

The Jews renewing their accusa- 
tions, to which Jesus makes no re- 
ply, and mentioning Galilee, Pilate 
sends him to Herod, who was then 
in Jerusalem; but Jesus refuses to 
answer his questions, and is sent 
back to Pilate. The latter now re- 
sorts to another expedient. He seats 
himself upon the judgment-seat, and, 
calling the chief -priests and elders, 
declares to them that neither him- 
self nor Herod had found any fault 
in him. According to custom, he 
would release him ; but the multi- 
tude beginning to cry that he should 
release Barabbas, not Jesus, he leaves 
it to their choice 

During the interval while the peo- 
ple were making their choice, his 
wife sends a message of warning to 
him. The people, persuaded by the 
priests and elders, reject Jesus and 
choose Barabbas ; and Pilate, after 
having made several efforts in vain 
to change their decision, at last gives 
orders that Jesus be scourged pre- 
vious to crucifixion 

This was done by the soldiers with 
mockery and abuse; and Pilate, go- 
ing forth, again takes Jesus and 
presents him to the people. The 
Jews continue to demand his death, 
now upon the ground that he made 
himself the Son of God. Terrified 
at this new charge, Pilate again 
takes Jesus into the hall to ask him, 
but receives no answer. Pilate still 
strives earnestly to save him, but is 
met by the cry that he would not be 
Caesar's friend. Yielding to fear, he 
ascends the tribunal, and, calling 
for water, washes his hands in token 
of his innocence, and then gives di- 
rections that he be taken away and 
crucified. As he comes forth, he 
presents him to them as their king. 
They cry, "Crucify him!" and he is 
led away to the place of crucifixion.. 

He is led without the city to a 
place called Golgotha, bearing his 
cross. Falling exhausted under the 
burden, the soldiers compelled Simon 
of Cyrene, whom they met, to bear 
it for Jesus. To some women, fol- 
lowing him and weeping, he speaks 
words of admonition, and foretells 
the judgments about to come upon 
Jerusalem 

He is being affixed to the cross, 
and they give him wine mingled 
with gall, but he refuses. Two mal- 



27: 



11 



15: 



23: 2-4 



18: 28-38 



27: 12-18 



15: 3-10 



23: 5-19 



18:39,40 



27: 19-23 



15: 11-14 



23: 20-24 



27: 24-31 



15: 15-20 



23: 



25 



19: 1-16 



27: 32 



15: 



21 



23: 26-31 



19: 17 



170 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



A.U.C. C. C. C. 



783 



783 



7y:. 



30 A. D. 



30 A.D. 



30 A.D. 



7 S3 



Month and Day. 



Friday mor'g, 
April 7th, or 
15th of Nisan, 
(after 9o'cl'k.) 



Friday noon. 



Friday, 3 o'el'k,) 
P. M. J 



30 A.D. 



184. 



1S5. 



186 



1ST 



188 



Saturday, Ap. 

8th, or 
16th of Nisan. 



190 



CONTENTS. 



efactors are crucified with him, one 
on the right hand and one on the 
left. He prays his Father to forgive 
those that nailed him on the cross. 
The inscription placed over his head 
displeases the Jews, but Pilate re- 
fuses to change it. The soldiers who 
keep watch at the foot of the cross 
divide his garments among them- 
selves 

He is reviled and derided by the 
people as they pass by the cross. 
One of the malefactors reproves the 
other for joining in this mockery, 
and prays Christ to remember him. 
Beholding his mother standing near 
by with John, he commends him to 
her as her son 

Darkness now overspreads the 
land, and Jesus exclaims, "My 
God, my God, why hast thou for- 
saken me?" The supernatural dark- 
ness prevails from the sixth to the 
ninth hour. He thirsts and receives 
drink 

After he had drank, he says, "It 
is finished," commends his spirit to 
God, and expires. At this moment 
the vail of the Temple is rent, the 
earth shakes, rocks are rent and 
graves opened. The centurion bears 
witness that he was the Son of God. 
The people, and the women from 
Galilee that had followed him, re- 
turn, smiting their breasts 

Soon after the Lord had expired 
the chief-priests came to Pilate, re- 
questing that the bodies might be 
taken down before sunset, because 
the next day was the Sabbath. In 
consequence of their request the legs 
of the two malefactors are broken to 
hasten their death ; but Jesus, being 
found already dead, is pierced with 
a spear in the side 

In the mean time Joseph of Ari- 
mathea goes to Pilate, and, inform- 
ing him that Jesus was already 
dead, asks his body for burial ; and 
Pilate, after satisfying himself that 
he was actually dead, orders the 
body to be given to him 

Aided by Nicodemus, Joseph took 
the body, and, winding it in linen 
cloths with spices, laid it in his own 
sepulcher in a garden near the cross, 
and shut up the sepulcher. Some 
women beheld where he was laid, 
and, returning home, prepared spices 
and ointments, that they might em- 
balm him after the Sabbath was past. 

Early on the Sabbath the ecclesi- 
astical authorities obtain permission 



27: 33-38 



27: 39-44 



27: 45-49 



27: 50-56 



27: 57, 58 



27: 59-61 



15: 22-28 



15:29-32 



15: 33-36 



15:37-41 



15:42-45 



15:46,47 



23: 32-34 



23: 35^3 



23:44,45 



23:46-49 



23: 50-52 



23: 53-56 



19: 18-24 



19: 25-27 



19:28,29 



19: 



30 



19: 31-37 



19; 



38 



19: 39-42 



SYNOPTICAL TABLE OF THE GOSPEL HISTOEY. 



171 



A.U.C. C. C. C. 



783 30 A. D. 



783 30 A. D. 



Month and Day. 



{ Saturday ev'g, 
April 8th, or 
16th of Nisan. 



Sunday, April 

9th, or 
17th of Nisan. 



101 



192 



193 



194. 



195 



196, 



197. 



199 



200 



CONTENTS. 



from Pilate to seal up the sepulcher, 
and to place a watch, lest the disci- 
ples should steal the body 

"When the Sabbath was past Mary 
Magdalene, and Mary the mother of 
James and Salome, buy spices to 
embalm the body of Christ 



VII. From the Resurrection to the 
Ascension. 

As the day began to dawn there 
was a great earthquake ; and an an- 
gel of the Lord, descending, rolled 
away the stone from the door of the 
sepulcher, and sat upon it. Terror- 
stricken, the soldiers fall to the 
ground 

Soon after came Mary Magdalene 
and the other women to embalm the 
body, and find the sepulcher open... 

Mary Magdalene, first beholding 
the stone rolled away, and supposing 
that the body had been removed by 
the Jews, runs to find Peter and 
John to inform them 

The other women proceed to the 
sepulcher, and there meet an angel, 
who tells them of the Lord's resur- 
rection, and gives them a message to 
the disciples 

Soon after they had departed, Pe- 
ter and John come in haste to see 
what had occurred, and Mary fol- 
lows them. Entering the sepulcher 
they find it empty, and the grave 
clothes lying in order; John be- 
lieves, and they leave the tomb to 
return, but Mary remains behind, 
weeping. Looking into the sepul- 
cher she sees two angels, and imme- 
diately after the Lord appears to 
her, and gives her a message to bear 
to the disciples 

Before the other women return the 
Lord also appears to them 

The accounts of the women are 
not believed 

Upon the return of the soldiers 
from the sepulcher into the city, the 
priests and elders, hearing what had 
taken place, bribe them to spread 
the report that the disciples had 
stolen the body 

Early in the afternoon two of the 
disciples leave Jerusalem for Em- 
maus. As they go, Jesus joins him- 
self to them, and converses with 
them till they reach the village. At 
their urgent request he sits down 
to eat with them ; and, as he is 
breaking the bread, their eyes, which 
were holden that they should not 
know him, are opened, but he 



27: 62-66 



28: 2-4 



28: 1 



28: 5-8 



28: 9,10 



28: 11-15 



16: 



16: 2-A 



24: 1, 2 



20: 1-2 



16: 5- 



\ 24: 3-9 



16: 9 



16:10,11 



24: 12 



20: 3-18 



24: 10, 11 



172 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



A.U.C. C. C. C. Month and D:iy. 



783 



783 



783 



783 



30 A.D. 



30 A.D. 



30 A. D. 



30 A.D 



('Sunday eve'g, 
< April 9th, or 
(l7th of Nisan. 



('Sunday, April 
1 16th, or 
I 24th of Nisan. 



( Latter part of 
< April, orbegin- 
l^ning of May. 



j Thursday, May J 
(18th. I 



201. 



202. 



203 



204, 



205 



20C, 



207. 



CONTENTS. 



immediately vanishes out of their 
sight 

They return at onee to Jerusalem, 
and find the eleven and others gath- 
ered together, who meet them with 
the announcement that the Lord is 
risen indeed, and has appeared unto 
Simon. Nevertheless some disbe- 
lieve their accounts of having met 
the Lord on the way to Emmaus... 

AVhile they were yet speaking Je- 
sus himself stood in their midst, 
although the doors were shut, and 
saluted them. He convinces them 
of the reality of his bodily presence 
by showing them his hands and his 
feet, and by eating before them. He 
breathes upon them and says unto 
them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost. 
He openeth the Scriptures to their 
understanding 

After eight days Jesus again ap- 
peared to the assembled apostles, 
Thomas, who had before been ab- 
sent, now being with them. By 
showing him the prints of the nails 
and the spear, as he had demanded, 
and desiring him to touch them, the 
Lord convinces him of the reality of 
his resurrection ; and Thomas ac- 
knowledges him as his Lord and his 
God 



The apostles having returned to 
Galilee, the Lord appears to seven 
of them while engaged in fishing on 
the lake. The miracle of the great 
draught of fishes is repeated. After 
he had eaten with them, he asks 
Peter, three times, whether he loved 
him, before he commissioned him to 
feed his flock 

[About this time, it is most prob- 
able, our Lord was seen of James. 
(1 Corinthians xv, 7.)] 

After this the Lord meets the great 
body of his disciples, (1 Cor. xv, 6,) 
upon a mountain in Galilee, and com- 
mands that the Gospel be preached 
throughout the world 

A few days after the meeting upon 
the mountain the apostles return to 
Jerusalem, accompanied by Jesus' 
mother and brethren. Upon the for- 
tieth day after his resurrection Jesus 
gathers the eleven at the Mount of 
Olives, and, leading them toward 
Bethany, ascends to heaven. (Com- 
pare Acts i, 9-12.) 

The apostles go back to Jerusa- 
lem, and there wait for the promised 
baptism of the Holy Ghost 



28: 16-20 



16: 12 



24: 13-32 



16: 13 



24: 33-35 



16: 14 



24: 36-48 



20: 19-23 



20: 24-29 



21: 1-23 



16: 15-18 



10: 19 



16: 20 



24: 49-51 



24: 52, 53 



INDEX OF REFERENCE TO THE SYNOPTIC TABLE. 



173 



D. A TABLE 

FOR FINDING THE CHRONOLOGICAL PLACE IN THE SYNOPSIS OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY 
OF ANY PASSAGE IN THE GOSPELS. 



MATTHEW. 


CHAPTER. 


VERSES. 


NUMBER. 


CHAPTER. 


VERSES 


| NUMBER. 
1 


CHAPTER. 


VERSES. 


NUMBER. 


I. 


1-17 


Genealogy. 


XII. 


46-50 


67 


XXII. 


41-46 


159 




18-25 


5 


XIII. 


1-53 


68 


XXIII. 


1-39 


160 


II. 


1-12 


12 




54-58 


77 


XXIV. 


1, 2 


163 




13-15 


13 


xrv. 


1, 2 


80 




3-51 


164 




16-18 


14 




3- 5 


45 NOTE. 


XXV. 


1-46 


164 




19-22 


15 




6-12 


79 


XXVI. 


1- 5 


165 




23 


16 




13-21 


81 




6-13 


148 


III. 


1-12 


20 




22-34 


82 




14-16 


165 




13-17 


21 




35, 36 


83 




17-19 


166 


IV. 


1-11 


22 


XV. 


1-20 


86 




20 


167 




12,17 


45 




21-28 


87 




21-25 


168 




13-16 


46 




29-39 


88 




26-29 


169 




18-22 


47 


XVI. 


1- 4 


89 




30 


172 




23-25 


50 NOTE. 




5-12 


90 




31-35 


170 


V. 




59 




13-20 


92 




36-46 


172 


VI. 




59 




21-28 


93 




47-56 


173 


VII. 




59 


XVII. 


1- 9 


94 




57-66 


174 


VIII. 


1 


59 




10-13 


95 




67,68 


175 




2- 4 


51 




14-21 


96 




69-75 


174 




5-13 


60 




22,23 


97 


XXVII. 


1, 2 


176 




14-17 


49 




24-27 


98 




3-10 


177 




18-22 


70 


XVIII. 


1-35 


99 




11 


178 




23-27 


71 


XIX. 


1 


108 




12-18 


179 




28-34 


72 




2 


114 




19-23 


180 


IX. 


1 


73 




3-12 


140 




24-31 


181 




2- 8 


52 




13-15 


141 




32 


182 




9 


53 




16-30 


142 




33-38 


183 




10-17 


74 


XX. 


1-16 


143 




39-44 


184 




18-26 


75 




17-19 


144 




45-49 


185 




27-34 


76 




20-28 


145 




50-56 


186 




35-38 


78 




29-34 


146 




57,58 


188 


X. 


1- 4 


58 


XXI. 


1-11 


150 




59-61 


189 




5-42 


78 




12-17 


152 




62-66 


190 


XI. 


1 


78 




18,19 


151 


XXVIII. 


1 


193 




2-19 


63 




20-22 


153 




2- 4 


192 




20-30 


63 NOTE. 




23-46 


154 




5- 8 


195 


xn. 


1- 8 


54 


XXII. 


1-14 


155 




9,10 


197 




9-14 


55 




15-22 


156 




11-15 


199 




15-21 


56 




23-33 


157 




16-20 


205 




22-45 


66 




34-40 


158 








MAKE. 


CHAPTER. 


VERSES. 


NUMBER. 


CHAPTER. 


VERSES. 


NUMBER. 


CHAPTER. 


VERSES. 


NUMBER. 


I. 


1- 8 


20 


in. 


7-12 


56 


VI. 


17-20 


45 NOTE. 




9-11 


21 




13-19 


58 




21-29 


79 




12,13 


22 




20,21 


61 




30-44 


81 




14, 15 


45 




22-30 


66 




45-53 


82 




16-20 


47 




31-35 


67 




54-56 


83 




21-28 


48 


rv. 


1-34 


68 


vn. 


1-23 


86 




29-34 


49 




35 


69 




24-30 


87 




35-39 


50 




36-41 


71 




31-37 


88 




40-45 


51 


v. 


1-17 


72 


VIH. 


1-10 


88 


n. 


1-12 


52 




18-20 


73 




11,12 


89 




13,14 


53 




21-43 


75 




13-21 


90 




15-22 


74 


VI. 


1- 6 


77 




22-26 


91 




23-28 


54 




7-13 


78 




27-30 


92 


in. 


1- 6 


55 




14-16 


80 




31-38 


93 



174 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



MARK— CONTINUED. 


CHAPTER. 


VEESES. 


NUMBER. 


CHAPTER. 


VERSES. 


NUMBER. 


CHAPTER. 


VERSES. 


NUMBER. 


IX. 


1 


93 


XII. 


28-34 


158 . 


XV. 


2 


178 




2-10 


94 




35-37 


159 




3-10 


179 




11-13 


95 




38-40 


100 




11-14 


180 




14-29 


96 




41-44 


161 




15-20 


181 




30-32 


97 


XIII. 


1, 2 


163 




21 


182 




33-50 


99 




3-37 


164 




22-28 


183 


X. 


1 


108 


XIV. 


1, 2 


165 




29-32 


184 




2-12 


140 




3- 9 


148 




33-36 


185 




13-16 


141 




10,11 


165 




37-41 


186 




17-31 


142 




12-16 


166 




42-45 


188 




32-34 


144 




17 


167 




46,47 


189 




35-45 


145 




18-21 


168 


XVI. 


1 


191 




46-52 


146 




22-25 


169 




2- 4 


193 


XI. 


1-11 


150 




26 


172 




5- 8 


195 




12-14 


151 




27-31 


170 




9 


196 




15-19 


152 




32-42 


172 




10,11 


198 




20-26 


153 




43-52 


173 




12 


200 




27-33 


154 




53-64 


174 




13,14 


201 


XII. 


1-12 


154 




65 


175 




15-18 • 


205 




13-17 


156 




66-72 


174 


19 


206 




18-27 


157 


XV. 


1 


176 


20 


207 


LUKE. 


CHAPTER. 


VEESES. 


NUMBER. 


CHAPTER. 


VERSES. 


NUMBER. 


CHAPTER. 


VERSES. 


NUMBER. 


I. 


1- 4 


Preface. 


VIII. 


4-18 


68 


XVI. 


14-31 


132 




5-22 


1 




19-21 


67 


XVII. 


1-10 


133 




23-25 


2 




22 


69 




11 


135 




26-38 


3 




23-25 


71 




12-19 


136 




39-56 


4 




26-37 


72 




20-37 


137 




57-79 


6 




38,39 


73 


XVIII. 


1- 8 


138 




80 


19 




40-56 


75 




9-14 


139 


II. 


1- 5 


7 


IX. 


1- 6 


78 




15-17 


141 




6- 7 


8 




7- 9 


80 




18-30 


142 




8-20 


9 




10-17 


81 




31-34 


144 




21 


10 




18-21 


92 




35-43 


146 




22-38 


11 




22-27 


93 


XIX. 


1 


146 




39,40 


16 




28-36 


94 




2-28 


147 




41-51 


17 




37-42 


96 




29-44 


150 




52 


18 




43-45 


97 




45-48 


152 


III. 


1-18 


20 




46-50 


99 


XX. 


1-18 


154 




19,20 


45 NOTE. 




51 


108 




19 


155 




21-23 


21 




52-56 


109 




20-26 


156 




24-38 


Genealogy. 




57-60 


70 




27-40 


157 


IV. 


1-13 


22 




61,62 


110 




41-44 


159 




14, 15 


45 


X. 


1 


111 




45-47 


160 




16-31 


46 




2-16 


112 


XXI. 


1- 4 


161 




32-37 


48 




17-24 


. 113 




5, 6 


163 




38-41 


49 




25-37 


115 




7-38 


164 




42-44 


50 




38-42 


127 


XXII. 


1- 6 


165 


T. 


1-11 


47 


XI. 


1-13 


116 




7-13 


166 




12-16 


51 




14-36 


117 




14-18 


167 




17-26 


52 




37-54 


118 




19,20 


169 




27,28 


53 


XII. 


1-12 


119 




21-23 


168 




29-39 


74 




13,14 


120 




24-30 


167 


VI. 


1- 5 


54 




15-34 


121 




31-38 


170 




6-11 


55 




35-59 


122 




39-46 


172 




12 


57 


XIII. 


1- 9 


123 




47-53 


173 




13-16 


58 




10-17 


124 




54-62 


174 




17-49 


59 




18-21 


124 NOTE. 




63-65 


175 


VII. 


1-10 


60 




22-30 


125 




66-71 


176 




11-17 


62 




31-35 


126 


XXIII. 


1 


176 




18-35 


63 


XIV. 


1-35 


129 




2- 4 


178 




36-50 


64 


XV. 


1-32 


130 




5-19 


179 


VIII. 


1- 3 


65 


XVI. 


1-13 


131 




20-24 


180 



INDEX OF REFERENCE TO THE SYNOPTIC TABLE. 



175 



LUKE— CONTINUED. 


CHAPTER. 


TEKSES. 


NUMBER. 


CHAPTER. 


VERSES. 


NUMBER. 


CHAPTER. 


VERSES. 


NUMBER. 


XXIII. 


25 


181 


XXIII. 


50-52 


188 


XXIV. 


13-32 


200 




26-31 


182 




53-56 


189 




33-35 


201 




32-34 


183 


XXIV. 


1, 2 


193 




36-48 


202 




35-43 


184 




3- 9 


194 




49-51 


206 




44,45 


185 




10,11 


198 




52,53 


207 




46-49 


186 




12 


197 








JOHN. 


CHAPTER. 


VERSES. 


NUMBER. 


CHAPTER. 


VERSES. 


NUMBER. 


CHAPTER. 


VERSES. 


NUMBER. 


I. 


1-18 


Introduction. 


V. 


17-47 


44 


XIII. 


31-38 


170 




19-28 


23 


VI. 


1-14 


81 


XIV. 




171 




29-34 


24 




15-21 


82 


XV. 




171 




35,36 


25 




22-71 


84 


XVI. 




171 




37-40 


26 


VII. 


1 


85 


XVII. 




171 




41,42 


27 




Comp. vi, 4 




XVIII. 


1 


172 




43-51 


28 




2-10 


100 




2-12 


173 


II. 


1-11 


29 




11-13 


101 




13-27 


174 




12,13 


30 




14-31 


102 




28-38 


178 




14-17 


31 




32-53 


103 




39,40 


179 




18-22 


32 


VIII. 


1-11 


104 


XIX. 


1-16 


181 




23-25 


33 




12-59 


105 




17 


182 


III. 


1-21 


34 


IX. 


1-38 


106 




18-24 


183 




22 


35 




39-41 


107 




25-27 


184 




23-36 


36 


X. 


1-21 


127 




28,29 


185 


IV. 


1 


37 




22-42 


138 




30 


186 




2 


35 


XI. 


1-54 


134 




31-37 


187 




3 


37 




55,56 


135 




38 


188 




4-26 


38 




57 


134 




39-42 


189 




27-42 


39 


XII. 


1- 9 


148 


XX. 


L 2 


194 




43-45 


40 




10, 11 


159 




3-18 


196 




46-54 


41 




12-19 


150 




19-23 


202 


V. 


1 


41 




20-50 


162 




24-31 


203 




2- 9 


42 


XIII. 


1-17 


167 


XXI. 


1-25 


204 




10-16 


43 




18-30 


168 


1 







THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW. 



12 



INTRODUCTION 



TO 



THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW. 



§ 1. Its Authorship. 

The superscription is " The Gospel according to Matthew." The four records of the 
life and discourses of our Lord, the historical foundation of the Christian religion, were 
by the primitive Church called The Gospel, that is, the good news or glad tidings, and 
they were considered not so much as four specifically-different histories or gospels, but 
as one history, one gospel from four different stand-points, designated by Irenseus (Adv. 
Haer., Ill, 11, 8) as rerpd/iopcpov to sbayyihov. When the name of the respective author 
■was afterward added to each, the authorship was very properly expressed by the prepo- 
sition xard, according. If by this preposition it had been designed to express a more 
remote relationship, not direct authorship, it would be unaccountable, why the Gospels ac- 
cording to Mark and to Luke should not have been designated as Gospels according to 
Peter and Paul, inasmuch as the general tradition asserted them to have been published 
under the direction and authority of these apostles. 

That the apostle Matthew wrote a Gospel has never been called into question, as we 
see from the unanimous testimony of the Fathers from the beginning to the close of the 
second century. (See §§ 8 and 9 of our General Introduction.) But whether this Gospel 
was originally composed in Hebrew or in Greek is a point on which scholars and critics 
are still divided. From Eusebius (H. E., Ill, 39) we learn that Papias, Bishop of Hier- 
apolis in Phrygia, in the beginning of the second century, declares Matthew to have written 
in Hebrew rd ).6yta, a term by which we can not well understand any thing else than an 
account of the life as well as the sayings of our Lord, inasmuch as Papias explains the 
term, when he speaks of Mark, by adding rd v-zb zoo Xpiazoo ij XtyJ^hza ij icpa%{Hvza. Though 
Papias was a man of weak judgment, as Eusebius expressly says, we find his testimony on 
this point indorsed by Lengeus, Origines, Eusebius, Jerome, Epipbanius, and others. Yet 
Papias may have mistaken the heretical gospel according to the Hebrews for a supposed 
Hebrew original of Matthew, and those writers may have been misled by him. There is 
evidence, at least, that Jerome once believed the Hebrew MS. in the Cagsarean library to be 
the original Gospel of Matthew, but subsequently found reason to doubt this. But those 
who maintain a Greek original rest principally on the internal evidence furnished by the 
Gospel itself, as Alford shows on the following grounds : 

"1. The present Greek text stands on precisely the same footing as that of the other 

Gospels, is cited as early, and as constantly as they are. 

179 



180 INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW. 

"2. The hypothesis of a translation from the Hebrew altogether fails to account for 
the identity observable in certain parts of the text of the three synoptic Gospels. For the 
translator must either have been acquainted with the other two Gospels — in which case 
it is inconceivable that in the midst of the present coincidences in many passages such 
divergences should have occurred — or unacquainted with them, in which case the identity 
itself would be altogether inexplicable. 

"3. A further observation of the coincidences and divergences is said to confirm the 
view of a Greek original. The synoptic Gospels mainly coincide in the discourses and 
words of our Lord, but diverge in their narrative portions; and while verbal identity is 
found principally in the former, the latter present the phenomena either of independent 
translations from the same original, or of independent histories. 

"4. Again, whereas the Evangelists themselves, in citing the Old Testament, usually 
quote from the Hebrew text, our Lord in his discourses almost uniformly quotes the Sep- 
tuagint, even where it differs from the Hebrew. This is urged as tending to establish 
the Greek original of Matthew ; for if the Gospel were really written in Hebrew for the 
use of the Jews, it is not conceivable that the citations would be given in any but the 
Hebrew text; and equally inconceivable that the translator would have rendered them 
into the language of the LXX in our Lord's discourses, while he retained the Hebrew 
readings in the narrative. 

"5. But the same fact would also tend to establish that our Lord spoke usually in 
Greek — that Greek was the language commonly used and generally understood by the Jews 
of Palestine — and, consequently, that the composition of a Hebrew Gospel for the early 
Jewish- Christians would be unnecessary and in the last degree improbable." 

For a further critical examination of the arguments on both sides we must refer the 
reader to Alford's Prolegomena and other learned works. Even if the question should 
be decided in favor of a Hebrew original, the canonical authority of our Greek Matthew 
would not be affected by it, for it maintained that authority undisputed from the first. 
The disappearance of the Hebrew original, provided it ever existed, can easily be accounted 
for, inasmuch as the Greek language soon supplanted the Aramaic Hebrew, especially 
after the destruction of Jerusalem ; and the heretics corrupted at an early period the sup- 
posed Hebrew Gospel of Matthew to such an extent that it lost all canonical authority. 

Dr. William Thomson, Archbishop of York, in his article on " The Gospel of Matthew,'" 
in Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, closes his discussion with these words : " With these 
arguments we leave a great question unsettled still, feeling convinced of the early accept- 
ance and the apostolic authority of our ' Gospel according to St. Matthew ;' and far from 
convinced that it is a reproduction of another Gospel from St. Matthew's hand. May not 
the truth be that Papias, knowing of more than one Aramaic gospel in use among the Ju- 
daic sects, may have assumed the existence of a Hebrew original from which these were 
supposed to be taken, and knowing also the genuine Greek Gospel may have looked on all 
these — in the loose, uncritical way which earned for him Eusebius's description — 'as the 
various interpretations ' to which he alludes ? It is certain that a gospel, not the same as 
our canonical Matthew, sometimes usurped the apostle's name ; and some of the witnesses 
we have quoted appear to have referred to this in one or other of its various forms or 
names. The Christians in Palestine [not all] still held that the Mosaic ritual was binding 
on them, even after the destruction of Jerusalem. At the close of the first century one 



INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW. 181 

party existed who held that the Mosaic law was only binding on Jewish converts — 
this was the Nazarenes. Another, the Ebionites, held that it was of universal obligation 
'on Christians, and rejected St. Paul's Epistles as teaching the opposite doctrine. These 
two sects, who differed also in the most important tenets as to our Lord's person, pos- 
sessed each a modification of the same Gospel, which, no doubt, each altered more and 
more as their tenets diverged, and which bore various names — the Gospel of the Twelve 
Apostles, the Gospel according to the Hebrews, the Gospel of Peter, or the Gospel ac- 
cording to Matthew. Enough is known to decide that the Gospel according to the 
Hebrews was not identical with our Gospel of Matthew. But it had many points of 
resemblance to the synoptic Gospels, and especially to Matthew. What was its origin it 
is impossible to say ; it may have been a description of the oral teaching of the apostles, 
corrupted by degrees ; it may have come in its early and pure form from the hand of Mat- 
thew, or it may have been a version of the Greek Gospel of St. Matthew, as the Evangel- 
ist who wrote especially for the Hebrews. Now, this Gospel did exist ; is it impossible 
that when the Hebrew Matthew is spoken of, this questionable document, the Gospel of 
the Hebrews, was really referred to? Observe that all accounts of it are at second- 
hand — with a notable exception: no one quotes it; in case of doubt about the text, Ori- 
gen even does not appeal from the Greek to the Hebrew. All that is certain is, that 
Nazarenes or Ebionites, or both, boasted that they possessed the original Gospel of Mat- 
thew. Jerome is the exception ; and him we can convict of the very mistake of confound- 
ing the two, and almost on his own confession." 

On the genuineness of the Gospel, in general, see General Introduction §§ 5, 6 ; that 
of the first two chapters, which have been assailed by some critics who admit the apostol- 
ical antiquity of the rest, is satisfactorily established on the following grounds : 1. All the 
old MSS. and versions contain them ; and they are quoted by the Fathers of the second 
and third centuries, and the day has passed, it may be hoped, when a passage can be 
struck out, against all the MSS. and the testimony of early writers, for subjective im- 
pressions about its contents. 2. Their contents form a natural part of a Gospel intended 
primarily for the Jews. 3. The commencement of chapter iii is dependent on ii, 23 ; and 
in iv, 13, there is a reference to ii, 23. 4. In construction and expressions they are sim- 
ilar to the rest of the Gospel. 

§ 2. Personal Notices op the Author. 

In Mark ii, 14, his father is called Alpheus ; from this some have supposed that he was 
a brother of James the Less ; but as Atyheus was a very common name, and as in none of 
the lists of the apostles (Matt, x, 3 ; Mark iii, 18 ; Luke vi, 15 ; Acts i, 13) Matthew is 
grouped together with James the Less, there is no ground for this supposition. From a 
comparison of Matthew ix, 9, with Mark ii, 14, and Luke v, 27, it appears plainly that 
the two names Matthew and Levi belong to the same person ; for Levi, who is undoubt- 
edly called to the apostleship, is found in none of the lists of the apostles, and his place 
can not be supplied by any other than Matthew, who appears in all the lists. Following 
a pretty general custom of his countrymen to change their names at decisive epochs of 
life, Levi assumed at his call to the apostleship the name of Matthew, and this new name 
supplanted the old name altogether, as was the case with Peter and Paul. According 



182 INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW. 

to Gesenius the names Matthaios and Matthias are both contractions of Mattathias — mean- 
ing, gift of Jehovah — a common Jewish name after the exile; but the true derivation 
is not certain. 

There is no doubt that, as he lived at Capernaum, he had heard Jesus, and believed 
in him, before he was called to the apostleship. He was so greatly rejoiced at his call, 
that he made a great feast for his fellow-publicans, to which Jesus was invited with his 
disciples. Dr. Lange remarks, "that a man who shows the mind of so true an Israelite 
and so thorough an acquaintance with the Old Testament, as Matthew, would never have 
accepted the despised office of a Roman custom officer in utter disregard of the national 
prejudices, if he had not learned very early to distinguish between the outward form and 
the substance of the Mosaic economy, and that he was thereby peculiarly qualified to 
write the first Gospel, designed mainly for Jewish believers." 

Of his apostolic labors the New Testament is silent. Clement of Alexandria says 
that he preached the Gospel at Jerusalem for fifteen years after the ascension. Euse- 
bius writes, that he then left Judea and preached the Gospel to other nations. Accord- 
ing to Heracleon, who wrote in the second century, he died a natural death, and this is 
implicitly confirmed by Clement, Origen, and Tertullian, who mention only Peter, Paul, 
and James the Greater as martyrs among the apostles. 

§ 3. The Time when he wrote his Gospel. 

The precise time when Matthew wrote his Gospel can not be determined. The primi- 
tive Church, however, held unanimously that Matthew wrote first of all the Evangelists. 
Clement of Alexandria, although dissenting from the present order of our Gospels, yet 
assigned the first place to Matthew. From the remarks of the Evangelist, in chapters 
xxvii, 8, and xxviii, 15, we may infer that a considerable series of years must have in- 
tervened between the resurrection of our Lord and the time when the Evangelist wrote. 
There is, on the other hand, internal evidence, that the Gospel was written sometime 
before the year 66, when the Jewish war broke out that terminated with the destruction 
of Jerusalem. For it is psychologically inconceivable, that the Evangelist could have 
given us the discourse of our Lord in chapter xxiv, in the manner he has, if the detailed 
prediction concerning this fearful catastrophe had already begun to be fulfilled when he 
wrote. Among the conflicting statements of the Fathers, that of Irenseus, that Matthew 
wrote his Gospel while Paul was at Rome, is the most probable. This would bring the 
date between 50 and 60. 

§ 4. The peculiar Character and Object op the first Gospel. 

The Gospel itself tells us by plain internal evidence that it was written for Jewish 
converts, not only in Palestine, but all over the world. Its diction is more Hebraistic 
than that of the other Gospels. A full acquaintance with Jewish customs and manners, 
with the geography and topography of the Holy Land, is, with a few exceptions, (chap, i, 
23; xxvii, 8; xxxiii, 46,) presupposed, while Mark and Luke generally add explanatory 
notes. The chronology is taken, unlike that of Luke, from the Jewish, not from uni- 
versal history. Jerusalem goes by the august name — the Holy City. The etymological 



INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW. 183 

reference in i, 21, and the typical use of the word Nazar in ii, 23, were intelligible to 
Jewish readers. Only a few names of extraordinary importance are explained, (i, 23 ; 
xxvii, 33,) and the cry of Christ on the cross is translated, (xxvii, 46.) 

These linguistic peculiarities are in full consonance with the object which the author 
evidently had in view; namely, to furnish ample proof to the Jews that Jesus was the 
promised Messiah of the Old Testament. This is seen in the very beginning, the geneal- 
ogy of Jesus being traced only to Abraham, on which Lange remarks : " The first Gospel 
connects the New Testament most intimately with the Old, not by a list of the books of 
the Old Testament, but by the Old Testament genealogy of Jesus. In this way the union 
between the Old and the New Testament is made indissoluble, and the truth is set forth, 
that Divine revelation was carried on, not merely through written documents, but also 
through living personalities — the seed of Abraham — till it found its completion in the 
incarnation of the Son of God." 

In developing this fundamental idea the author adds to this genealogy the proofs that 
in Jesus the Messianic prophecies have been fulfilled. Jesus Christ is the son of David 
and the seed of Abraham, (i, 1; comp. ix, 27; xii, 23; xv, 22; xx, 30; xxi, 9, 15;) is born 
at Bethlehem of a virgin, (i, 22 ; ii, 6 ;) must flee to Egypt, and be recalled thence, (ii, 15 ;) 
groweth up in Nazareth, (ii, 23 ;) has John for his forerunner, (hi, 3 ; xi, 10 ;) labors in the 
despised Galilee, (iv, 14 ;) his power to heal was a promised mark of his Messianic office, 
(viii, 17; xii, 17, etc.,) and so was his mode of teaching in parables, (xiii, 14, 35;) he 
holds' his Messianic entry into Jerusalem, (xxi, 5-16 ;) is rejected by his people, (xxi, 42,) 
and deserted by his disciples, (xxvi, 31-56) — all according to the prophecies of the Scrip- 
tures. He is, therefore, the great King of Israel, of whom David was but a faint type ; 
to Him is given all power in heaven and on earth; and He is that seed of Abraham in 
whom all nations should be blessed; he, therefore, commands his apostles to go into all 
the world and disciple all nations, promising to them and their successors to be with them 
to the end of time, and raising the typical kingdom of Israel to the universal kingdom 
of God. Jesus Christ is thus the center and end of all theocratic developments, in whom 
are fulfilled the prophecies, types, and shadows of the old dispensation, and who is him- 
self the fulfiller of the law and the prophets, (v, 17-19 ; vii, 12 ; xxii, 40.) For this very 
reason there must be an irreconcilable conflict between him and the degenerate Juda- 
ism of his times, which culminates in his total rejection. The all-pervading idea of Mat- 
thew is, in short, " The complete fulfillment of the Messianic idea of Israel in the person 
and history of Jesus Christ, appearing in constantly-increasing opposition to the corrupt 
Judaism of those days." 

Olshausen compares this Gospel with that of John as follows : " In the Gospel of Mat- 
thew, considered as a whole, we behold its author as a man that is completely carried 
away by the overwhelming grandeur of Jesus' whole appearance. The Son of God, whom 
Matthew, as well as the other apostles, beholds in Jesus of Nazareth, is represented by 
him as the King of Israel ; while in the portraiture of John he appears in flowing robes 
of fight, corresponding to the glory of the beloved Son of the Father. As this can not 
be said of the Gospel of Matthew, the ancients were not wrong in calling the Gospel of 
Matthew the bodily, and that of John the spiritual — Gospel — by which name, however, 
they did not design to detract from Matthew's Gospel; but as the Redeemer was the 
Logos incarnate, it was necessary for a complete exhibition of this holy life to delineate 



184 INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW 

not only its Divine, but also its human and national side, and this is done in the first 
Gospel." To this we add the remark of Ebrard : " Matthew embodies in his Gospel the 
substance of what the twelve apostles had preached by word of mouth to the people of 
Israel, furnishing the proof that Jesus of Nazareth is the promised seed of Abraham, 
(Gen. xv,) and the promised son of David, (2 Sam. vii ;) in other words, the Messiah. To 
the apprehension of this truth the Israelites had first to be brought, before the mystery 
of Christ's eternal Godhead could be more fully set forth. First his historical relation 
to prophecy — then his higher relation to God, to the universe, and to universal history ! 
This accounts fully for the Christology of Matthew's Gospel, which sets forth promi- 
nently the human side of the Redeemer, and that from a Jewish stand-point." 

§ 5. The Arrangement and Division of its Contents. 

In his narrative of facts and sayings of our Lord the Evangelist is not governed by 
the chronological sequence. He generally groups together what is nearly related to each 
other in substance, frequently without regard to the connection in which the events took 
place. 

It seems to have been the peculiar gift of the Spirit to him to record most fully the 
longer discourses of the Lord, and especially those which set forth the character and privi- 
leges of the citizens of the kingdom of heaven. Of this description are the Sermon on the 
Mount, the parables recorded in chapter xiii, and the other polemical and prophetic parables 
in chapters xxi-xxv, also the apostolic commission, (chap, x,) the discourse concerning the 
Baptist, (chap, xi,) that on blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, (chap, xii,) and that on some 
characteristics of the Church, (chap, xviii.) The whole Gospel falls into four principal 
divisions ; namely, 1. The history of the birth and childhood of Jesus, (chaps, i, ii.) 2. 
The preparation for his public ministry, (chaps, iii-iv, 11.) 3. His public ministry in 
Galilee, (chap, iv, 12-xviii, 35.) 4. The last journey to Judea, the close of his public 
ministry, his death, and resurrection, (chap, xix-xxviii, 20.) 

In our Commentary we have divided the whole Gospel into sections, each of which 
contains — with but few exceptions — only one discourse or event, so that the reader can 
find, at a glance, in the index, whatever subject he wishes to examine. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

VEESES. PAGE. 

§ 1. The Genealogy of Jesus Christ 1-17 187 

§ 2. An Angel announces to Joseph the Supernatural 

Conception of Jesus 18-25 194 

CHAPTER n. 

§3. The Visit of the Magi 1-12 202 

§4. The Murder of the Infants of Bethlehem, Flight 

into Egypt, and Eeturn to Nazareth 13-23 207 

CHAPTER ni. 

§ 5. The Preaching and Baptism of John 1-12 210 

§6. The Baptism of Jesus 13-17 218 

CHAPTER IV. 

1 7. The Temptation of our Lord in the Wilderness.. 1-11 222 
(8. Our Lord's Formal Opening of his Ministry in 
Galilee, and the Call of Simon, Andrew, James, 
and John into his Permanent Service 12-25 233 

CHAPTER V. 

§9 The Sermon on the Mount _ 239 

A. The Fundamental Coudition of entering into 

and participating in the Kingdom of God.. 1-16 243 

B. The Righteousness required by the Law to be 

fulfilled in the Kingdom of Christ. 17-20 250 

0. The right and genuine Fulfillment of the Law 
as opposed to that taught and practiced by 
Pharisees 21-48 252 

CHAPTER VI. 

D. The True Motive in Good Works — a lively 

Sense of God's Omnipresence and Omnis- 
cience 1-18 260 

E. Ihe Righteousness of the Kingdom of God 

the Supreme Good and the Highest Object 
of Life, to which every Thing must be sub- 
ordinate 19-34 271 

CHAPTER VII. 

F. Warning, addressed to the Disciples of Christ 

especially, against Censorious Judging and 
Indiscriminating Charity 1- 6 275 

G. Various Concluding Remarks 7-29 276 

CHAPTER VIII. 

§10. Jesus heals a Leper 1-4 282 

g 11. Jesus heals the Centurion's Servant 6-13 286 

§ 12. Jesus heals Peter's Mother-in-Law, and Cures 

many that are Sick and possessed of Devils 14-17 288 

§13. Jesus instructs Two Men that desire to follow 

Him, and Calms a Storm 18-27 289 

1 14. Jesus heals Two Demoniacs in the Land of the 

Gergesenes 28-34 291 

CHAPTER IX. 

§15. Jesus heals a Paralytic 1- 8 295 

§16. The Call of Matthew and the Conversation of 



VEESES. PAGE. 

our Lord with some Pharisees and Disciples 

of John at Matthew's Feast 9-17 298 

§ 17. Jesus heals a Woman diseased with an Issue of 

Blood, and raises the Daughter of Jairus 18-26 302 

§18. Jesus heals Two Blind Persons and a Dumb De- 
moniac 27-34 303 

§ 19. Christ pities the Shepherdless People and ex- 
horts to Prayer for Laborers 35-38 304 

CHAPTER X. 

§ 20. The First Mission of the Apostles 1-4 307 

g 21. Our Lord's Instructions to the Apostles 312 

A. Instructions of the Lord with regard to the 

Mission of the Apostles confined to Israel.. 5-15 313 

B. Christ's Instructions with reference to the 

Persecutions awaiting the Apostles 16-23 316 

C. Christ's Instructions, as to the Course to be 

pursued by his Disciples, continued — Rea- 
sons why they should be perseveringly faith- 
ful amid Trials and Sufferings 24^-42 318 

CHAPTER XI. 

§ 22. The Message of John, and the Discourse of Jesus 

on the Occasion 283 

A. The Mission of John's Disciples to Jesus 1- 6 330 

B. Christ's Testimony of John 7-19 331 

C. Woes pronounced by the Lord on the Cities 

of Galilee 20-24 334 

D. The Savior's Invitation to all that labor and 

are heavy laden 25-30 336 

CHAPTER XII. 

1 23. The Disciples pluck Ears of Corn on the Sabbath 

Day 1- 8 342 

§ 24. Jesus heals a Withered Hand on the Sabbath 9-21 344 

§ 25. Miraculous Cure of a Man that was Blind and 
Dumb — The Blasphemy of the Pharisees, and 
their Demand of a Sign from Heaven — Our 
Lord's Warning against the Unpardonable Sin. 22-45 346 

§ 26. Jesus declares who are his True Kindred on 
the Occasion of a Visit from his Mother and 
Brothers 46-50 354 

CHAPTER XIH. 

§27. The Seven Parables of the Kingdom of God 356 

A. The Parable of the Sower 1-23 359 

B. The Parable of the Tares among the Wheat. $ |£j^ j-367 

C. The Parable of the Mustard Seed 31,32 373 

D. The Parable of the Leaven 33-36 374 

E. The Parable of the Treasure hid in a Field.... 44 376 

F. The Parable of the Pearl of Great Price 45,46 377 

G. The Parable of the Draw Net 47-52 378 

§28. Jesus is rejected at Nazareth the Second Time... 53-58 380 

CHAPTER XIV. 

§29. John the Baptist is Beheaded 1-13 383 

§30. The First Miraculous Feeding 14-21 386 

§ 31. Christ walks upon the Lake 22-36 389 

185 



186 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XV. 

VERSES. PAGE. 

§ 32. A Discussion with the Pharisees concerning the 

Traditions of Men 1-20 394 

§33. The Canaanitish Woman 21-28 399 

§34. The Second Miraculous Feeding 29-39 404 

CHAPTER XVI. 

§ 35. The Pharisees and Sadducees require a Sign from 
Heaven — Christ warneth his Disciples against 
their Leaven 1-12 406 

§ 36. The Confession of Peter and Christ's Declaration 

concerning his Church 13-20 409 

§ 37. The Savior predicts his Death and Resurrection, 
and enjoins upon his Followers to take up his 
Cross 21-28 419 

CHAPTER XVII. 

§38. The Transfiguration of Christ 1-13 428 

§ 39. Jesus heals a Lunatic Boy, made Dumb and Deaf 
by a Demon, whom his Disciples were unable 
to cast out 14-21 435 

§40. The Lord's Second Announcement of his Death 

and Resurrection — Payment of the Temple Tax. 22-27 439 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

§41. Christ enjoins upon his Disciples that which 
should ever characterize the Members of his 
Church 442 

A. Humility, the Source of True Brotherly Love. 1-14 442 

B. Of Evangelical Church Discipline, and Christ's 

Promise to those who meet in his Name 15-20 448 

C. The Gospel Law of Forgiveness, illustrated by 

the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant 21-35 454 

CHAPTER XIX. 

§ 42. Christ's Exposition of the Marriage Relation 1-12 459 

§43. Jesus blesses Little Children 13-15 462 

§44. Answer to the Inquiry of a Rich Young Man, 

and Discourse thereupon 16-30 465 

CHAPTER XX. 

§ 45. The Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard 1-16 470 

§ 46. Christ foretells once more his Death — The Ambi- 
tious Bequest of the Mother of the Sons of 

Zebedee 17-28 477 

§47. Restoring Sight to Two Blind Men 29-34 481 

CHAPTER XXI. 

§48. Christ's Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem 1-11 483 

§49. The Cleansing of the Temple 12-17 487 

£ 50. The Barren Fig-Tree Withered, and its Lesson of 

Faith 18-22 491 

§ 51. Christ's Answer to the Question of his Au- 
thority 23-32 493 

§ 52. The Parable of the Wicked Husbandman 33-46 496 

CHAPTER XXII. 

§ 53. The Parable of the Marriage of the King's Son.. 1-14 500 

§54. The Insidious Question concerning Tribute to 

Cffisar 15-22 505 

g 55. Reply to the Sadducees respecting the Resurrec- 
tion 23-33 508 

§56. The Great Commandment 34-40 510 



VERSES. PAGE. 

§ 57. Our Lord's Question concerning the Messiah and 

David 41-46 512 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

§ 58. Christ's Denunciation of the Scribes and Phar- 
isees 515 

A. Warning against the Example of the Scribes 

and Pharisees 1-12 516 

B. The Seven Woes against the Scribes 13-28 518 

C. Conclusion, and Lamentation over Jerusalem. 29-39 521 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

§ 59. Our Lord's Prediction of the Destruction of the 
Temple, and the Disciples' Inquiry about that 
Event... 1- 3 525 

§ 60. Our Lord's Answer to the Question concerning 

his Coming 527 

A. A General Survey of what must precede 

Christ's Judicial Coming 4-14 528 

B. The Premonitory Signs of Christ's Judicial 

Coming 15-28 532 

C. The Judicial Coming of the Son of Man the 

Virtual Beginning of the Final Judgment. 29-36 636 

D. Closing Exhortations 37-51 545 

CHAPTER XXV. 

§ 61. The Parable of the Ten Virgins 1-13 54' 

§62. The Parable of the Talents 14-30 55) 

I 63. The Final Judgment of all Nations 31-46 5£ 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

§ 64. Our Lord foretells the Time of his Death, while 
his Adversaries are yet at a Loss how to bring 

it about 1- 5 i59 

§65. Jesus is anointed at Bethany 6-13 561 

§ 66. Compact of Judas with the High-Priests to be- 
tray Jesus 14-16 563 

§67. The Preparation for the Passover 17-19 565 

§ 68. Our Lord eats the Passover and points out his 

Betrayer 20-25 567 

§69. The Institution of the Lord's Supper 26-3( 570 

§ 70. Christ foretells the Dispersion of the Disciples 

and the Fall of Peter 31-5 581 

§71. Christ's Agony in Gethsemane 36-t6 583 

§72. Jesus arrested in Gethsemane 47-56 590 

§73. Jesus before the High-Priest 57-68 593 

§74. Peter's Denial and Repentance 6S-75 597 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

§ 75. Jesus is led away to Pilate — Remorse and Suicide 

of Judas 1-10 598 

§76. Jesus before Pilate 11-30 602 

§ 77. Jesus on the Cross 31-50 610 

§ 78. The Signs and Incidents following the Death o:' 

Christ— His Burial 51-66 622 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

§79. Christ is risen from the Dead 1-10 626 

§ 80. The Sanhedrim's Fraudulent Suppression of the 

Soldiers' Testimony 11-15 635 

§ 81. Appearance of the Lord on a Mountain in Gali- 
lee— The Great Commission 16-20 637 

A Dissertation on Christian Baptism 641 



THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW. 

CHAPTEE I. 

§1. THE GENEALOGY OF JESUS CHRIST. 

The prophets having announced the Messiah as the seed of Abraham and the son 
of David, the genealogy of Jesus forms an important portion of Gospel truth. Matthew 
gives us the lineage of Joseph, the reputed father of Jesus, hut no intimation of the 
relation of Mary to the house of David, nor have we any express declaration to this effect 
in the other Gospels. "Whether Luke's genealogical table is intended to give the lineage 
of Mary is not certain, as we shall show in our comments on Luke iii, 23. The early 
Church generally ascribed both genealogies to Joseph, and modern scholars are about 
equally divided on this point. However that may be decided, the reasons why Matthew, 
writing for the Jews, gives prominence to the Davidic descent of Joseph and is silent 
respecting the family of Mary, are obvious: 1. We must assume that the child Jesus -was 
presented in the Temple and recorded in the national register and tables of genealogy as 
the lawful son of Joseph. Had the Jews been informed in his lifetime of his super- 
natural generation, they would certainly have made it the subject of reproach. But in 
all their questions and cavils at his doctrine, in their indignation at his testimony and 
rejection of his claims, there is no allusion to what they would readily have stigmatized 
as evidence of imposture. 2. To have said that Mary was of the house of David, and to 
have cited her genealogy, would in the eyes of the Jews not have sustained a legal claim 
of Jesus to a descent from David, as it was a rule of the Eabbins, and one universally 
recognized, that the descent on the father's side only shall be called a descent; the 
descent by the mother is not called any descent. To prove that Jesus was the rightful 
heir to the promises made to Abraham and to David, it must be established that Joseph, 
Jesus' legal father, was of David's house, for only as the legal son of Joseph could he lay 
such a claim to the Messiahship as the Jews would admit. It was, therefore, of the 
greatest importance, that the legal relation in which Jesus stood to Joseph, as his 
adopted son, should be set in the clearest light, and for this purpose the lineage of his 
mother was of no importance. 

But the question arises, whether the fulfillment of the promise to David concerning 
his seed (2 Sam. vii, 12; Acts ii, 30; xiii, 23; Bom. i, 3) does not demand for our Lord a 
line of natural descent from David through his mother. A writer in the April number 
of the Bibliotheca Sacra of 1861 — George M. Clelland — denies this, and urges the follow- 
ing ingenious argument: "The human ancestry of Jesus could not ascend higher than 
his mother. There was no power in any human descent, or in all humanity together, 
could it have been concentrated as one, to give birth even to the human nature of Jesus 
in the manner in which it was conveyed to him — though the same in substance as that 
of all men — and still less to his whole person. Nor was there any such power in Mary 
of herself, any more than in any other of the daughters of the race; for in no respect 

was she in essence different from or superior to any one of them. It was preeminently 

187 



188 MATTHEW I, 1-17. 



'a new thing' which 'the Lord created in the earth.' (Jer. xxxi, 22.) "While the Son of 
God could not have taken hold of the human nature in reality without a mother, the 
words 'the seed of the woman' imply, even in regard to his humanity, the original and 
underived source of Jesus. The Messiah could have no natural grandfathers or line of 
human ancestry; he was the seed of no man in this sense. And it is remarkable that the 
far-sighted wisdom of God, by which the Scriptures provide for every emergency, had set 
aside any supposed rights of his mother by means of the rule of the Jewish polity, which 
forbade a woman of herself to head a family or to appear in a genealogy. How, then, 
could Jesus be of the seed of David according to the flesh, as Scripture required him to 
be and represents him to have been? In no other way than through his being the son 
of Joseph according to the law, in consequence of Joseph's union with Mary, his mother. 
This was the result of the law of the flesh — that is, of earthly humanity under the Jewish 
law — above that of mere physiology, and constituted the nearest possible approach our 
Lord could make as a person to be of the seed of David according to the flesh, and it 
made him legally of that seed. Before the birth of Jesus, Joseph was commanded to take 
Mary to his house as his wife. It is not enough to say, that this was in order to protect 
Mary. Joseph and Mary, previously joined together by the act of espousals, by this 
further act became perfectly one in God's sight, and it conferred on Joseph the title of 
father, according to the law, of the child about to be, and some time afterward born of 
Mary. The gift of a son. in a most important sense, was to Joseph as well as Mary. 
And God, in so dealing with Joseph's wife, doubtless intended that it should be so. God 
could give Joseph such a gift, and he could accept it, and its character and relations the 
law was at hand to define and maintain. It may be proper to notice the light indirectly 
thrown by the Scriptures on the subject. By a provision of the Jewish law, (Deut. xxv, 
5-10,) when a brother died childless, his surviving brother was commanded to marry the 
widow; 'and it shall be that the first-born son which she beareth shall succeed in name 
of his brother which is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel.' By this means the 
Jews were familiar with the idea of an heir being given to one who was not the real 
father. In their eyes the heir from such a source was as truly such as if born naturally 
to the deceased. We are inclined to think that there is something more than a mere 
analogy between the point of this Jewish law and the gift of a son to Joseph on the part 
of God. The grand truth of Christianity is, that man being dead through sin, and 
incapable by himself of recovery, God gave redemption and salvation by sending his 
own Son, the Lord of Life, into his nature, to serve as a quickening seed therein by his 
Spirit to all who should receive him. Of this truth the Scriptures teem with types and 
illustrations, and it was interwoven with the whole law and customs of the Jews. What 
more apt figure can we find of it than in Joseph, the husband after the flesh, of her of 
whom the Messiah was to be born, taken as representing either the fallen man after the 
flesh or the Jew under the law, or both of them, to whom, as in himself impotent for 
good, and dead in trespasses and sins, God as the- living One raises up the true seed who 
shall save and perpetuate the race about to perish." 

The above argument deserves much consideration, whether Mary herself was or was 
not a descendant of David. The argument does not force us to the conclusion that she 
was not, but that, if she was, her descent from David was not of so much importance as 
that of Joseph. We shall state in Luke the reasons for and against the opinion of his gen- 
ealogy being that of Mary, and show, at the same time, that the apparent inconsistency 
between the two genealogies, if they both should be that of Joseph, may be explained. 
Before passing to another point, we add the following interesting remarks of Mr. 
Andrews, in his "Life of our Lord:" "Whether Joseph and Mary were the only sur- 
viving descendants of David, we have no positive data to decide; but it is not probable; 
for if they had been the sole survivors, this very fact, which could not have been 
unknown, must have made them conspicuous. . . . Yet, on the other hand, the 



THE GENEALOGY OF JESUS CHRIST. 189 

expectation that the Messiah should spring from the house of David was strong and 
general. If the people were really looking for a Messiah descended from that family, 
must not all who were known to he members of it have occupied a large space in public 
attention? Perhaps the following may he the just solution of the difficulty. The 
promise made to David and his house respecting the throne of Israel was not absolute. 
Its fulfillment was to depend upon the condition of obedience. Yet if the condition 
failed the promise was not withdrawn, but its fulfillment was suspended, and the kingly 
claims of the descendants of David were in abeyance. After the return from the 
captivity of Babylon, the house of David, at first prominent in Zerubbabel, fell more and 
more into obscurity. Other families began to be prominent. At last the Maccabees, 
through their wisdom and valor, won the highest place, and became the acknowledged 
heads of the nation. After their decay the family of Herod, through Eoman favor, 
became dominant. During four hundred years no one of David's lineage seems to have 
drawn to himself public attention. Nevertheless, the Messianic hopes of the Jews had, 
during the wars of the Maccabees, and under the usurpation of Herod, been constantly 
gaining in depth and strength. Every -where they began to turn to their Scriptures, and 
to read them with new earnestness and faith. And as the expectation of the Messiah 
became more and more prevalent, it was naturally connected with the promise to David. 
Yet among his descendants there was no one to whom public attention was turned as in 
any way likely to fulfill their hopes. Hence, while a general belief existed that the 
Messiah should be of that family, its individual members continued to live in obscurity. 
And as it was also firmly believed that Elijah, the prophet, must personally come as the 
forerunner of the Messiah, this belief would naturally prevent any special attention 
being turned to them till that prophet actually appeared. Thus Joseph, the carpenter of 
Nazareth, might have been known to be of David's line, and even the legal claimant of 
the throne, and yet live unhonored and unnoticed." 

It is to be presumed that the Evangelists took their genealogical tables from docu- 
ments which the Jews deemed authentic, and which, if they contained any unessential 
inaccuracies or discrepancies, the Evangelist did not feel at liberty to correct. Of the 
existence of genealogical public registers we have a striking incidental proof in the fact 
that, when Augustus ordered the census of the Empire to be taken, the Jews imme- 
diately went each to his own city; that is, to the city to which his tribe, family, and 
father's house belonged. The mention of Zacharias, as " of the course of Abia," of Eliz- 
abeth, as "of the daughters of Aaron," and of Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, as "of 
the tribe of Aser," are further indications of the same thing. And this conclusion is 
expressly confirmed by the testimony of Josephus in the opening of his Autobiography. 
After deducing his own descent, not only from the race which is considered the noblest 
among the Jews, that of the priests-, but from the first of the twenty -four courses — that 
of Jehoiarib — and on the mother's side from the Asmonean sovereigns, he adds : 
"I have thus traced my genealogy as I have found it recorded in the public tables." 
From all this it is abundantly manifest that the Jewish genealogical records con- 
tinued to be kept till near the destruction of Jerusalem. But it may be safely affirmed 
that the Jewish genealogical system then came to an end. Essentially connected as it 
was with the tenure of the land on the one hand, and with the peculiar privileges of the 
houses of David and Levi on the other, it naturally failed when the land was taken 
away from the Jewish race, and when the promise to David was fulfilled and the priest- 
hood of Aaron was superseded by the exaltation of Christ to the right hand of God. 
Nor can it be doubted that the authentic records were destroyed with the destruction 
of Jerusalem, and since no Jew can now show his descent from David, we have another 
proof how utterly groundless the expectations of the Jews concerning a coming Messiah 
have ever been since that event. 

To prepare the reader for the solution of some difficulties, which each of the geneal- 



190 



MATTHEW I, 1-1 7. 



ogies of Christ presents, we premise a few remarks, taken from Smith's Dictionary of 
the Bible, with regard to the nature of the genealogical records in the Old Testament. 
They had respect to political and territorial divisions as much as to strictly genealogical 
descent, and it will at once be seen how erroneous a conclusion it may be that all who 
are called "sons" of such or such a patriarch must necessarily be his very children. 
Just as in the very first division into tribes, Manasseh and Bphraim were numbered with 
their uncles, as if they had been sons instead of grandsons of Jacob. (Gen. xlviii, 5.) 
So afterward the names of persons belonging to different generations would often stand 
side by side as heads of families or houses, and be called the sons of their common 
ancestor. For example, Genesis xlvi, 21, contains grandsons as well as sons of Benja- 
min, and Exodus vi, 24, probably enumerates the son and grandson of Assir as heads, 
with their father, of the families of the Korhites ; and so in innumerable instances. 
If any one family or house became extinct, some other would succeed to its place, called 
after its own chief father. Hence, of course, a census of any tribe, drawn up at a later 
period, would exhibit different divisions from one drawn up at an earlier. Compare, 
e. g., the list of courses of priests in Zerubbabel's time (Neh. xii) with that of those in 
David's time. (1 Chron. xxiv.) The same principle must be borne in mind in interpret- 
ing any particular genealogy. The sequence of generations may represent the succes- 
sion to such or such an inheritance or headship of tribe or family, rather than the rela- 
tionship of father and son. Again: where a pedigree was abbreviated it would naturally 
specify such generations as would indicate from what chief houses the person descended. 
In cases where a name was common, the father's name would be added for distinction 
only. These reasons would be well understood at the time, though it would be difficult 
now to ascertain them positively. Another feature in the Scripture genealogies, which it 
is worth while to notice, is the recurrence of the same name, such as Tobias, Tobit, 
Nathan, Mattatha, and even of names of the same signification in the same family. 

"Verses 1 — VS 1 . 

(1) The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son 1 of David, the son of 
Abraham. (2) Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat 
Judas and his brethren; (3) And Judas begat Phares and Zara 2 of Thamar; and 
Phares begat Esrom ; and Esrom begat Aram ; (4) And Aram begat Aminadab ; 
and Aminadab begat Naasson; and ISTaasson begat Salmon; (5) And Salmon begat 
Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse; (6) And 
Jesse begat David the king; and David the king begat Solomon of her that had 
been the wife of Unas ; 3 (7) And Solomon begat Roboam ; i and Roboam begat Abia ; 
and Abia begat Asa; (8) And Asa begat Josaphat; and Josaphat begat Joram; 
and Joram begat Ozias; (9) And Ozias 5 begat Joatham; and Joatham begat 
Achaz; and Achaz begat Ezekias; 6 (10) And Ezekias begat Manasses; and Manas- 
ses begat Amon; and Amon begat Josias; (11) Aucl Josias begat Jechonias and his 
brethren, 7 about the time they were carried away to Babylon : (12) And after they 
were brought to Babylon, Jechonias begat Salathiel; and Salathiel begat Zoroba- 
bel; 8 (13) And Zorobabel begat Abiud; and Abiud begat Eliakim; and Eliakim 



1 The word " Son " with the Jews means not only a son 
proper, but also any descent. " Son of David " was one 
of the special designations of the Messiah. 2 Phares and 
Zara are mentioned together, because they were twins. 
3 Bathsheba became, after the death of Urias, the lawful 
wife of David, so that Solomon was their legitimate son. 



*OrRehoboam. 5 Or Azariah,(2 Kings xv, 1.) 6 0r Heze- 
kiah, (2 Kings xvi, 20.) 'The reading of several good 
manuscripts is, "And Josias begat Jehoiakim and his 
brothers ; and Jehoiakim begat Jechonias at the time of 
the Babylonian captivity." Compare 1 Chron. xiii, 13-35 
8 Or Zerubbabel, (Ezra iii, 2.) 



THE GENEALOGY OF JESUS CHRIST. 



191 



begat Azor; (14) And Azor begat Sadoc; and Sadoc begat Achim; and Achim 
begat Eliud; (15) And Eliud begat Eleazar; and Eleazar begat Mattban; and Mat- 
tban begat Jacob; (16) And Jacob begat Josepb tbe busband of Mary, of wbom 
was born Jesus, wbo is called Christ. (17) So all tbe generations from Abraham 
to David are fourteen generations ; and from David until the carrying away into 
Babylon are fourteen generations ; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto 
Christ are fourteen generations. 



Verse 1. The phrase fiifiloq ytviozuq is correctly 
rendered "the Book of the Generation." Genera- 
tion is evidently used in a passive sense, and "the 
Book of the Generation" means the record of the 
birth of Christ and the circumstances attending it. 
In this sense it would be the appropriate heading of 
chapters i and ii. It may, however, also mean, in 
uniformity with Old Testament usage, (Gen. vi, 9 ; 
xxv, 19; xxxvii, 2,) where historiography consisted, 
to a great extent, in filling up genealogies, the his- 
tory of the whole life of Jesus. In this sense it 
would be the heading of the whole Gospel, whose 
very object is to prove that Jesus is the son of David, 
and, through David, of Abraham. — The Old Testa- 
ment begins with the account of the creation of 
the world, the New with that of the incarnation of 
Him who created the world, who, though " his goings 
forth have been from of old, from everlasting," was 
to be born of a woman when the fullness of time had 
come. — Jesus Christ, or, more correctly, Jesus the 
Christ. The word "Jesus" is synonymous with our 
word Savior and the Hebrew Jeshua, abbreviated 
from Jehoshua or Joshua; that is, "Jehovah helps or 
delivers." Our Lord was so named by express com- 
mand of the angel (Verse 21; Luke i, 31.) This 
name was borne, 1. By the son of Nun, the conqueror 
of the promised land; 2. By the son of Iosedech, the 
high-priest, who brought the people back from the 
Babylonian captivity. (Ezra ii, 2; Hag. i, 1.) Both 
of these were called, by the Hellenists, Jesus. (Heb. 
iv, 8.) The word " Christ" — Greek Xpiardc, He- 
brew Mashiach, German Messias, English Messiah- 
signifies "the Anointed," and is the official name 
of Jesus, with reference to his prophetic, priestly, 
and royal offices. (Psalms ii, 2; Dan. ix, 25; Isa. 
Ixi, 1.) Under the old dispensation the kings, high- 
priests, and sometimes the prophets, were conse- 
crated to their respective offices by anointing them 
with oil. This anointing symbolized the Holy Ghost, 
whom Jesus, "the Son of man," received without 
measure, and whose influence upon believers is 
called, by John, the "anointing." In a similar 
sense in which Jesus was called " Christ," believers 
are called " Christians," "Anointed ones." 

Verse 2. Judah and his brethren. Judah is here 
named prominently, because the Savior was to spring 
from his seed; yet his brethren are also mentioned, 
because they had an equal right with Judah to the 
theocratic privileges. 



Verse 5. That Rachab was the mother of Booz 
is not stated in the Old Testament. The Evan- 
gelist must have known it from the private fam- 
ily records of the house of David. According 
to Jewish tradition, eight prophets and priests de- 
scended from her. The high consideration in which 
she was held by the Jews appears also from the 
mention which the New Testament makes of her. 
(James ii, 25; Heb. xi, 31.) Since Rachab lived 
between 300 and 400 years before the birth of David, 
most commentators suppose that several members 
are omitted in this part of the record, a phenomenon 
that is by no means rare in the Old Testament gen- 
ealogies. If we take, however, into consideration the 
great age of Jesse, as indicated 1 Sam. xvii, 12, as 
well as the reasonable conjecture that God may have 
granted to Boaz and Obed, on account of their piety, 
an unusually long life, it appears by no means impos- 
sible that Rachab was literally the great grandmother 
of David. — A writer in the Journal of Sacred Litera- 
ture, 1856, remarks on the differences besetting this 
part of the genealogy: " Between Naasson — who was 
Prince of Judah at the time of the Exodus — and 
the birth of David there intervened four genera- 
tions, Salmon, Boaz, Obed, and Jesse. Now, this 
interval is computed by some at 480 years, and by 
none at less than 405 years, thus to make each gen- 
eration to exceed over at least 100 years. Assuredly 
this is quite beyond the limits of probability ; but in 
Lord Hervey's work we find a fair attempt at recon- 
ciling the chronology with the genealogy. After an 
elaborate examination of the genealogies which bear 
on this point, and by certain probable conjectures 
regarding the corruption of the Hebrew numerals — 
sundry examples of which he gives from the Old 
Testament — he is able, with much appearance of 
truth, to lessen the whole period from the Exodus to 
the death of David, which was not computed at less 
than 455 years, to 240 years, and so giving an average 
of 48 years to each generation. This theory is con- 
firmed by Sir G. Wilkinson in his work on the Egyp- 
tians, and by Dr. Lepsius in his Letters from Egypt. 
The latter shows that the cruel King Pharaoh, men- 
tioned in Exodus, is the same as Ramases I, and, 
therefore, lessens the interval between him and 
David by about 200 years. The latter, after careful 
investigation, comes to the conclusion that the inter- 
val which, we said above, was reckoned by some as 
480 years, is at least 180 years too great." 



192 



MATTHEW I, 1-17. 



Verse 8. The names Ahaziah, Joash, and Ama- 
ziah, which, in 1 Chron. iii, 11, 12, occur between 
Joram and Ozias, are here omitted, probably for no 
other reason than because they were missing in the 
public records. The ground of this omission is 
found by some expositors in their descent from Jez- 
ebel, the wicked daughter of Ethbal, and in their 
own apostasy from Jehovah. As such they were not 
worthy to be numbered with the theocratic princes. — 
In the same way the tribe of Dan is omitted in Rev- 
elation vii, 5-8, probably from its idolatrous char- 
acter. Ozias was the son of Amaziah, yet it is here 
said that Joram begat Ozias. This is in perfect keep- 
ing with the custom of the Jews, to call not only sons 
proper, but also grandchildren and great grandchil- 
dren, sons. Accordingly, a man is said to beget a 
child that was by several generations removed from 
him. (Comp. Isa. xxxix, 7.) 

Verse 11. Between Josias and Jechonias there 
should stand, according to 2 Kings xxiv, 6, and 2 
Chron. xxxvi, 8, Jehoiakim. Josiah had four sons, 
Johanan or Jehoahaz, Eliakim or Jehoiakim, Zede- 
kiah, and Sallum. After the death of Josiah, the 
people made Johanan king; but since the crown, by 
right of two years' seniority, belonged to his brother 
Jehoiakim, Johanan was deposed after a reign of 
three months, by Pharaoh Necho, and carried cap- 
tive into Egypt, where he died, and left the crown to 
Jehoiakim, who had one son, Jechonias. Ebrard, 
Lange, and others maintain that Jehoiakim is omit- 
ted for good reasons, because, under him, the coun- 
try lost its independence, (2 Kings xxiv, 4,) and the 
sovereignty of the theocratic kings ceased. These 
scholars say that, for this reason, Jechonias was 
inserted in place of his father Jehoiakim. In this 
exposition, "his brethren" is taken in the wider 
sense of " kindred," here for his paternal uncles. 
Other commentators are of the opinion that by the 
" Jechonias " of this verse Jehoiakim is meant, who 
had either likewise the name Jechonias or was, 
through an oversight of the Greek copyist, con- 
founded with Jechonias. This might easily happen, 
since, owing to the slight difference between the 
Hebrew Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin, either of these 
names might be rendered, in Greek, Jechonias. Ac- 
cording to this view the words "about the time" 
mark the time, when the people were led into captiv- 
ity, only approximately. For the Babylonish cap- 
tivity was not consummated at once, but in three 
acts, at different times, of which the first took place 
in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josias, 
when Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem, and carried 
to Babylon a great number of captives; the second 
under Jechonias, the son of Jehoiakim; the third 
under Zedekiah. — All the difficulties of this passage, 
however, are easily and satisfactorily removed by 
adopting, with Dr. Clarke, Dr. Strong, and others, 
the reading given in foot-note 7. 

Verse 12. According to 1 Chron. iii, 17, Sala- 
thiel was Jechonias' s natural — not legal — son. If 



this Salathiel is identical with the one mentioned by 
Lnke, which is very probable, we have to take Neii 
either for the father-in-law or the grandfather of Sa- 
lathiel, through the wife of Jechonias. Several pas- 
sages of the Scriptures favor this view. It would 
seem that Zorobabel was the son of Salathiel' s 
brother Pedaiah, by the widow of Salathiel, who had 
died without issue. (1 Chron. iii, 19.) 

Verse 13. Abiud, Eliakim, Azor, are not found 
in the Chronicles, but quite different names stand in 
their place. (1 Chron. iii, 19, 20.) The author of 
" Chronicles" has, probably, introduced only those of 
Zorobabel's posterity, who enjoyed public renown, 
and to this class the ancestors of Joseph did not be- 
long. In like manner the other names given in the 
genealogy do not occur in the Old Testament, because 
they were humble members of the fallen family of 
David, and could be found only in the genealogical 
records extant in those days. 

Verse 16. Matthew says, purposely, not as in the 
preceding cases, "Joseph begat Jesus," but calls Jo- 
seph only the "husband of Mart, of whom was born 
Jesus." As Jesus passed among the Jews for a son 
of Joseph, his foster-father, Divine Providence has 
arranged it, that this foster-father of Jesus was a 
descendant of David. 

Verse 17. It has given commentators a great 
deal of trouble to make out the fourteen generations 
in the second and in the third periods. The most 
natural division is, either to commence the third 
group with Jehoiakim, according to the reading in 
foot-note 7, or to count David twice, which, as Alford 
remarks, seems to be demanded by the text. The 
whole passage is set in the clearest light by Dr. J. A. 
Alexander in his Notes on the Gospel of Matthew: 
" The meaning can not be that there were really, in 
point of fact, just fourteen generations in the several 
intervals here mentioned; for we know from the Old 
Testament that four names are omitted in the second 
period, and have reason to believe that others may be 
wanting in the third. It rather means the contrary; 
namely, that, although there were more generations 
in the actual succession, only fourteen are here given, 
for the sake of uniformity, in each of the three peri- 
ods. So far from being a mistake or an intentional 
misrepresentation, it is really a caution to the reader 
against falling into the very mistake which some 
would charge upon the writer. As if he had said: 
' Let it be observed that this is not a complete list of 
all the generations between Abraham and Christ, but 
that some names are omitted, so as to leave fourteen 
in each great division of the history of Israel.' All 
the generations, if extended to the whole verse, may 
then be understood to mean all that are here given ; 
but if restricted to the first clause, which is a more 
probable construction, it may have its strict sense — ■ 
absolutely all — and give a reason for selecting four- 
teen as the measure of the periods; namely, that 
there were really just fourteen generations in the 
first, and that the others were assimilated to it, either 



THE GENEALOGY OP JESUS CHRIST. 



193 



by the genealogist, from whom the pedigree was bor- 
rowed, or by the Evangelist himself. But it still 
remains to be considered, why they are thus divided 
at all. Some say that this was a customary formula 
appended to the ancient genealogies, designed to aid 
the memory, and here retained by the Evangelist 
without change, as a part of the original document 
which he is quoting. Others suppose a mystical 
allusion to the name of David, or to the Scriptural 
use of seven as a sacred number. Besides these 
mnemonical and mystical solutions, there is a chro- 
nological one ; namely, that the periods are equal in 
years, though not in generations, and two of the 
great cycles having been completed, he who was 
born at the close of the third must be the Christ. 
The only other supposition that need to be stated is, 
that the writer's purpose was to draw attention to the 
three great periods in the history of Israel as the 
chosen people, one extending from Abraham as its 
great progenitor to David, its first theocratic sover- 
eign; another to the downfall of the monarchy and 
loss of the national independence; and a third from 
this disaster to the advent of Messiah. Thus under- 
stood, the verse may be paraphrased as follows : ' The 
foregoing table is divided into three parts, the first 
of which embraces fourteen generations, and the 
other two are here assimilated to it, by omitting a 
few names, in order to make prominent the three 
great eras in the history of Israel, marked and di- 
vided by the calUng of Abraham, the reign of David, 
the Babylonian exile, and the birth of Christ, the end 
to which the previous succession pointed.' " 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 

The Gospel of Matthew begins with a long list 
of names. But let none look upon the first sixteen 
verses as unimportant. As there is nothing in na- 
ture that does not answer some purpose, be it even 
the smallest insect or plant, so every thing in the 
Bible has its particular purpose and meaning. From 
the genealogy we learn : 

1. That God always keeps his promises. Though 
the descendants of David had been so far reduced in 
their outward circumstances that it almost seemed 
as if God had forgotten his purpose, yet he carried it 
out at a time and in a manner least expected. Let 
this strengthen the faith of the Christian that God 
will fulfill all his promises. Let the sinner also learn 
from this that God will surely execute the sentence 
of death pronounced upon him, " The sonl that sin- 
neth shall die," unless he repent and believe in the 
Lord Jesus Christ. — " The genealogy of Christ," says 
H. W. Beecher, " serves to connect Jesus and his 
teachings with all God's revelations and promises 
that had been given before. It binds all generations 
together in one moral system, showing us that there 
is, for all generations, one God and one religion, 
whose principles do not change. It proclaims that 



13 



it has come, not to tell men of an unknown God, 
but of Him 'who made a covenant with Abraham 
and an oath unto Isaac, and confirmed the same 
unto Jacob for a law, and unto Israel for an ever- 
lasting covenant;' the same God to whom David 
poured out his psalms of praise ; the same God 
whose will, whose principles of government, all the 
prophets had made known. It introduces not a 
new religious system, but only the clearer and com- 
pleted revelation of that by which all good men in 
former ages had lived and died — demanding the 
same kind of faith which was' imparted to Abraham 
for righteousness, so that all believers in Christ are 
called the children of Abraham — requiring the same 
kind of penitence as that which David uttered in 
the 51st Psalm, and the same kind of obedience 
which God demanded of Israel, saying to them by 
the prophet, 'What doth the Lord require of thee 
but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk 
humbly with thy God ?' The prediction that the 
seed of David should reign over all the earth, and 
that in the seed of Abraham all the families of the 
earth should be blessed, had waited long for its ful- 
fillment; and at last we have 'the book of the gen- 
eration of Jesus Christ,' ' the son of David, the son 
of Abraham;' and every one of those strange Jew- 
ish names is a link in the chain of evidence which 
demonstrates the truth of God's promises, and gives 
the world assurance that he will be faithful to bis 
word." 

2. We recognize in this genealogy God's spe- 
cial providence; for how could it be known before- 
hand, without Divine guidance, in which of the in- 
numerable collateral branches of a father the great 
Descendant should be born ? The genealogy of the 
Bible, brought down to Jesus, is evidently a distinc- 
tion of the Son of man from all others. Every 
thing is designed to point to him, and his lineage was 
made known long before his birth. — But the Bibli- 
cal genealogies have still another important design; 
namely, to furnish us with a true history of our race 
and its origin, in opposition to the fictions and 
myths of ancient and modern hea,thens about the 
origin of man. The further back we trace the my- 
thologies of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Ro- 
mans, the more obscure and absurd they become. 
They speak of the carnal intercourse of gods with 
men, which gave rise to hero-worship and idolatry. — 
The table of Christ's genealogy, standing at the be- 
ginning of Matthew's Gospel, fixes in our minds, at 
the very outset, the impression that we are reading 
the history of a real person, who actually lived here 
in this world of ours. No one who was writing a 
fiction would have dared to give it a beginning seem- 
ingly so dry as this list of names. 

3. The genealogy shows us the sinfulness and de- 
pravity of human nature. How many pious parents 
named in this catalogue had wicked children ! The 
parents of Rehoboam, Joram, Amon, and Jechonias 
were pious. Piety and the grace of God are not 



194 



MATTHEW I, 18-25. 



necessarily inherited by children from their parents. 
The children of God are " not born of blood, nor 
of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but 
of God." — When we consider how polluted our na- 
ture is, how infinite is the condescension and mercy 
on the part of the Son of God, to be born of a wo- 
man, to be made in the likeness of sinful flesh. — 
Some of the names contained in this table remind 
ns of base deeds and sad events ; but at the close of 
all the names stands the name of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. Although he was the eternal Word, yet he 
took upon himself human nature for the purpose 
of making us again the children of God. This 
infinite condescension of Christ should inspire us 
with profound gratitude. It teaches us that whoever 
partakes of human nature has claims on Christ's 
redemption. Even if our sins are as many and as 
heinous as those of some of the above-mentioned 
ancestors of Jesus, they will not shut the gate of 
heaven against us, if we repent and believe in the 
Lord Jesus Christ, and thus become ingrafted unto 
him as fruit bearing branches to the glory of the 
Savior of the world. 

4. Dr. Lisco in his vv ^vcbitlt'Silttuurfe" gives the 
following excellent sketch of a homily on this sec- 
tion, which offers both to the general reader, and 
especially to the preacher of the Gospel, ample ma- 
terial for profitable reflection : 

HOW FAR HAS THE GENEALOGY OF JeSUS A BEARING 

on our Christian Faith? 

I. By shoiving the historical connection of Christ 
with the human family. 

1. By tracing his pedigree to Adam. (Luke iii, 38.) 
He is the Savior of the whole race. 



2. By tracing it to Abraham. (Matt, i, 1.) Sal- 
vation is of the Jews. 

3. This connection runs through the three prin- 
cipal epochs of the history of the Jews, (verse 17;) 
namely : 

(1.) Through the time when the promise was gen- 
eral, from Abraham to David. (Verses 1-6.) 

(2.) Through the time from David to the Baby- 
lonian captivity, the time of particular promises. 
(Verses 6-11.) 

(3.) Through the time intervening between the 
Babylonian captivity and the birth of Christ, the 
time when the voice of prophecy was hushed, and 
the Promised One was eagerly desired and looked 
for. (Verses 12-16.) 

4. This connection further shows : 

(1.) Not only how in Christ the prophecies of all 
times were fulfilled, but, also, 

(2.) How they proceed from an inward necessity. 

II. By a deeper apprehension of the history of 
the world, for which his genealogy prepares us. 

1. The central point of the world's history is the 
redemption of the human family through Jesus 
Christ. 

2. An ardent desire of this redemption has pre- 
eminently characterized the children of Israel. 

3. This fact accounts for the possibility of pre- 
serving, for thousands of years, the genealogies of 
those that are considered heirs of the promise. 

4. Not in Israel alone, but even in the whole race, 
there existed a faint hope of the great Deliverer. 

5. All violent commotions and convulsions in his- 
tory prior to the advent of Christ must be consid- 
ered as expressions of this vague and unsanctified 
longing. 



2. AN ANGEL ANNOUNCES TO JOSEPH THE SUPERNATURAL CONCEPTION OF JESUS. 



Matthew's narrative concerning the conception of Jesus bears the stamp of the high- 
est simplicity and brevity. In attacking its historical character, infidel writers have 
claimed the right to put it on an equal footing with the myths of heathen nations, which 
represent their great men also as the sons of virgins. But this blasphemous comparison 
shows only the firm historical basis on which the Gospel account rests ; for in these 
mythological tales a god becomes a man, not in order to give existence to a being of 
superhuman purity, but in order to gratify the vilest lusts. Such conceptions were 
abominations upon which the Jews looked with the utmost abhorrence. Besides, when 
the gods of the heathen became incarnate, they took only the form of what they repre- 
sented, but acted in direct contradiction to the nature which they apparently assumed. 
Not so in the incarnation of the Son of God. He was very man, as well as very God, 
and even in this awful mystery the God of Bevelation carried out his own perfect laws. 
If, however, any latent truth is to be recognized in these myths, it is this, that they bear 
witness to the correct idea, that by the way of natural generation the perfect man could 
not be born. They may, moreover, be considered as the expression of the universal long- 
ing after the fact, of which Matthew gives us a well-authenticated account. That in the 



THE ANGEL'S ANNOUNCEMENT TO JOSEPH. 



195 



person of Jesus this universal, unconscious longing has been fulfilled, his whole life testi- 
fies, infinitely superior as it is to any thing that could proceed from sinful mankind. (See 
General Introduction, §§ 28, 29.) Very significantly says Moses, in his account of the 
generations from Adam to Noah, (Gen. v, 3:) "Adam begat a son in his own likeness, 
after his image." Hence, if Jesus was a real, yet sinless man, as his mediatorial office 
required, and as the New Testament expressly declares him to be, he can have been 
exempted from depravity only by virtue of his supernatural conception, as expressly 
stated by two Evangelists and taken for granted in all the books of the New Testament. 

"Verses 18—25. (Compare Luke i, 26-28; n, 1-21.) 

(18) Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother 
Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with 
child of the Holy Ghost. (19) Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and 
not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. 
(20) But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared 
unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee 
Mary thy wife : for that which. is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. (21) And 
she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus : for he shall save 
his people from their sins. (22) Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled 
which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, (23) Behold, a virgin shall 
be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, 
which being interpreted is, God with us. (24) Then Joseph being raised from 
sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife : 
(25) And knew her not till she had brought forth her first-born son : and he called 
his name Jesus. 



Verse 18. Now the birth of Jesus was on 
this wise. Literally translated the clause reads, 
"But of Jesus Christ the origin was thus." The 
Greek word for birth, in the received text, is yhvTjcig, 
the being generated or conceived, corresponding 
to the verb kyewriae, begat, repeated so often in the 
genealogy. There is another reading, yiveaig, origin 
in a more general sense. The difference in the 
sense is scarcely perceptible. The words form evi- 
dently a contrast to what has preceded. As if the 
Evangelist had said : All these, from Isaac to Joseph, 
were begotten in the natural and ordinary way; but 
Jesus Christ was begotten in an entirely-different 
way. This the Evangelist had already indicated 
negatively in verse 16, and adds now the positive 
statement of the manner of his origin. — When as 
his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph. Lit- 
erally, for his mother Mary being espoused. The 
particle for, omitted in the English version, ex- 
plains how Jesus was begotten differently from his 
ancestors. — Was found with child. Her condi- 
tion became known to herself, and, probably through 
her, to Joseph. It is evident that the discovery was 
not such as to expose the Virgin Mother to any dis- 
grace; for among all the slanders heaped upon the 
Savior by the Jews, there is not the least trace of 



any touching his birth. — Most of the German com- 
mentators place the discovery of Mary's condition 
and Joseph's taking her unto him as his wife, before 
her journey to Elizabeth. But Mr. Andrews refutes 
this supposition very satisfactorily as follows: "With 
it Luke's statement, (i, 19,) that she went with haste 
into the hill country, is inconsistent; for going 
with haste can not refer merely to the rapidity of 
the journey after it was begun, but to the fact that 
she made no delay in commencing it. Hug refers 
to a traditionary law that virgins should not travel, 
and that, therefore, Joseph must previously have 
taken her home as his wife. Alford says that " as a 
betrothed virgin she could not travel," but cites no 
authority. But if any such law were in force, which 
is very doubtful, Mary may have journeyed in com- 
pany with friends, or with a body of neighbors going 
up to the Passover. That no unmarried female 
could journey, even to visit her friends, is incred- 
ible. ' The incidental mention of women and chil- 
dren in the great assemblies gathered around Jesus,' 
says Thomson, (The Land and the Book, vol. II. 
page 84,) 'is true to Oriental life, strange as it may 
appear to those who read so much about female 
seclusion in the East. In the great gatherings of 
this day, at funerals, weddings, feasts, and fairs, 



196 



MATTHEW I, 18-25. 



women and children often constitute the largest 
portion of the assemblies.' Ebrard's supposition 
that Mary continued at Nazareth till certain women, 
the pronubse, becoming suspicious, informed Joseph 
of her condition, and that then God made known 
to him what had occurred, has nothing in its favor. 
As little basis has the supposition of Lange that she 
told Joseph of the visit of the angel. The narra- 
tive plainly implies that Mary, without communi- 
cating to him or any one else what had taken place, 
departed immediately to seek Elizabeth. That, un- 
der the peculiar circumstances in which she was 
placed, she should greatly desire to see Elizabeth, 
was natural, and it is very improbable that she 
should wait several weeks, when all this time she 
could have no communication with Joseph, except 
through these pronubas. The whole narrative shows 
that neither Elizabeth nor Mary rashly forestalled 
God's action. Both, full of faith, waited in quiet- 
ness and silence till he should reveal in his own 
way what he had done. The interval that had 
elapsed between the annunciation and Mary's re- 
turn from Judea, was sufficient to make manifest 
to Joseph her condition. That she at this time 
informed him of the visit of the angel and of the 
Divine promise is not said in so many words, but is 
plainly implied. The position in which Joseph was 
now placed was one of great perplexity, and, as a 
just man who desired to mete out to every one that 
which was his due, he was, on the one hand, unwill- 
ing to take her under such imputation of immoral- 
ity, yet, on the other hand, unwilling to condemn 
her where there was a possibility of innocence. 
He, therefore, determined to put her away privately, 
which he could lawfully do, and so avoid the neces- 
sity of exposing her to public disgrace, or of inflict- 
ing upon her severe punishment. While yet in 
doubt as to his proper course, the angel of the 
Lord, in a dream, confirmed the statement of 
Mary. Agreeably to the Divine commandment, 
Joseph takes Mary at once to his own house as his 
wife." —The idolatrous worship paid to Mary by the 
Roman Catholic Church has perhaps induced Prot- 
estants too much to overlook her exalted charac- 
ter, which so gloriously shines forth from various 
circumstances. She must have been a woman of 
superior mind and deep piety, timid and modest, 
yet thoughtful and firm, peculiarly qualified to bear 
the mysterious trials and the high honor that fell 
to the lot of no other mother. — Or the Holy 
Ghost. These words have, of course, no reference 
to the discovery, but are simply added by the Evan- 
gelist, to declare the fact. 

Verse 20. These things ; namely, those related 
in the two preceding verses. — The angel of the 
Lord. The name of the angel is not given, as in 
Luke i, 19, 26 ; he may have been Gabriel. The word 
'"angel" properly signifies a messenger, and is chiefly 
used in Scripture to designate "a spiritual being 
sent by God on some supernatural errand." The 



existence of intermediate beings between man. and 
the Father of all spirits is not only not repugnant 
to human reason, but is rather almost a postulate 
of reason, since all the visible creatures of God form 
a rising scale, proceeding, step by step, from the 
lower to the higher. Very pertinent is the remark 
of Dr. Whedon on this point: "During the four 
hundred years intervening between the Old Testa- 
ment and the New, prophecy, miracle, inspiration, 
and angelic inspiration had ceased. This interval 
of cessation and silence was broken by the prepara- 
tion for the appearance of Jesus, the Savior. The 
first phenomenon, opening this new dispensation, 
was the appearance of the angel Gabriel in the 
Temple, announcing to Zacharias the birth of John 
the Baptist, forerunner of the Messiah. This epiph- 
any was followed by a profusion of miraculous dis- 
play of every variety of nature, preceding the birth, 
attending the ministry, and following the ascension 
of the Son of God. Angels appear in their splen- 
dor, devils in their malignity ; dreams, miracles, and 
Divine operations of various nature surround and 
attend the sacred person of the Lord. It was a 
miraculous dispensation, a supernatural epoch, in 
which the powers of heaven and hell came forth 
in manifestations extraordinary and unparalleled, 
and not to be tested by the experience of ordinary 
ages. It is not for us to say, who live in the com- 
mon level of human history, that angelic appear- 
ances and demoniacal possessions did not transpire 
during the period in which God's love was incar. 
note. The greatest of miracles might well imply 
and properly be attended by a retinue of inferior, 
but kindred facts." — The Church of Christ stands 
no longer in need of angelophanies in order to per- 
ceive the will of God, having, as she does, in God's 
full self-revelation laid down in the Scriptures, and 
in the Holy Spirit which is promised and given unto 
her, the never-failing source of all light and truth. — 
In a dream. The same God who has warned us 
expressly against false dreams (Jeremiah xxiii, 32 ; 
xxix, 8,) has nevertheless often spoken to men "in 
a dream, in a vision of the night." (Job xxxix, 15.) 
Every dream from God, intended to reveal some 
supernatural truth, brought also an evidence of its 
Divine origin, and is conditioned by purity of heart; 
for the impure in heart constantly__see and hear 
falsely if they in an unauthorized manner seek super- 
natural information. God had often before revealed 
his will to patriarchs and prophets in dreams. Such 
dream-visions, however, are a lower kind of revela- 
tions than visions had in a state of waking. — Del- 
itsch, in his Psychology, says on this subject: 
" Dreams have also a spiritual side, and can become 
the means of a direct intercourse of God with man 
for special or general purposes. We divide this 
kind of dreams into dreams, 1. Of conscience; 
2. Of revelation. The latter are dreams by which 
the special will of God — such as can not be learned 
from his written Word or from motives presented 



THE ANGEL'S ANNOUNCEMENT TO JOSEPH. 



197 



by the conscience — is revealed unto man either 
through a divine or angelic voice ; or those dreams 
throuo-h which a man obtains a knowledge of future 
events, far beyond the limits of the foreboding fac- 
ulty. Examples of such dreams are those of Jacob 
in Bethel, (Gen. xxviii, 12, etc.,) and in Haran, 
(Gen. xxxi, 10-13,) that of Solomon in Gibeon, 
(1 Kings iii, 5, etc.,) those of Joseph, the husband 
of Mary, (Matt, i and ii,) and the visions of Paul, 
(Acts xvi, 9; Isaiah xi, 27, 28,) provided the apostle 
had them while sleeping." — For that which is con- 
ceived in her, etc. The humanity of Jesus dif- 
fered from that of all other men in this, that it was 
not derived from a descendant of fallen Adam, but 
was the immediate production of the Holy Spirit, a 
miracle not greater than Adam's creation by God 
without a natural father and mother. Through the 
conception in the womb of the Virgin, and the nour- 
ishment which his body drew from the mother, he 
became like other men in all things, sin alone ex- 
cepted, so that he was within the reach of pain and 
suffering and subject to the laws of physical devel- 
opment. (2 Cor. xiii, 4; Luke ii, 40.) We clearly 
see from this that the sinlessness of Jesus did not 
require a sinless nature on the part of his mother : 
for " that which was conceived in her was of the 
Holy Ghost," was of a holy and divine nature, and 
necessarily sanctified the nourishment which his 
body received from the mother. Hence the dogma 
of the Pope that Mary herself was conceived by her 
mother without sin is absurd, because her immacu- 
late conception would have required the same mir- 
acle which took place in the conception of Jesus. 
Why our Lord, during his sojourn on earth, only 
hinted indirectly at his supernatural origin, (John 
iii, 5, 6; x, 35,) and did not plainly teach it, is self- 
evident. — On the incarnation of the Logos see the 
exposition of Luke i, 35, and John i, 14. 

Verse 21. What was designated in the neuter 
gender, in the preceding verse, is now called a son. 
The angel, however, did not say, as he had done in 
the case of Zachariah, " She shall bear thee a son," 
but merely, " She shall bring forth a son." The 
angel, moreover, emphasizes both the name "Jesus" 
and the high destiny of the child. It is also worthy 
of note that both the office and work of Christ were 
so fully explained to Joseph, and the redemption to 
be accomplished by Jesus as announced by the angel 
is as deep and comprehensive as it is any where else 
represented by the synoptic Evangelists. (See Hom- 
iletic Suggestions.) 

Verse 22. Now, all this was done. Dr. Al- 
exander considers verses 22 and 23 to be words 
addressed by the angel to Joseph, and gives the 
following reasons for his view: "Here again, as in 
verse 18, the word translated nmo is the usual con- 
nective fit, corresponding to our and or but, and 
continuing the sentence, without interruption, from 
the verse preceding. The expression all this, or, 
retaining the exact form of the Greek phrase, this 



whole matter — namely, the conception of Mary — is 
more natural if uttered by the angel at the time 
than if added by the Evangelist long after. The 
verb, too, is in the perfect tense, and properly means 
has [now] come to pass, and not did come to pass 
at some former time. This distinction between the 
perfect and the aorist is clearly marked, not only 
in the theory of the Greek verb and the practice of 
the classical Greek writers, but also in the usage 
of the New Testament, where the perfect tense of 
this verb occurs more than sixty times, and, with a 
few exceptions, must be rendered by our perfect to 
express its full force, although usually rendered by 
the simple past tense or the present passive. That 
the two tenses are not simply convertible in either 
language may be seen from Rev. xvi, 17, xxi, 6, 
where it is done means it has come to pass, and 
could not be exchanged for it was done, it happened, 
or it came to pass. — That it might be fulfilled — 
Iva T7?.7/pc)-&ri. Ellicot, on Ephesians, says on the con- 
junction "iva: "The uses of this particle in the New 
Testament appear to be three : 1. Final, or indica- 
tive of the end, purpose, or object of the action — the 
primary and principal meaning — and never to be 
given up except on the most distinct counter argu- 
ments. 2. Sub-final, occasionally, especially after 
the verbs of entreaty — not of command — the subject 
of the prayer being blended with and even, in some 
cases, obscuring the purpose of making it. (See 
Winer's Gr., English translation, §44, 8, p. 299.) 
3. Eventual, or indicative of result, applicatory, in 
a few instances, and due, perhaps, more to what is 
called Hebrew teleology — that is, the reverential 
aspect under which the Jews regarded prophecy 
and its fulfillment — than grammatical depravation. 
Comp. Winer's Gr., §53, 6, p. 406." Winer him- 
self — ©rammattf be§ Sieuteftamentlicften Sprad;- 
ibioin?!, 5te Sluflage p. 541 — says, ad locum: "There 
can be no doubt that, in the mouth of Jesus and 
his apostles, the formula 'iva [ottuc) n'Xrjpu-&ri has the 
meaning in order that. At the same time, their 
meaning is not that God had brought about an 
event, much less compelled men to a certain course 
of action, in order that a prophecy might be ful- 
filled; but it is: God has foretold a certain event, 
and the Divine prophecies being true, the event had 
necessarily come to pass. Intervening events, the 
free acts of men, God foreknows, and on this fore- 
knowledge, which does not in the least interfere 
with man's free agency, he based his prophecies. 
This connection of events, however, the Jews, who 
framed this formula, did not conceive with scientific 
clearness." — The sense, accordingly, is not that all 
this was done for the purpose that a prophecy might 
be fulfilled; but God's providence brought it about 
in order to give to his people a proof of his omnis- 
cience, omnipotence, truth, and faithfulness in the 
'ulfillment of the prophecy. — No where in the New 
Testament does the expression, "Here is fulfilled," 
or, "That it might be fulfilled," merely mean, "Here 



198 



MATTHEW I, 18-25. 



we may fitly apply this or that passage of the Old 
Testament." In this sense the Jewish rabbins ap- 
plied many passages of the Old Testament, and put 
constructions on them unwarranted by the connec- 
tion in which they occurred. Some have charged 
the Evangelists with having quoted from the Old 
Testament in a similar manner, but, as we shall 
presently see, without sufficient cause. Dr. A. 
Clarke says: "Matthew seems to quote the proph- 
ecies from the Old Testament as fulfilled according 
to the following rules : 1. When the thing predicted 
is literally accomplished ; 2. When that of which the 
Scripture has spoken is done, not in a literal, but 
in a spiritual sense ; 3. When that which has been 
mentioned in the Old Testament as formerly done, 
is accomplished in a larger and more extensive 
sense in the New Testament; 4. When a thing is 
done, neither in a literal nor. spiritual sense, ac- 
cording to the fact referred to in the Scripture, but 
is similar to that fact." The rule mentioned last 
was evidently practiced by the rabbins, but certainly 
never by an inspired writer. When the Evangelists 
say, " This was done that it might be fulfilled," we 
must take it for granted that the passage quoted 
from the Old Testament as fulfilled, is actually ful- 
filled in and by Christ. 

Verse 23. Rationalistic, and some orthodox, com- 
mentators restrict the prophecy in question to the 
time of Ahaz, and say, its natural and literal mean- 
ing is : " If from this day a virgin marries and brings 
forth a son, she may call him Immanuel; for in his 
time God will be with us. Before the child shall be 
four years old, Syria and Israel shall be conquered, 
and Judah be delivered from its enemies." Accord- 
ing to this, the typical element in this prophecy would 
be, that the child of that virgin shall simply bear the 
name Immanuel, while the Son of the Virgin Mary, 
in virtue of his nature, shall be, " God with us." 
Olshausen says: "Isaiah gives Ahaz the sign that 
his spouse, that is soon to be his (second) wife, shall 
bear him a son, who shall be called Immanuel. This 
accords very well with the symbolic names, which 
the prophet gave his sons. The name of the oldest, 
Shear-jashub — 'the remnant shall return' — is very 
significant, and the second receives, by Divine com- 
mand, (Isaiah viii, 9,) in addition to the name 'Im- 
manuel,' another, ' Maher — Shalal-hashbaz ' — that is, 
' hastening to the spoil, he speeds to the prey ' — with 
reference to the fulfillment of the following threat- 
enings. Matthew, therefore, is right in referring 
the event of the birth of this Immanuel to the birth 
of Christ, because that parallelism was intended by 
the spirit of the prophecy." But this interpretation 
is untenable, for the following reasons: 1. What is 
said of the son of the prophet, (Isaiah viii, 1-4,) is 
a different word of the Lord to the prophet, and is 
not addressed to the house of Ahaz or the kingdom 
of Judah, but to the kingdoms of Israel and Syria. 
2. There is no real point of comparison between the 
woman who should bear a son in Ahaz's time and 



the Virgin Mary. The former event possessed no 
typical and supernatural element, as, e. g., the 
birth and offering of Isaac. It is equally unac- 
countable why the prophet should have given the 
name Immanuel to a child born in Ahaz's time of 
an unknown woman in a natural way, and address 
the child as the lawful owner of the law, as he does 
when he says concerning Israel's enemies, "And the 
stretching out of his [their wings] shall fill the 
breadth of the land, Immanuel!" (chap, viii, 8,) 
and then finds the final deliverance of the country 
from its oppressors in the fact that Immanuel is its 
possessor. For he addresses the efiemies, "Take 
counsel together, and it shall come to naught; 
speak the word, and it shall not stand ; for [here is 
Immanuel,] God with us." (Chap, viii, 10.) If we 
consider, in connection with this, the glorious 
prophecy of chap, ix, 6, " For unto us a child is 
born, unto us a Son is given: and the Government 
shall be upon his shoulder : and his name shall be 
called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the 
everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace," we can 
not but believe that the prophet understood the 
same supernatural personage by the " Immanuel." 
3. The Hebrew original reads not : " Behold, a vir- 
gin shall conceive," etc. — that is, a person that is now 
a virgin shall subsequently conceive — but it literally 
reads: " Behold the Virgin [pregnant or with child] 
gives birth to a son;" the only person that answers 
to this description, being virgin and mother at the 
same time. — The Hebrew word almah — here ren- 
dered '■'■virgin" — is derived from the verb alam, sig- 
nifying "to hide," "to conceal," "to cover," in the 
passive voice, "to be not known" — by a man — and 
in the Holy Scripture, it is always applied to unmar- 
ried women. (Gen. xxiv, 43; Ex. ii, 8; Ps. Ixviii, 
26; Song Sol. i, 8; vi, 8.) Moreover, this term 
"almah" is here translated ndp-&evog by the LXX, 
the strongest Greek term for a pure virgin. 4. What 
kind of a sign would it have been to Ahaz, that a 
young woman should give birth to a son in the nat- 
ural way? God deemed it necessary to impress 
upon Ahaz the reliability of his promised help by an 
extraordinary sign. For this end he unfolded before 
him the grand theater of heaven and earth, that he 
might choose from out of the countless, stupendous 
works of the universe, one that would dispel all his 
misgivings concerning the promised help in this 
hour of need. Refusing to choose one himself, it 
pleased God to give him a sign, which was certainly 
not inferior to what he had been offered; that is, a 
real miracle. Is it credible that God should have 
given him, in lieu of it, an every-day's occurrence? 
What impression could this possibly have made 
upon him ? 5. If the prediction of the prophet had 
referred to a then living virgin, it would not have 
been calculated to allay Ahaz's fears and apprehen- 
sions and to forestall their consequences; for long 
before a virgin might conceive and bear a son, and 
Ahaz be informed of the birth and name of the 



THE ANGEL'S ANNOUNCEMENT TO JOSEPH. 



199 



child, the siege might have been raised or the city 
taken, and thus the pernicious tendencies of Ahaz's 
fears and cowardly offer to the Assyrian king have 
been fully realized. — The direct application, how- 
ever, of the prophecy to the Messiah is objected to 
on the ground that an event, which was to take 
place about seven hundred years afterward, could 
not possibly be a sign to the desponding Ahaz and 
the house of David, of being delivered from their 
present danger. To this we reply: 1. Not only 
present events, but also such as are hid in the far 
distant future, may be signs of what already is or 
is soon to be, provided they are divinely accredited. 
An example or two will illustrate our meaning. 
We read, in Genesis xv, that Abraham was greatly 
troubled by the probability that he would die with- 
out issue. God, to console him, promised him a 
posterity as numerous as the stars of heaven, and 
confirmed this promise, along with other assurances, 
by the prediction that his descendants — the sons of 
his grandson Jacob — would emigrate to a foreign 
country — Egypt— return after an absence of about 
four hundred years, and then take possession of the 
land of Canaan. Here the event near by— the birth 
of a son to Abraham — is confirmed by the fate of 
his far distant posterity, inasmuch as this posterity 
involved a son of Abraham. So in the case before 
us. Ahaz was troubled that the whole family of 
David might be swept away. He is reminded of a 
previously-given promise, that the Messiah is to be 
of the family of David, and a new feature, his 
miraculous conception, is added to the Messianic 
prophecy. (Comp. Exod. iii, 1, 2; 1 Sam. ii, 3, 4.) 
2. The attending circumstances of the sign in ques- 
tion, the reason why and the object for ivhich it was 
given must not be lost sight of Ahaz had doubts 
about God's power to liberate him from two pow- 
erful enemies, according to his promise. He re- 
ceives, accordingly, the assurance that God can do 
much greater things; namely, that by Divine inter- 
position a virgin, as such, should conceive and bear 
a son. See a similar case in John ii, 18, etc. : a 
sign was demanded of Christ to prove his authority 
to do in the Temple what he had done. The Lord 
referred his questioners to his future resurrection 
from the dead, correctly intimating that he who had 
the power to raise his own dead body into life had 
also the power and authority to restore the order 
of the Temple service. 3. It is customary with the 
prophets, in their promises of temporal blessings to 
the children of Israel, never to lose sight of the 
promised Messiah as the foundation of all promises. 
It is, moreover, probable that, even in those days, 
people had, from the passage, Genesis iii, 15, which 
modern Jews also refer to the Messiah, some faint 
notion that a woman (Gal. iv, 4) would conceive 
and give birth to the Messiah, not knowing a man. — 
This remarkable prophecy was uttered by Isaiah 
during the first or second year of the reign of Ahaz, 
King of Judah, 743-742 before Christ, when Rezin, 



King of Syria, and Pekah, King of Israel, had en- 
tered into a league to take Jerusalem, and to de- 
throne the royal house of David. The king and all 
the people trembled. They had no confidence in 
the Divine promise given to Jacob, " that the scepter 
should not depart from Judah, before Shiloh [the 
Messiah] had come." King Ahaz had made up his 
mind to surrender to the King of Assyria. (2 Kings 
xvi, 7.) The Lord, therefore, sent the prophet 
Isaiah to him in order to promise him Divine deliv- 
erance, and thereby dissuade him from the prosecu- 
tion of his ruinous plan. The prophet bade the 
despairing king to ask of God a sign of the prom- 
ised help. The king refusing to do so, the prophet 
turned away from him to the house of David, and 
addressed it with these words: "The Lord himself 
shall give you a sign." This sign was a new, sig- 
nificant prophecy concerning the Messiah, who, of 
course, could not have come at all if the house of 
David and the kingdom of Judah had ceased to 
exist. But if this interpretation is correct, how are 
verses 15 and 16 of chapter vii of Isaiah to be un- 
derstood? The generally-received interpretation is 
best expressed by Dr. "Whedon: "Before this ideal 
child, beheld in vision as now being born, is able to 
know good from evil, these two invading kings shall 
disappear. Isaiah takes the growth of the infant, 
conceptually present, as the measure of the contin- 
uance of the invading kings. That Immanuel, the 
predicted seed of the woman, the prophet sees as 
already being born; he is being fed on nourishing 
food — namely, butter and honey — to bring him to 
an early maturity ; but in a briefer period than his 
growth to intelligence shall require, these invading 
kings shall be overthrown, and Israel be rescued." — 
An entirely-different and very interesting exposition 
of this difficult prophecy is given by Prof. Schultz, 
in the vv igtubien unb ktititm" of 1861, the sub- 
stance of which we subjoin, in a condensed, free 
translation : " The prophecy that Immanuel, or Mes- 
siah, should not be begotten by a king of the house 
of David, but be the son of a virgin mother, pro- 
claims a purpose of God, which had its first typical 
fulfillment in the time of Ahaz and his cotemporaries. 
Isaiah speaks of the Messiah and his virgin mother 
in such a manner that they also typify a general 
principle, which conditioned the continued existence 
of Israel as a people. While their faithless kino- 
forsakes them, the true Israelites shall, through Di- 
vine interposition, bring forth from out of them- 
selves a new and holy seed, which shall both prove 
and cause God's continued presence with his people, 
(Immanuel.) The same idea is hinted at already in 
chapter vi, 13, where the remnant of the people, 
after the execution of the terrible judgments of 
God, are compared to 'a teil tree, and to an oak, 
whose substance is in them.' The strength left in 
these shattered trees is a type of the Virgin, and the 
holy seed a type of the Immanuel of the New Test- 
ament. In order to understand this view of the 



200 



MATTHEW I, 18-25. 



prophecy, it is necessary to bear in mind that, in 
prophecy generally, but « especially in Messianic 
prophecies, beginning and end appear as one whole, 
simultaneous in all its parts. While, e. g., Jacob 
beholds the royal scepter of Judah, (Gen. xlix, 10,) 
to which the nations shall submit, while Balaam 
(Numb, xxiv, 17,) describes Israel, that is to smite 
the nations round about, both of them prophesy of 
the Messiah in such a manner that David and the 
other types constitute, with their glorious antitype, 
one whole, and the prophecy finds a partial fulfill- 
ment in David. Yet the prophet's eye dwells less 
on temporal and earthly objects than on the heav- 
enly ideal and its final perfect realization. Thus 
Isaiah also, in his prophecy of the Virgin bearing a 
son, sees at once the ideal, and from thence looks 
down on minor points, which lay nearer in point 
of time. These minor points, constituting the sign 
given to Ahaz, consist in this: The seed of God's 
people, that is born from out of the true Israel 
amid the greatest dangers and in spite of the entire 
despondency of the king, will speedily be delivered 
from the Syrians and Ephraimites in such a man- 
ner that the king himself, his whole house, and the 
whole apostate Israel shall fall a prey to their deliv- 
erers. Most expositors understand, by the eating 
of butter and honey, mentioned in chapter xvii, 15, 
coarse and scanty food, such as hard and trouble- 
some times afford ; but very improperly. Butter 
and honey are rather the best food, especially for 
children, which the land of Canaan yields. (Deut. 
xxxii, 13, 14.) Nor are these articles plenteous in 
times of distress and war. When an enemy invades 
a country, cattle are stolen, fields and meadows are 
laid waste, and, accordingly, honey and butter fail; 
but when the war is over, when the earth yields her 
produce again, when the number of the consumers 
is small in consequence of the war, then honey and 
butter become plenty. Immanuel's time will be a 
time of refreshing, such as God's children always 
enjoy, after the thunder of his judgment is spent. 
Those very troubles that changed the carnal secur- 
ity of the people, during Uzziah's and Jotham's 
reign, into consternation and despondency under 
Ahaz, (Isa. vii, 2,) must have strengthened the bet- 
ter portion, who saw therein the incipient fulfillment 
of the prophetic word, in their trust in God, and 
instead of being destroyed, as the unbelieving por- 
tion apprehended, they were spared and even in- 
creased, to the great astonishment of their faithless 
king. And when, shortly afterward, the Syrians 
and Ephraimites were humbled by the King of 
Assyria, (2 Kings v, 29; xvi, 9,) the surviving be- 
lievers alone enjoyed the fruits of the deliverance, 
Beeing therein not the result of Ahaz's vain efforts, 
but the hand of Jehovah, in whom they trusted. 
This had, of course, the happiest effect on the chil- 
dren of God. The king himself derived no benefit 
from the intervention of the Assyrians, which he 
had solicited; for, in the first place, they delivered 



him only from the Syrians and Ephraimites, not 
from the Edomite3 and Philistines, who turned their 
chance to good account, (2 Chron. xxviii, 17, 18; 
2 Kings i, 8 ; and Isa. xiv, 28 ; ) and, in the second 
place, Tiglath-pileser, the Assyrian king, robbed him 
of all his treasures, both of the royal palace and the 
Temple. — According to this view, the introduction 
of the virgin son, the Messiah, in this connection, 
is intelligible and natural. The prophet sees the 
growth of the people of God and of the Messiah as 
one event, altogether simultaneous. The begin- 
nings, though small, still were beginnings, and, at 
the same time, the fruitful germs of greater events. 
The small beginnings, the development and growth 
of the Divine seed in Israel without the favor of 
royalty, now a historical necessity in consequence 
of Ahaz's wickedness, were speedily realized, and 
thus furnished conclusive evidence that the whole 
prophecy, in all its grandeur, would, in God's ap- 
pointed time, be gloriously fulfilled." This inter- 
pretation agrees with the one given above, with 
regard to the time, before which the prophecy would 
be fulfilled in its beginnings; before the period 
transpires in which a child, conceived now and born 
in due time, shall be so far developed that it can 
distinguish between good and evil, the two invading 
kings shall have left the country in confusion and 
dismay. — They shall call his name Immanctel. 
In the Hebrew text it reads : She shall call. " He 
shall be called" is here, as in other places, equiva- 
lent to "He shall be." The name Immanuel is the 
most accurate and complete description of his per- 
son : he was in reality God with us, God with man, 
the God-man. 

Verse 25. Till she had brought forth her 
first-born son. The natural inference of this ex- 
pression is, that Mary, after the birth of Jesus, in the 
natural way conceived and bore children. Yet nei- 
ther the particle ewf — till— nor the term "first-born" 
forces us to the conclusion that other children were 
subsequently born of Mary. The supposition seems, 
however, to be confirmed by the frequent mention of 
Jesus' brothers and sisters. Of these we shall speak 
Matt, xiii, 55. Neander remarks: "The religious 
stand-point of Joseph and Mary does not warrant us 
to find it improbable that Jesus should have had 
younger brothers and sisters; nor is such an assump- 
tion forbidden from the Christian stand-point, which 
declares the state of matrimony to be a holy institu- 
tion of God, and the genuine traditions of the apos- 
tolic age contain nothing that contradicts this view." 
This much is certain, that if the perpetual virginity 
of Mary after the birth of Christ had been necessary 
for the purity of her character, as the Church of 
Rome pretends, the Evangelist, writing under the 
influence of the Holy Spirit, would have chosen a 
different phraseology. Those Protestant commenta- 
tors that are unwilling to assume that Mary gave 
birth to other children than Jesus, account for the 
obscurity of the Gospel expressions on this point, 



THE ANGEL'S ANNOUNCEMENT TO JOSEPH. 



201 



by supposing that it was employed for the very pur- 
pose of giving no ground to the sanctity which the 
Church of Rome ascribes to a state of celibacy. In 
this sense Olshausen understands the words of the 
Evangelist. He says, ad locum : "After such devel- 
opments, Joseph was perfectly justified to believe 
that his matrimonial connection with Mary had 
other purposes than to have children by her. The 
phraseology of the Evangelist, however, is perhaps 
purposely employed, in order to forbid every infer- 
ence against the holiness of the matrimonial state, 
which might possibly be drawn from this event. At 
the same time, it appears quite natural to us that 
the last female member of the house of David, the 
one that gave birth to the Messiah, should close her 
line with this last, eternal descendant of David's 
family." 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 

1. The name "Jesus" means a deliverer from 
sin, a Savior. Sin is the source of all misery, the 
greatest of evils. The great object of the incarna- 
tion of the Son of God is to make a reconciliation 
for sin and to put away sin. (Heb. ix, 26.) Deliv- 
erance from the guilt, power, and pollution of sin is 
the privilege of every believer in Jesus Christ. To 
expect less would be to curtail the Gospel prom- 
ises. Christ saves us from the guilt of sin through 
the merits of his death, and from the power and 
pollution of sin, by the power of the Holy Spirit 
Christ did not come to save us in, but to save us 
from, our sins — not to purchase us liberty to sin, 
but to redeem us from sin and all unrighteousness. 
(Titus ii, 14.) The glory of the Gospel is not to 
make an apology for sin, but to make the pardou 
of sin consistent with the justice of God; it does 
not wink at, but puts away sin. 

2. Jesus could not be our Savior if he were not 
"God with us, Immanuel" — God manifested in the 
flesh. He was the Son of God, and yet like unto 
other men in all respects, sin alone excepted. The 
personal union of the Divine with the human nature 
is, indeed, a mystery that transcends human reason, 
but does not contradict it; for it has too limited a 
knowledge of the Divine nature to be able to say 
why the Word which was with God, and was God, 
could not become flesh without losing his divinity. 
With Him that has called the universe into being 
nothing is impossible. For the very reason that, 
in the person of Christ, the Divine is united with 
the human nature, he is the only mediator that can 
reconcile us with God. (1 Tim. ii, 5; iii, 16.) In 
his mediatorial capacity he is also the Head of the 
Church, his body, and as such sustains a real life- 
union with his members, the believers, making them 
partakers of the Divine nature and temples of God. 
(1 Cor. iii, 15.) The personal union of the Divine 
with the human nature in Jesus Christ is also the 
sure pledge of the final glorification of human na- 



ture in the righteous at his second coming, "when 
they shall see him/ as he is, and shall be like unto 
him." Jesus is, thus, Immanuel, God with us, in his 
incarnation, in his vicarious death, in his glorious 
resurrection and ascension. He is God with us; 
that is, he is on our side as our Intercessor, Friend, 
and Protector, our Comforter in life, in suffering, in 
death — God with us and in us, through his Holy 
Spirit, his Word and sacraments. 

3. On the mental difficulties of Joseph the Hom- 
ilist, a British homiletical journal of great value, 
from which we shall quote from time to time, has 
the following excellent sketch: 

"I. God knows the mental difficulties of good 
men. Mary's position was a trying one; her virtue 
was under a cloud; and the eye of suspicion was 
turned at her; but the inner energy of conscious 
rectitude, then, as ever, would nobly bear up her 
spirit. Events soon cleared the mist, and brought 
her forth as the spotless and honored heroine of 
ages. Suspected virtue can afford to wait. But 
Joseph's trial seems greater. Strong attachment 
and high principles of honor and piety were battling 
within him; high hopes were blighted, and long- 
cherished purposes were broken up. What soul- 
stirring thoughts would start in that breast of his! 
There was One who observed the workings of his 
anxious mind — who understood his 'thoughts afar 
off.' Thoughts are heard in heaven. 

" II. God removes mental difficulties in connec- 
tion with conscientious thoughtfulness. While he 
'thought on these things,' the angel of the Lord 
appeared unto him in a dream. He did not act 
from impulse ; he paused in the use of his reason — 
inquired for the right course; and the almighty 
Spirit came to his help. Thus he always guides 
man. He directs the planets by force — brutes by 
instinct — man by reason. He controls all men, 
but guides none save the thoughtful. He who 
would 'follow Providence' must become an earnest 
thinker — ' inquire in his temple.' 

" III. God removes mental difficulties by disclos- 
ing his redemptive plan. 'And she shall bring forth 
a Son,' etc. In the disclosure made to Joseph, the 
birth of Jesus is represented as supernatural, the 
mission of Jesus as remedial, and the nature of Je- 
sus as divine. This disclosure was quite satisfactory. 
A knowledge of God's redemptive plan will solve 
all moral problems. In all the intellectual difficul- 
ties of spiritual life — amid interwinding paths, and 
under skies cold and dark with doubts, when forced 
by urgent questionings and conflicting sentiments 
well-nigh to a fearful crisis — let us, with Joseph-like 
thoughtfulness, pause, even on the margin ; turn 
devoutly the eye and ear of reason up to the All 
Knowing: 'He shall send from heaven,' and help. 
Some kind angel shall course his downward way, 
and shall dispel all clouds, leaving the scene in all 
the serenity, beauty, and promise of a Summer's 
day." 



202 MATTHEW II, 1-12. 



OHAPTEE II. 
§3. THE VISIT OF THE MAGI. 

The first question is, what it was precisely that led the Magi to connect the birth of 
a King of the Jews with the appearance of a star. The answer to this question is not 
difficult. That they were acquainted with the prophecies of the Old Testament concern- 
ing the Messiah, especially with that of Balaam, of a star out of Jacob, (Num. xxiv, 17,) 
and with that of Daniel's seventy weeks, we may infer from the seed of revealed truth 
left by the Jews during their Babylonish captivity. Add to this that, according to the 
testimony of Suetonius, (Yesp., c. iv,) and Tacitus, (v, 13,) a general expectation per- 
vaded, at that time, the East, that a King should arise in Judea to rule the world. But 
above all, we must take into consideration that these men were the subjects of an espe- 
cial Divine illumination, as we see from verse 12. "Various are the ways by which God 
worketh with man. To the illiterate shepherds the announcement is made in direct and 
plain terms, and minute circumstances are related to enable them at once to find the 
Savior. To the learned Magi it was made by a phenomenon, by which God conde- 
scended to their natural wisdom. In a similar manner Jesus adapted himself, during 
his whole public ministry, to the position and capacities of his hearers, in order to lead 
them to a knowledge of salvation ; fishermen he impressed with their future calling by 
the miraculous draught of fishes; the sick he drew to himself by healing their diseases; 
the scribes he convinced out of the Scriptures, and his general hearers he instructed by 
parables taken from their daily pursuits and employments. 

The next question is: "What have we to understand by the star, which these astron- 
omers had seen, and in which they recognized the star of the new-born King of the 
Jews ? Was it a supernatural, luminous appearance, in the form of a star, or a phenom- 
enon in the regular movements of the heavenly bodies? The German commentators, 
almost without exception — and, among the English, Alford and Strong — adopt the last- 
named view. This opinion was first advanced by the celebrated astronomer Kepler, 
who, from a constellation observed in 1603, computed that a remarkable conjunction 
of the planets of our system took place a short time before the birth of our Lord. 
During the year 747 of Borne, the planets Jupiter and Saturn came three times — in 
May, October, and December — into near conjunction, so as to seem one body of sur- 
passing splendor, while in the ensuing Spring the planet Mars also came into conjunc- 
tion with the other two. The conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn occurred in the sign 
of the Eishes. Of the astrological significance of this constellation the learned rabbi 
Abarbanel, who wrote half a century before Kepler, and knew nothing of the conjunc- 
tions of 747, says that no conjunction could be of mightier import than that of Jupiter 
and Saturn, which planets were in conjunction in the year of the world 2365, three years 
before the birth of Moses, in the sign of the Fishes, and thence remarks that that sign 
was the most significant one for the Jews. All this, however, has been considered by 
some an unworthy connection of the superstitions of astrology with the Divine purposes. 
But why may not such a remarkable concurrence, resting uj)on high scientific authority, 
teach us that, about the time of Christ's birth, a great astronomical period closed, and 
that, as Neander remarks, the greatest event in the history of the world should be indi- 
cated in the movements of our planetary system? In confirmation of this supposition 
Alford remarks: "The expression of the Magi, 'We have seen his star,' does not seem to 
point to any miraculous appearance, but to something observed in the course of their 
watching the heavens." The Magi were students of the heavens, and such remarkable 
phenomena would naturally attract their attention. 



THE VISIT OF THE MAGI. 203 



Nevertheless, the view we have presented is rejected by most of the English com- 
mentators. It is objected that, "what is said, in verse 9, of the star going before them, 
can not have reference to a conjunction of planets, or to any ordinary movement of the 
stars." To this objection we may reply, that the words of the Evangelist, relating to an 
astronomical phenomenon, and given, as Alford remarks, as the report of the Magi 
themselves, need not be so rigidly interpreted. Some latitude of expression must be 
allowed the sacred writers on scientific subjects. On the supposition that the star, which 
the Magi had seen in the East, and which went before them, till it came and stood over 
where the youog child was, was not a meteor in the shape of a star, created by God for 
this very purpose, but either the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, or the planet Mars, 
which was added in the following Spring, or some comet, which, according to some Chi- 
nese astronomical records, was visible about that time — what is said in verse 9 of the 
motion of this star, may be explained in the following manner: "In their native 
country the Magi saw what they call a star in the wider astrological meaning of the 
word, and by its position in the sign of the Fishes, in connection with information from 
other sources, they were induced to set out for Jerusalem. Erom Jerusalem they went 
to Bethlehem, not because the star went before them, but because Herod had directed 
them to Bethlehem, and they could have no difficulty in finding the public road from 
Jerusalem to Bethlehem without a supernatural guide. But while on their way, trav- 
eling, no doubt, by night, as the Orientals generally do, they saw the star again. This 
agrees well with the fact that the constellation in question appeared and disappeared 
several times. Its appearing again was a Divine sign to them that they were now on 
the right way to the Messiah, whom they had erroneously expected to find at Jerusalem. 
It stood now in the south, and, according to the well-known laws of optics, it seemed to 
go with or before them. When Matthew, therefore, says, ' The star went before them, 
till it came and stood over where the young child was,' his object is not to represent the 
going and standing still of the star as the cause of the going and standing still of the 
Magi. He only portrays vividly how, at the desired end of their journey, when they 
had reached the edge of the table-land, which separates Jerusalem from the valley of 
Bethlehem, they saw the star shine in its full luster and brightness over the village, and, 
as it were, over the house where the child was. They were greatly rejoiced at seeing 
the star, not because it served them as a guide, but because it was a proof to them that 
they were coming to the right place." This explanation, however, is considered too 
forced, and it is contended that we must understand by the star an extraordinary 
meteor, standing at such a low elevation from the earth as to indicate a particular 
house. But if we take the word aff-rr/p in this sense, we depart from the literal meaning 
of the word just as much as if we understand by it a constellation — another objection 
urged against our view. As to the forced construction of the passage, the charge seems 
rather to lie against those who suppose the star to have been a miraculous phenomenon, 
and we fully agree with the principle of interpretation which Alford lays down on this 
occasion. He says: "We know the Magi to have been devoted to astrology; and, on 
comparing the language of our text with this undoubted fact, I confess that it appears 
to me the most ingenuous way, fairly to take account of that fact in our exegesis, and 
not to shelter ourselves from an apparent difficulty by the convenient but forced hypothesis of a 
miracle. Wherever supernatural agency is asserted, or may be reasonably inferred, I 
shall ever be found foremost to insist on its recognition, and impugn every device of 
rationalism or semi-rationalism; but it does not, therefore, follow that I should consent 
to attempts, however well meant, to introduce miraculous interference where it does not 
appear to be borne out by the narrative. The principle on which this commentary is con- 
ducted is that of honestly endeavoring to ascertain the sense of the sacred text, without 
regai'd to any preconceived systems and fearless of any possible consequences. And 
if the scientific or historical researches of others seem to contribute to this, my readers 



204 



MATTHEW II, 1-12. 



will find them, as far as they have fallen within my observation, made nse of for that 
purpose." — Another objection to the view to which we give the preference is, that the 
constellation in 747 does not agree with the otherwise-ascertained data concerning the 
time of the birth of Christ. But this objection has not much weight, because we have 
no means to know whether the first appearance of the constellation was designed to 
signify the actual birth or the incarnation, which the early Church connected with the 
annunciation — not with the nativity — nor at which of the successive appearances of the 
constellation the Magi set out on their journey, and how long it took them to reach 
Jerusalem. In conclusion, those who understand an extraordinary meteor by the star 
going before the Magi on their way to Bethlehem, ought to concede this much, that the 
attention of the Magi was first arrested by the planetary conjunctions, and that they 
were thus prepared to watch the heavens with deep interest for further signs, which God 
might, possibly, have given them by some extraordinary luminous appearance in the 
form of a star. 

"Verses 1—13. 

(1) JSTow when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea 1 in the days of Herod 
the king, 2 behold, there came wise men 3 from the east 4 to Jerusalem, 5 (2) saying, 
Where is he that is born King of the Jews ? for we have seen his star in the east, 
and are come to worship him. (3) When Herod the king had heard these things, 
he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. (4) And when he had gathered all 
the chief -priests 6 and scribes 7 of the people together, he demanded of them where 
Christ should be born. (5) And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judea: for 



1 There was another Bethlehem in the tribe of Zebu- 
lun, near the Sea of Galilee. (Josh, xix, 15.) The 
name Bethlehem- Judah is used, Judges xvii, 7, 8, 9; 
1 Sam. xvii, 12. Another name for our Bethlehem was 
Ephrath, (Gen. xxxv, 19; xlviii, 7,) or Bphrata. (Mic. 
v, 2.) It was six Roman miles to the south of Jerusa- 
lem, and was known as " the city of David/' the origin 
of his family. (Ruth i, 1, 19.) 2 This Herod, surnamed 
the Great, was the son of Antipater, an Idumean and 
Jewish proselyte, who, having been appointed procura- 
tor of Judea by Julius Cassar, on the defeat of Pompey, 
made his younger son, Herod, Governor of Galilee. But 
on the invasion of the Parthians, who supported the 
claims of Antigonus, the representative of the Asmo- 
nean dynasty, he fled to Rome, where, by his own en- 
ergy and the aid of Mark Antony, he obtained from 
the Senate the title of King of Judea, which was con- 
firmed to him by Augustus. He sought to strengthen 
his throne by a series of cruelties and slaughters. Hyr- 
canus, the grandfather of his wife Mariamne, the last 
descendant of the line of Maccabean princes, was put 
to death shortly before his visit to Augustus. Mari- 
amne herself was next sacrificed to his jealousy. One 
execution followed another, till at last, 6 B. C, he was 
persuaded to put to death the two sons of Mariamne, 
Alexander and Aristobulus, in whom the chief hope of 
the people lay. Two years afterward ho condemned to 
death Antipater, his eldest son, who had been their 
most active accuser, and the order for his execution was 
among the last of Herod's life ; for he died himself, 
most miserably, five days after the death of his son, in 
the same year which marks the true date of the birth 
of Christ. (See General Introduction, \ 35.) 3 In Greek 
jiayoi — Magi — the name of an influential class of learned 
priests among the ancient Medians. They retained 



their high position after the union of the Median and 
the Persian empires. In Jer. xxxix, 3, one among the 
princes at the Court of Babylon is called Rab-mag, the 
chief of the Magi, holding, perhaps, the same place 
which was occupied by Daniel, (ii, 48.) This name lost, 
however, in later times, its honorable signification, and 
was applied to all who made pretensions to the occult 
sciences, astrology, etc. * An indefinite term. 5 Its ear- 
liest name was Salem — peace. (Gen. xiv, 18; Psalms 
lxxvi, 2.) Melchisedek resided there in the times of 
Abraham. Afterward the place fell into the hands of 
the Jebusites, who built a strong fortress, which they 
called Jebus, and although the Israelites took posses- 
sion of the adjacent country, and the place belonged to 
the inheritance of the children of Benjamin, (Joshua 
xviii, 28,) yet the fortress remained in the hands of the 
Jebusites (Judg. xix, 10, 11) till David took it from 
them. (2 Sam. v, 6-9.) Henceforth it became the po- 
litical capital of the Jewish nation and the seat of the 
theocracy. The word Jerusalem is a compound of 
Jebus and Salem, with a change of the letter b into r. 
6 Chief-priests is the plural of the word elsewhere trans- 
lated high-priest. According to the law of Moses, this 
office could be held by only one person during his life- 
time ; but in the course of the Gospel history we meet 
with several high-priests at one and the same time, be- 
cause the Romans had usurped the power to appoint and 
depose the high-priest at pleasure. Here, however, we 
have to understand, by the chief-priests, the heads of 
the twenty-four courses into which the priesthood was 
divided, who were, probably, all members of the San- 
hedrim. 7 The scribes of the New Testament were the 
successors of Ezra, and had the charge of transcribing 
the sacred books, whence naturally arose their office of 
interpreting difficult passages, and deciding in cases 



THE VISIT OF THE MAGI. 



205 



thus it is written by the prophet, (6) And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, 
art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Gov- 
ernor, that shall rule my people Israel. (7) Then Herod, when he had privily 
called the wise men, inquired of them diligently what time the star appeared. 
(8) And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently for the 
young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may 
come and worship him also. (9) "When they had heard the king, they departed ; 
and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and 
stood over where the young child was. (10) When they saw the star, they rejoiced 
with exceeding great joy. (11) And when they were come into the house, they 
saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down and worshiped him : 
and when they had opened their treasures, 8 they presented unto him gifts ; gold, 
and frankincense, 9 and myrrh. I0 (12) And being warned of God in a dream 
that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country 
another way. 



Verse 2. Where is he that is born King of 
the Jews? " The [one] born already, as the past 
participle in the Greek text denotes. They assume 
the fact of his nativity as certain, and merely in- 
quire for the place, as something not revealed or 
ascertainable from astronomical phenomena. King 
of the Jeivs is the title applied to the Messiah in the 
New Testament by Gentiles, (see chap, xxvii, 29, 37, 
and compare John xviii, 33,) while the Jews them- 
selves call him King of Israel. (See chap, xxvii, 42, 
and compare John i, 50; xii, 13.) After the down^ 
fall of the kingdom of the ten tribes, and particu- 
larly after the return from exile, the whole nation 
being merged in Judah, the name Jew became a 
general one, especially with foreigners, and is ap- 
plied, in the New Testament, not only to the people 
of Judea, in the strict sense, but to those of Galilee, 
in reference both to their religion and their natural 
descent, as in Luke vii, 3; John ii, 6; Acts x, 28, 
and elsewhere. As the throne of David had been 
vacant now for ages, the inquiry of the wise men 
had respect not to the actual sovereign, who was 
not an Israelite at all, but to the hereditary, rightful 
sovereign, who had just been born." (Alexander.) — 
To worship him. The word worship is often used in 
the Old and New Testaments where real adoration is 
not meant. It is, however, very truly remarked by 
Dr. Alexander, that a mere civil homage could not 
well be the sole object of these Magi, and would 
have been wholly out of place upon the part of 
Herod. (See verse 8.) There must, therefore, be 
meant a religious homage to the Messiah. 



Verse 3. Herod was troubled, because he appre- 
hended the overthrow of his throne. The inhab- 
itants of Jerusalem were troubled, partly because 
some of them belonged to the party of Herod, and 
partly because they feared the cruelties of Herod, 
which he would most likely commit against them in 
his efforts to maintain his power. Well does Dr. 
Whedon remark on this verse: "It was a bold and 
alarming question put by these new-comers. It 
would have been treason to the reigning king, if 
there were not some superhuman authority in it." 

Verse 6. The prophecy (Micah v, 2) is quoted 
freely. There is internal evidence, as we shall 
presently show, that the difference in the quota- 
tion, both from the Hebrew text and from that of 
the LXX, is to be attributed to the Evangelist, not 
to those to whom Herod had addressed the question. 
In the place of the words, " Thou art not the least 
among the princes of Judah," the text in Micah 
reads : " Though thou be little among the thousands 
of Judah." The meaning of the two expressions is 
evidently the same. The prophet says that Bethle- 
hem was, indeed, small, and scarcely able to take a 
place among the ruling divisions of the land, but 
was, nevertheless, destined to become great; namely, 
as the God-ordained birthplace of the Messiah. The 
Evangelist expresses the same idea, only with this 
difference, that he speaks of Bethlehem's insignifi- 
cance as something past: "Thou wast, indeed, once 
small, but art so no longer, having already obtained 
what must render thee great and renowned." Nor 
is there any discrepancy between the expressions: 



of ecclesiastical jurisprudence. A select number of 
these soribes was associated -with the chief -priests to 
constitute the Sanhedrim or supreme legislative body 
of the Jewish nation. B Their chests or bales, contain- 
ing their treasures. 9 A gum from the trunk of a tree, 



obtained by slitting the bark. It was used for incense 
in worship, and is very fragrant when burned. It is 
found not only in Arabia, but also in Persia. 10 An aro- 
matic gum, exuding from a thorn-bush in Arabia. It 
was valued chiefly for embalming the dead. 



206 



MATTHEW II, 1-12. 



"among the princes of Judah" and "among the 
thousands of Judah." The Jewish people were di- 
vided into families or chiliads, (Judges vi, 25,) at 
the head of which were princes or leaders. (Exod. 
xviii, 21; Numb, i, 16.) These princes are named 
by Matthew in the place of the families themselves, 
and these families in the place of the cities where 
they resided. — It is very remarkable that Bethle- 
hem is not named among the cities of Judah in the 
Hebrew text of Joshua xv, 59, although inserted 
with ten others by the LXX, who, to make the text 
and context uniform, subjoin the summary, "Eleven 
cities, with their villages." However we may ac- 
count for it, it is a proof of the obscurity of Bethle- 
hem. — For out op thee shall come. This means 
evidently that Bethlehem should give birth to the 
person described. It is, therefore, not applicable to 
Zerubbabel, or to any other person than our Lord 
Jesus Christ, as is irrefutably proved by the addi- 
tional clause in Micah, "Whose goings forth have 
been from of old, from everlasting." To quote this 
clause was not required by the occasion, either on 
the part of the Sanhedrim or on that of the Evan- 
gelist. — A Governor, that shall rule my people 
Israel. More correctly translated: "A Leader, 
who shall pasture my people." There is reference 
to the office of a shepherd, (comp. Isa. xl, 11 ; Ezek. 
xxxiv, 23,) which includes protection and control, 
as well as feeding. 

Verse 7. Herod examined the Magi as to the 
time when the star had appeared unto them, in 
order to learn thereby the age of the child for the 
purpose of killing it. Relying implicitly upon the 
simple-hearted Magi, from whose minds he had, as 
he supposed, removed all suspicion, he neglected to 
send spies with them, and thus his prey escaped 
from him. Thus the greatest cunning is often vis- 
ited with blindness in the decisive moment. 

Verse 11. And when they were come into the 
House. The cause why the parents had sought shel- 
ter in a stable, or cave, existed no longer. The 
arrival of the Magi of Bethlehem we must fix im- 
mediately after the presentation of the child in the 
Temple. (Introductory remarks of § 4.) The greater 
part of the people, who had come to Bethlehem to 
be taxed, had left again, and in this way the holy 
family had succeeded in finding more convenient 
lodgings. — They presented unto him gifts. The 
ancient Fathers ascribed symbolical meanings to 
these gifts. The gold has been thought to refer to 
his royal office, the incense to his divinity, the myrrh 
to his death. Again : from the three kinds of gifts 
which were presented, it has been inferred that the 
visitors were three in number; and, with reference 
to the prophecy in Psa. lxxii, 10, and Isa. Ix, 6, the 
tradition arose that they were kings from three dif- 
ferent countries. The nature of the gifts furnishes 
no ground to believe that they came from Arabia; 
for these gifts were general products of the East, 
not confined to any particular country. — Whether 



the Magi themselves ascribed any symbolical mean- 
ing to their gifts is very doubtful ; nor have we any 
reason to suppose that they had a conception of the 
mystery of the incarnation. But the homage which 
they paid to the infant, found in poverty and obscur- 
ity, proves conclusively that they recognized in him 
the great and holy Priest-King of the Jews, "the 
desire of all nations." 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 

1. The Savior was scarcely born when the words 
of old Simeon were fulfilled, that he was a light to 
lighten the Gentiles, (Luke ii, 32;) for the Magi 
were not Israelites. 

2. God has true worshipers and servants, also, 
without the pale of the visible Church. Such were 
undoubtedly these Magi. The conduct of the scribes, 
on the other hand, shows that those who enjoy the 
brightest light often improve it least. The scribes 
knew that the Messiah was to be born at Bethlehem, 
yet they did not consider it worth their while to 
travel the short distance from Jerusalem to Bethle- 
hem, while the Magi, with infinitely less light, had 
undertaken a long and laborious journey in order to 
find him. We ought to shun neither labor nor ex- 
pense to attain to a saving knowledge of Christ. 

3. The Magi have also set an example worthy to 
be imitated by all the wise men of this world. Like 
the Magi, these ought not to be ashamed to seek 
Christ and to bow to him. Genuine philosophy 
leads to Christ. Science should be the handmaid 
of religion. Learning and religion are perfectly 
consistent with each other; yet without the light 
of faith all our knowledge is fragmentary, and with- 
out the Word of God all the stars of heaven leave 
us in the dark But whoever follows the light he 
has, however faint it may be, is brought, by God's 
grace, to the full knowledge of the truth. Without 
the Word of God and the enlightening influences 
of his Spirit, Christ and his kingdom can not be 
found. God's Word is the star that points to Christ, 
and if we follow it we shall infallibly come to Christ. 
(2 Peter i, 19; 2 Tim. iii, 7.) 

4. The mere knowledge of the letter of the Bible 
avails but little. "If ye know these things, happy 
are ye if ye do them." These very scribes act, on a 
subsequent occasion, contrary to their better knowl- 
edge, saying : " When Christ cometh, no man know- 
eth whence he is." (John vii, 27.) 

5. Although no one else paid any regard to the 
infant child at Bethlehem, and although the Magi 
saw nothing but a weak, helpless child, yet they did 
not suffer themselves to be prevented thereby from 
paying their homage to him whom God had pro- 
claimed to them by the star as the King of the 
Jews. 

6. When even the appearance of Christ as a 
helpless child caused consternation, what will be 



FLIGHT INTO EGYPT AND RETURN TO NAZARETH. 



207 



the effects of his coming to judgment? The coming 
of Christ's kingdom is always terrible to the un- 
godly. But how great is the joy of the pious when 
the light rises in darkness ! 

7. The Magi paid homage only to the child, with- 
out taking any further notice of Mary, his mother, 
while the Church of Rome pays, to this very day, a 
degree of respect to Mary that is not due to any 
created intelligence. 



8. Herod's motive in directing the Magi to Beth- 
lehem was malice and treachery; but God knows 
how to foil all the cunning devices of worldly men. 
He can cause even the wrath of men to work out 
his sovereign will. The accomplishment of his pur- 
poses is safe in the hands of devout, upright men. 
"He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous." 
(Prov. ii, 1.) Or, as the German has it, "The Lord 
gives success to men of honest purpose." 



§4. MURDER OF THE INFANTS OF BETHLEIIEM — FLIGHT INTO EGYPT AND 

RETURN TO NAZARETH. 

The salvation of the world depended on the life of an infant threatened by Herod, 
a tyrant, whose dagger had always reached its victim. At the very entrance of the 
eternal light into our benighted world, it was to become manifest that the incarnate Son 
of God would achieve his final triumph only through the sorest trials and the severest 
Bufferings. So intense was the hatred of the world against God and his Christ, that, 
shortly after the birth of the latter, innocent children were on his account put to death. 
But the eyes of his Father watched over the infant Savior, and the world was not per- 
mitted to touch his life. Neither in the Old nor in the New Testament was the "child 
Israel" to suffer harm. (Hos. xi, 1.) 

According to Luke ii, 39, Joseph and Mary came back to Nazareth, after having pre- 
sented the child in the Temple, but, according to Matthew, not before their return from 
Egypt. It is self-evident that the presentation did not take place between the visit 
of the Magi and the flight into Egypt; nor can we suppose that it was deferred till 
after the return from Egypt. The language of Luke ii, 21 and 22, compared with v.'ise 
39, plainly intimates that as the circumcision took place on the eighth or legal day, so 
did the presentation on the fortieth. Till this day the mother was regarded as unclean, 
and was to abide at home. It is, therefore, in the highest degree improbable that the 
adoration of the Magi and the flight into Egypt should have previously taken place. 
This supposition is, moreover, inconsistent with Matthew's statement, that after Joseph 
had heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea, he was afraid to go thither. How 
much less would he have dared to go to Jerusalem, and enter publicly into the Temple ! 
Finally: if Mary had received the gifts of the Magi before she presented her child, we 
may suppose that she would not have offered the offering of the poor, but would havo 
used the gold to provide a better offering. There is, therefore, an apparent discrepancy 
between Matthew and Luke, but it is easily explained. Luke, in describing the events 
preceding the birth of Christ, had mentioned Nazareth as the residence of Mary, and 
his notice, in chap, ii, 4, that Joseph resided also in Nazareth prior to his journey to Beth- 
lehem, came thus in very naturally; yea, it followed as a matter of course from chap. i. 
Now, as the residence in Bethlehem can have lasted only a few months, and as Luke 
does not mention the visit of the Magi and the flight into Egypt — which could likewise 
not have lasted long, since Herod died a few months afterward — it is very natural for 
him to make the general remark, that the parents of Jesus did not make Bethlehem 
their permanent residence, but returned again to Galilee. Matthew, on the other hand, 
for whom the Savior's birth at Bethlehem was very significant as the fulfillment of a 
prophecy, but who had found no occasion to state the circumstances which had brought 
about the journey to Bethlehem, describes Bethlehem as the residence of Joseph, and 
that correctly, as this really seems to have been his design, and having said nothing of a 
previous stay at Nazareth, the Evangelist could not call Joseph's going to Nazareth for 



208 



MATTHEW II, 13-23. 



the purpose of living there a "return;" and, attaching great importance to the fact that, 
by Jesus' residence in the despised Galilee, a prophecy had been fulfilled, it was but nat- 
ural for him to state the special providence which had brought about the settling of 
Jesus' parents in Nazareth. As he says, however, that Joseph selected Nazareth with- 
out giving any reasons for this choice, he takes it evidently for granted that these 
reasons were well known to his readers; namely, that Joseph had resided there before, 
as Luke expressly states. 

"Verses 13—33. 

(13) And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth 
to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, 
and flee into Egypt, x and be thou there until I bring thee word : for Herod will 
seek the young child to destroy him. (14) "When he arose, he took the young 
child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt : (15) and was there 
until the death of Herod : that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord 
by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son. (16) Then Herod, 
when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent 
forth, and slew all the children 2 that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts 
thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had dili- 
gently inquired of the wise men. (17) Then was fulfilled that which was spoken 
by Jeremy the prophet, saying, (18) In Rama was there a voice heard, lamenta- 
tion, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and 
would not be comforted, because they are not. (19) But when Herod was dead, 
behold, an angel of the Lord appeareth in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, (20) saying, 
Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel : for 
they are dead which sought the young child's life. (21) And he arose, and took 
the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel. (22) But when 
he heard that Archelaus 3 did reign 4 in Judea 5 in the room of his father Herod, he 
was afraid to go thither : notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he 
turned aside into the parts of Galilee. 6 (23) And he came and dwelt in a city 
called Nazareth : 7 that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He 
shall be called a Nazarene. 



1 Egypt, although subject to the Romans, was beyond 
tho reach of Herod, and was extensively populated by 
Jews, who had there a number of synagogues and even 
a temple. 2 Namely, all male children, the sense being 
limited to one sex by the masculine adjective and ar- 
ticle. 3 " Archelaus was the eldest son of Herod the 
Groat, by his Samaritan wife Matthace, to whom he be- 
queathed his crown and royal title ; but Augustus only 
partially confirmed the will, confining his dominions to 
Judea, Idumea, and Samaria, and requiring him to 
bear the title ethnarch till he should prove himself 
worthy to be called a king. After reigning eight or 
nine years, he was summoned to Rome to answer 
charges of oppression and cruelty, and afterward ban- 
ished to Vienna, in Gaul." (Alexander.) i Literally, 
" reigns." The Greek word here used means to reign 
as a king. This was true of Archelaus immediately 
after his father's death, before his will was broken by 
Augustus. The word has, however, also the general 



sense " to rule." 5 Judea, also called "Jewry," derived 
its name from the patriarch Judah. At tho time of 
our Savior, the "promised land" formed a part of the 
Roman Empire, and was divided into four parts : 
1. Judea; 2. Samaria; 3. Galilee; and, 4. The land 
beyond Jordan, Persea. Judea was the most south- 
erly, lying mainly between the Dead Sea and the Med- 
iterranean. 6 See foot-note to chapter iv, verse 15. 
7 Stanley gives tho following account of Nazareth: "It 
is one peculiarity of the Galilean hills, as distinct from 
those of Ephraim or Judah, that they contain or sus- 
tain green basins of table-land just before their topmost 
ridges. Such, above all, is Nazareth. Fifteen gently- 
rounded hills ' seem as if they had met to form an in- 
closure ' for this peaceful basin ; ' they rise round it like 
the edge of a shell to guard it from intrusion. It is a 
rich and beautiful field ' in the midst of these green 
hills, abounding in gay flowers, in fig-trees, small gar- 
dens, hedges of the prickly pear; and the dense, rich 



FLIGHT INTO EGYPT AND RETURN TO NAZARETH. 



209 



Verses 13, 14. It is plain that the flight into 
Egypt took place immediately after the departure of 
the Magi. A journey to Egypt on the much-trav- 
eled high-road took only a few days; and the gifts 
of the Magi may have served to defray the expenses. 

Verse 15. Herod died a few months after this 
flight, of a fulsome disease, of which Josephus has 
given us a detailed description, (Hist, of Jews, xvii, 
6.) The words of the prophet, to which the Evan- 
gelist refers, are: "When Israel was a child, then I 
loved him, and called my son out of Egypt." (Hos. 
xi, 1.) The prophet spoke here of the recall of 
Israel from out of Egypt. The people of Israel is 
called, in the Old Testament, the son of God, (Ex. 
iv, 22; Deut. xix, 5,) because God begat him, (Deut, 
xxxii, 6, 18,) to be the people to which he desired to 
reveal his name, in whose midst he desired to dwell, 
that were to worship him according to his own direc- 
tion, whose development he guided by special provi- 
dences. Enlightened through the revelation of Jeho- 
vah, Israel was to become the servant that carries 
the light of the true God to the Gentiles, the first- 
born that leads the other nations to the worship of 
God, "a kingdom of priests, a holy nation." (Ex. 
xix, 5, 6.) But this high and sacred calling of Is- 
rael found its complete fulfillment only in the incar- 
nation of the Son of God. Israel was in this sense 
a historical type, by its typical history a prophecy 
concerning the Messiah. This typical relation be- 
tween Israel and the Messiah we find alluded to in 
many passages of the Old Testament, especially in 
the prophet Isaiah, (Isa. xlii, 1-8; xlix, 1-13.) Thus 
the history of even the childhood of our Savior was 
so directed by Divine Providence that it became the 
antitype of the typical history of Israel. As God 
led Israel into Egypt, in order to preserve it there 
from death by famine, and led it out again thence, 
that it might fulfill its calling, so the infant Jesus 
was taken to Egypt and back again, the antitype 
of the whole typical history of IsraeL 

Verse 16. Herod waited, in all probability, sev- 
eral days for the return of the Magi, and so Joseph 
had time enough to reach a place of safety. — From 
two tears old and under. This expression is in- 
definite. It may include only those who had begun 



the second year. As more or less time had elapsed 
between the first appearance of the star and the set- 
ting out of the Magi, Herod fixed upon this age in 
order not to miss his prey. As Bethlehem, however, 
was a small place, the number of the children mur- 
dered can not have been very large, and the silence 
of Josephus is not surprising. The crime was but 
one of the innumerable and equally-atrocious acts 
of Herod, and it may never have come to the knowl- 
edge of the Jewish historian; and, if he had heard 
of it, he may have passed it over in silence, to avoid 
every thing that drew attention to the Messianic 
hopes of his people. Still less surprising is the 
silence of heathen historians. 

Verses 17, 18. Here, as well as in verse 15, the 
Evangelist speaks of the fulfillment of a type, not 
of a prophecy proper. (See Jer. xl, 1; comp. with 
chap, xxxi, 15, 16.) Rama was a town of the tribe 
of Benjamin, not far from Bethlehem, a city of 
Judah. Much as the two events vary which caused 
mourning and lamentation, yet the Evangelist had 
good reason to refer the latter to the former. Herod 
was the second Nebuchadnezzar, who expected to 
accomplish by inhuman cruelty what the Chaldean 
conqueror fondly dreamed to have accomplished ; 
namely, to have destroyed forever the expectations 
of Israel. When the latter, after the destruction of 
Jerusalem, led the few remnants of the people cap- 
tive away from Rama, he fancied that he had struck 
the fatal blow against Israel. And Herod thought 
that he had accomplished the same end by murder- 
ing the infants of Bethlehem, and with them the 
Infant King of Israel. As Rama was in the terri- 
tory of Benjamin, the prophet introduces the pro- 
genitrix, Rachel, as mourning and lamenting her 
slaughtered, enslaved descendants. How appropri- 
ate is, therefore, the application of her lamentations 
to the heart-rending grief, that came so unexpectedly 
upon the mothers of Bethlehem ! 

Verse 20. For they are dead. These words, 
which were originally addressed to Moses, (Ex. iv, 19,) 
were to remind the parents of the typical character 
of that great man of God, and thus call their atten- 
tion to the rich consolation and promise embodied 
in the providence exercised over the infant Jesus. 



grass affords an abundant pasture. The village stands 
on the steep slope of the south-western side of the 
valley. From the crest of the hills which thus screen 
it, especially from that called ' Nebi-Said,' or ' Ismail,' 
on the western side, is one of the most striking views in 
Palestine. There are Tabor, with its rounded dome, on 
the north-east, Hermon's white top in the distant north, 
Carmel and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, a con- 
junction of those three famous mountains, probably 
unique in the views of Palestine. And, in the nearer 
prospect, there are the uplands in which Nazareth 
itself stands, its own circular basin behind it; on the 
west, inclosed by similar hills overhanging the plain 
of Acre, lies the town of Sepphorieh, the Roman cap- 
ital. On the south and south-cast lies the broad plain 



14 



of Esdraelon, overhung by the high pyramidal hill 
which, as the highest point of the Nazareth range, and 
thus the most conspicuous to travelers approaching from 
the plain, has received, though without any historical 
ground, the name of the 'Mount of Precipitation.' 
These are the natural features which, for nearly thirty 
yeitfs, met the almost daily view of Him who 'increased 
in wisdom and stature' within this beautiful seclusion. 
It is the seclusion which constitutes its peculiarity and 
its fitness for these scenes of the Gospel history. Un- 
known and unnamed in the Old Testament, Nazareth 
first appears as the retired abode of the humble car- 
penter. There, secured within the natural barrier of 
the hills, was passed that youth, of which the most 
remarkable characteristic is its absolute obscurity." 



210 



MATTHEW III, 1-12. 



Verse 23. " The very use of the plural, ' by the 
prophets,' ought to prepare us to expect what we 
find to be the case, that this is no citation from any 
particular prophet, but expresses the declaration of 
several. 'By saying prophets, not prophet, the 
Evangelist shows that he quotes the Old Testament, 
not literally, but as to its meaning.' (Hieron., in 
Loc.) We seem justified, then, in assigning to the 
word 'Nazarene' all the meanings legitimately be- 
longing to it, by derivation or otherwise, which are 
concurrent with the declarations of the prophets in 
reference to our Lord. We may, therefore, both 
with the early Hebrew Christians, (see Jerome,) and 
apparently the whole Western Church, trace this 
prophetic declaration, 1. Principally and primarily, 
in all the passages which refer to the Messiah under 
the title of the Branch (nezer) of the root of Jesse, 
(Isa. xi, 1; comp. Jer. xxiii, 5; xxxiii, 15; Zech. vi, 
12 ;) 2. In the references to the circumstances of low- 
liness and obscurity under which that growth was to 
take place, (comp. Isa. liii, 2;) and perhaps further, 
3. In the prophetic notices of a contempt and rejec- 
tion, (Isa. liii, 3,) such as seems to have been the 
common, and, as it would seem in many respects, 
deserved portion of the inhabitants of rude and 
ill-reputed Nazareth." (Ellicott's Life of Christ, 
page 86.) 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 

1. God suffers the plans of the wicked to succeed 
only so far as they do not hinder his own designs. 
Thus he permitted — that is, did not prevent — the 



murder of the infants of Bethlehem, because neither 
the work of redemption nor the victims themselves 
sustained thereby any lasting injury. They died for 
Jesus in order to live only for him ; while he lived in 
order to die for them. No price of blood and tears 
is too dear for the preservation of Jesus' life, be- 
cause this life is the price by which the whole world 
is rescued from destruction. 

2. The princes of this world favor but rarely the 
cause of God. They persecute the Church, because 
they can not comprehend that the kingdom of Christ 
is not of this world. It met with bloody persecu- 
tion both in the beginning and during its progress. 
But neither the malice nor the power of men lasts 
long; the final victory is God's. Death carries away 
the enemies of Christ quickly; but the Lord and his 
Word abide forever. 

3. The visit of the Magi was followed by the flight 
into Egypt. Special strengthenings of faith are fol- 
lowed by sore trials. Joy and grief are near neigh- 
bors. We are scarcely born again, when persecution 
arises against us. The Lord, however, knows how 
to snatch his children, in due time, from impending 
harm, and to defeat the designs of his enemies. If 
the members of thy own household drive thee away 
from them, God will prepare a place for thee among 
strangers. The wise men of this world can not pro- 
tect the life of Jesus nor of his Church ; for this 
purpose God employs the angels of heaven, and 
lowly members of his kingdom. 

4. As Christ spent thirty years in seclusion and 
obscurity in the despised Nazareth, before he re- 
vealed his Messianic dignity, so his Church fares. 
(2 Cor. vi, 9.) 



CHAPTER III. 



§5. THE PREACHING AND BAPTISM OF JOHN. 

Between the closing scene of the second chapter and the event which opens the 
third lies the whole period of Jesus' infancy and youth, passed over in silence by Mat- 
thew. Only one instance of it is related by Luke, (ii, 41, etc.;) namely, that Jesus, in 
his twelfth year, went with his parents up to Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover, and 
returned with them thence to Nazareth. So we learn, also, from Mark vi, 3, that he 
staid at Nazareth with his foster-father, working at his trade, till he entered upon his 
public ministry. " In those days" in which John commenced preaching, means, there- 
fore, the time when Jesus was still at Nazareth, at least six months before he entered 
upon his ministry and left Nazareth as his place of residence. Luke, by naming the 
year of government of several temporal and ecclesiastical rulers, enables us to determine 
with precision the time when John entered upon his mission. It was, as we shall show 
in our notes on Luke iii, 1, 2, during the Summer of the year 779. According to "Wiese- 
ler, this was a Sabbatic year, (Bxod. xxiii, 11) — if it was observed by the Jews according 
to its original intent — a most appropriate time for the Baptist to begin his labors. John 
had then reached his thirtieth year, at which time he would have been admitted to the 



THE PREACHING AND BAPTISM OF JOHN. 211 

Temple service as the son of a priest, according to Numbers iv, 3. Trained by his par- 
ents for the austere calling of a Nazarite, (Numb, vi,) according to the directions given 
by the angel, (Luke i, 15,) he had spent his youth in the deserts, (Luke i, 80;) the 
high ground, probably, west of the Dead Sea, mostly uninhabited and untilled. On 
the locality of John's baptism see foot-note. 

By no writer has the office of John the Baptist, as the forerunner of the Messiah, 
been set forth in so lucid and comprehensive a manner as by Mr. Andrews in his "Life 
of our Lord." He says: 

" His work was threefold : First , he was to announce that the kingdom of God was at 
hand and the Messiah about to appear. In this announcement he especially displayed 
his prophetic character. Second, he was to bring the nation to repentance, and ' make 
ready a people prepared for the Lord.' Here he especially manifested himself as a 
preacher of righteousness. Of this righteousness the law was the standard, and by the 
law must the nation be judged. Hence, John was a preacher of the law. The burden 
of his message was, ' Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.' As a wicked, diso- 
bedient people, they were not ready for that kingdom. True, they were ' Abraham's 
children,' and 'sons of the kingdom,' but* this did not suffice. They had broken the holy 
covenant, they had not hearkened to God's voice, and he had punished them terribly in 
his anger. The Baptist came to awaken them to a sense of their guilt, to make them see 
how by their unbelief and sin they had frustrated the grace of God, and thus move 
them to repentance. Comparing the promises of God with their fulfillment, they might 
see how little he had been able to bestow upon them, how little they had answered to the 
end for which he chose them. How glorious the promises, how melancholy the history ! 
Their national independence was gone; the covenant with the house of David was sus- 
pended, and that royal family had sunk into obscurity. Their high-priest was appointed 
by the Boman Governor for political ends, and was a mere tool in his hands ; the priest- 
hood, as a body, was venal and proud ; the voice of prophecy had long been unheard, 
and for the teachings of inspiration were substituted the sophisms and wranglings of the 
Babbis; the law was made, in many of its vital points, of none effect by traditions; the 
nation was divided into contending sects ; a large party, and that comprising some of 
the most rich, able, and influential, were infidels, open or secret ; some, aspiring after a 
higher piety than the observance of the law could give, wholly ceased to observe it, and 
withdrew into the wilderness to follow some self-devised ascetic practices; still more 
were bigots in their reverence for the letter of the law, but wholly ignorant of its spirit, 
and bitter and intolerant toward all whom they had the power to oppress. The people 
at large still continued to glory in their theocratic institutions, in their Temple, in their 
priesthood, and deemed themselves the only true worshipers of God in the world. They 
were unmindful that almost every thing that had constituted the peculiar glory of the 
theocracy was lost by sin; that the Visible Glory that dwelt between the cherubim had 
departed ; that there was no more response by the Urim and Thummim ; that the ark, 
with its attendant memorials, was no more to be found in the Holy of Holies; that all 
those supernatural interpositions that had marked their early history had ceased ; in 
short, that the whole nation 'was turned aside like a deceitful bow.' To the anointed 
eye of the Baptist the unpreparedness of the nation for the Messiah was apparent. He 
saw how in it was fulfilled the language of Isaiah: 'The whole head is sick and the 
whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head, there is no soundness 
in it, but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores ;' and he would, if it were possible, 
awake the people to a sense of their real spiritual condition. Unless this were done, they 
could not receive the Messiah, and his coming could be only to their condemnation and 
destruction. Deliverance was possible only when, like their fathers in Egypt, they be- 
came conscious of their bondage, and began to sigh and cry for deliverance. (Ex. ii, 23.) 
And as the elders of the people gathered themselves together unto Moses and cooperated 



212 



MATTHEW III, 1-12. 



with him, so must now the priests and Levites, and all who, by God's appointment, held 
any office among the people, be co-workers with Jesus. In this way only was it possible 
that the promises of the covenant could take effect, and the predictions of the prophets 
be fulfilled. To awaken in the hearts of the Jews a deeper sense of their sins and of the 
need of cleansing, John established the rite of baptism in the Jordan. He taught that 
this rite was only preparatory, a baptism of repentance, and that the higher baptism 
of the Spirit they must still receive at the hands of the Messiah himself, who was speed- 
ily to come. All whom he baptized came confessing their sins. Thus the extent of his 
baptism was an index how general the repentance of the people, and, consequently, how 
general the preparation for the Messiah. Third, John was to point out the Messiah per- 
sonally to the nation, when he should appear. This was the culminating point of his 
ministry, and would naturally come at the close of the preparatory work. 

"Let us now survey for a moment the Baptist's ministry as narrated by the Evan- 
gelists, and see how far its purpose was accomplished. First, he aroused general atten- 
tion to the fact that the Messiah was at hand. Second, his jM-eaehing brought great 
numbers to repentance. Multitudes from every part of the land came to his baptism. 
But of these it is probable that many did not understand the significance of the rite, or 
truly repent of their sins. Perhaps with comparatively few was the baptism with water 
a true preparation for the baptism with the Holy Ghost. And it is to be specially noted, 
that those thus coming to John to be baptized were mostly, if not exclusively, of the 
common people, and not of the priests, or Levites, or members of the hierarchical party. 
Many of the Pharisees and Sadducees came to be spectators of the rite, but only with 
hostile intent; or, if some received baptism at his hands, we find few or no traces of 
them in the subsequent history. (Matt, iii, 7; Luke vii, 29, 30.) In the hearts of those 
who sat in Moses' seat, the spiritual rulers and guides of the nation, no permanent sense 
of sin was awakened, and they could not submit to a baptism of which they felt no need. 
To all his exhortations they had the ready and, as they deemed, sufficient reply: 'We 
have Abraham to our father.' Thus John did not effect national repentance. The high- 
est proof of this is seen in the deputation that was sent him from Jerusalem to ask him 
who he was, and by what authority he acted. (John i, 19-27.) It is plain from the nar- 
rative that he was wholly unable to satisfy the Jewish leaders that he was divinely com- 
missioned, or that his baptism had any validity. It followed, of course, that they paid no 
heed to his prophetic or personal testimony to the Messiah. As his last official act, he 
pointed out Jesus in person to the nation as the Messiah. He whom he had foretold was 
come. Henceforth they must see and hear him." 

"Verses 1—13. (Compare Mark i, 1-8; Luke hi, 1-17.) 

(1) In those days came John the Baptist, 1 preaching 2 in the wilderness of 
Judea, 3 (2) and saying, Repent ye : for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. (3) For 
this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, 4 saying, The voice of one 
crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. 
(4) And the same John had his raiment of camel's hair, 5 and a leathern girdle 5 



1 Or, the Baptizer. 2 The Greek verb, translated 
preaching, signifies to make a public announcement or 
proclamation of something, as heralds do. The preach- 
ing mentioned in the Gospel history is not to be under- 
stood in the modern sense of the word. 3 The wilderness 
of Judea was a level tract of land to the east of the 
tribe of Judah, toward the Dead Sea. It was not ex- 
actly a desert, but thinly inhabited, and used for pas- 



ture. The extent of the region designated by this term 
was, however, not clearly defined by it, nor was the 
ministry of John the Baptist confined to this wilderness, 
as appears from Luke iii, 3, 4, and from the fact that he 
was imprisoned by Herod Antipas, whose jurisdiction 
did not extend to Judea. 4 Isaiah xl, 3. 5 A raiment 
of coarse sackcloth, made of camel's hair, such as Eli- 
jah wore. (2 Kings i, 8.) 6 The girdle was used for 



THE PREACHING AND BAPTISM OF JOHN. 



213 



about his loins ; and his meat was locusts r and wild honey. (5) Then went out to 
him Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan, 8 (6) and 
were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins. (7) But when he saw 
many of the Pharisees and Sadducees 9 come to his baptism, he said unto them, 



fastening the robe that hung loose around the body. 
John's consisted of a strip of untanned hide. 7 A sort 
of grasshoppers, permitted to be eaten by the law of 
Moses. (Lev. xi, 22.) That they were used as food by 
the poorer classes is testified not only by ancient writers, 
but also by modern travelers. Burkhardt, as quoted by 
Thomson, says: "I have seen, at Medina and Tayf, 
locust shops, where these animals were sold by the 
measure. In Egypt and Nubia they are only eaten by 
the poorest beggars. The Arabs, in preparing locusts 
as an article of food, throw them alive into boiling 
water, with which a good deal of salt has been mixed. 
After a few minutes, they are taken out and dried in 
the sun; the head, feet, and wings are then torn off; 
the bodies are cleansed from the salt and perfectly 
dried, after which process whole sacks are filled with 
them by the Bedouins. They are sometimes eaten 
boiled in butter, and they often contribute materials 
for a breakfast, when spread over unleavened bread 
mixed with butter. s The Jordan is the principal river 
of Palestine. It has its sources at the southern slope 
of Lebanon and at Hermon. At a distance of about 
seven miles it flows through the Lake Merom, from 
whence it proceeds for about nine miles to the Lake of 
Tiberias, and has a fall of four hundred feet. In pass- 
ing through the lake the waters of the river do not 
mingle with those of the lake. From thence to the 
Dead Sea it flows rapidly in a tortuous channel, with a 
fall of about one thousand feet. Its breadth, when it 
comes out of Lake Merom, is about twenty paces, after 
passing through Lake Tiberias eighty, and when it en- 
ters the Dead Sea from two to three hundred, with a 
depth of channel of about three feet, which is, how- 
ever, much increased by the Spring rains. 9 The names 
of two parties in the Jewish Church. As they are here 
mentioned for the first time in the New Testament, we 
subjoin a description of their respective principal tenets, 
adding also, in order to make the picture complete, 
those of the sect of the Essenee, who arc, indeed, not men- 
tioned in the New Testament, but are well known from 
Josephus. I. The Pharisees claimed to be the orthodox 
party, and were more numerous and influential than 
their opponents, the Sadducees. Their name is derived 
from the Hebrew verb Pharash, which means to separate. 
When, after the return from exile, many Jews com- 
menced to leave the law of their fathers and to imitate 
the customs of the Greeks and Romans, those that op- 
posed these innovations were called Pharisees; that is, 
Separatists. It would seem that their zeal for the law 
and the religion of their fathers was at first sincere and 
genuine ; but in the course of time they attached as 
much importance to the traditions of the elders as to 
the law itself, and by multiplying the former, and in- 
sisting more and more upon the mere letter of the law, 
and especially upon the ceremonial law, they became 
self-righteous, sanctimonious, and hypocritical. Their 
principal tenets were as follows: Every thing comes to 
pass by Divine predestination, yet so as not to destroy 
entirely the freedom of the human will; the souls of 
men are immortal, and, beyond the grave, either happy 



or miserable; the dead are raised; there are good and 
bad angels ; the Jews have a legal right upon the espe- 
cial favor of God, and are justified by the merit of Abra- 
ham or by their own fulfillment of the law. In conse- 
quence of their self-righteousness they were proud and 
overbearing, and despised the common people. (John 
vii, 49.) They aspired to the high offices of state, and 
pretended to great personal dignity. They acquired 
great political importance by being scattered over the 
whole country and constituting the majority in the San- 
hedrim. In political conflicts they generally played the 
demagogue. They prided themselves on their scrupu- 
lous observance of the outward duties of religion, prayed 
at the corners of the streets, and strove to acquire the 
favor of the people by giving alms. They attached, 
also, great importance to ablutions and ceremonial 
cleanliness. Some of the laws of Moses they kept very 
strictly. In addition to the written law they had the 
so-called traditions, professedly handed down from 
Moses, to which they attached the same importance as 
to the written law. In obedience to these traditions 
they washed themselves before every meal ; they fasted 
twice a week ; namely, on Monday, on which day they 
believed that Moses had come down from Sinai, and on 
Thursday, on which day they believed that he had gone 
up; they wore wide cloaks, with large borders, to which 
they affixed passages of the law ; they coveted the first 
seats at meals and in the synagogues. On the whole, 
they were a corrupt, hypocritical, and vain set of men ; 
but there were also honorable exceptions to this rule. 
(Acts v, 34; Mark xv, 43; Luke ii, 25 ; xxiii, 51; John 
xix, 38.) In the days of Jesus they were doctrinally 
divided into two schools, that of Hillel and that of 
Shammai — the former representing moderate, the latter 
strict Pharisaism. During the closing years of the Jew- 
ish polity the Pharisees were the ecclesiastical rulers of 
the people, although the highest posts of honor were, at 
times, held by the Sadducees. They fostered that feel- 
ing of discontent which led to several rebellions against 
the Romans, and finally brought on the downfall of 
their polity and the destruction of Jerusalem. II. The 
Sadducees. Their name is generally derived from a 
certain Zadok, who taught about 260 B. C, and is con- 
sidered the founder of this sect. Zadok was a disciple 
of Antigonus Loehajus, President of the Sanhedrim, 
who had taught that we must serve God from pure, dis- 
interested motives, without expectation of reward or 
fear of punishment. Zadok, who did not correctly un- 
derstand the teaching of his master, drew the inference 
from it that there was no future state of retribution. 
Their other tenets were : 1. There is no resurrection, 
nor angel, nor spirit. (Matt, xxii, 23; Acts xxiii, 8.) 
2. They rejected the doctrine of the Pharisees concerning 
fate, and, 3, all tradition. They were less numerous than 
the Pharisees, but counted their adherents generally 
among the great and the wealthy, and were admirers 
of Grecian philosophy and manners. Their infidel and 
libertine principles met with but little favor among the 
people, for which reason they were very reserved in pro- 
fessing their principles. Yet some of them held the 



214 



MATTHEW III, 1-12. 



generation of vipers, 10 who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 
(8) Bring forth therefore fruits meet for 11 repentance: (9) and think not to say 
within yourselves, "We have Abraham to our father : for I say unto you, that God 
is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. (10) And now also the 
ax is laid unto the root of the trees : therefore every tree which bringeth not forth 
good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. (11) I indeed baptize you with 
water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose 
shoes 12 I am not worthy to bear : he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and 
with fire: (12) whose fan 13 is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, 14 
and gather his wheat into the garner; 15 but he will burn up the chaff 16 with 
unquenchable fire. 



Verse 2. Repent — /Lteravoslre ; that is, change 
your mind, or have an afterview. The Greek word 
does not only mean to feel sorrow, but also to 
change one's view or purpose, both being the effect 
of greater light having been poured on the soul. 
In Hebrews xii, 17, it means the change of Isaac's 
purpose with regard to the blessing pronounced 
upon Jacob. Its leading idea is a return from evil 
to good, a change of mind, that is, of views and 
purposes. This change of mind includes the con- 
viction of having done wrong, to feel sorry for it, 
and to resolve to leave off sinning; all of which 
man, as a free moral agent, has to do in order to be 
saved. The word /xsTa/xelecdai, likewise rendered by 
repenting — as in the case of Judas — signifies simply a 
change of feeling, sorrow, though it leads to despair; 
while fj-eravoelv always means grief connected with a 
change of heart. The " repentance" to salvation 
(2 Cor. vii, 10) is fierdvoia, not fiera/ielem. — What 
Luke (xiii, 10-14) quotes from the preaching of 
John shows that he understood by the /icrdvoia re- 
quired of the Jewish people not yet that change of 



heart in its full spiritual sense, which the Holy Ghost 
works, declaring expressly, as Neander observes, 
" that, in order to bring about that total moral 
change which admits to a participation in the king- 
dom of God to be established by the Messiah, a 
Divine, creative power is required, which he was 
unable to bestow." And as those to whom John 
preached repentance could not change their hearts 
themselves, in the Gospel sense of the term, so 
man, to this very day, is unable to do this. Evan- 
gelical repentance, including a thorough change of 
heart, is, in the nature of the case, indispensably 
necessary for man's salvation; and it is, therefore, 
made his solemn duty to repent, not as if he could 
do it of his own accord, but, being convinced of its 
absolute necessity, he is to seek supernatural assist- 
ance. Praying to God, then, for the needful influ- 
ences of the Spirit, with a heart painfully conscious 
of its entire sinfulness, this prayer is heard and an- 
swered, and the Spirit of God accomplishes the great 
work of changing the heart. — For the kingdom op 
heaven is at hand, literally, the kingdom of the 



high-priesthood. After the resurrection of Christ, the 
hostility to the apostles arose mainly from the Sad- 
ducees. (Acts iv, 5.) But their denial of the resur- 
rection of the dead was a point which Paul knew how 
to turn to good aoeount. (Acts xxiii, 6.) With the 
destruction of Jerusalem they completely disappear. 
III. The Essenes formed a community by themselves in 
the desert near the Dead Sea. They had their property 
in common ; they wore a white garment of the order, 
and followed very strict rules in diet, labor, and public 
worship. They were divided into four classes, that were 
strictly separated from each other. Only one of these 
classes was permitted to marry. They were in groat 
repute for veracity, chastity, and industry. Their relig- 
ious principles resembled those of the Pharisees more 
than those of the Sadducees. The fact that they are 
not mentioned in the New Testament is readily ac- 
counted for: they lived away from the rest of the peo- 
ple, did not cherish their Messianic hopes, and were, 
therefore, not noticed by our Lord. There is a strong 
resemblance between these Essenes and monkery, that 
afterward developed itself in the Roman Catholic 
Church. l0 The viper is beautiful to the eye, while it is 



full of venom ; its outward appearance is that of harm- 
lessness. Vipers measure in length about four feet, and 
in thickness more than an inch. They are of a dirty 
gray color, spotted, and very venomous. n An obsolete 
expression for "worthy of." 12 The shoes of the Ori- 
entals were sandals, mere soles of wood or hide, cover- 
ing the bottom of the foot, and fastened on with thongs. 
Within the house they are laid aside by visitors in the 
antechamber. With the Jews, Greeks, and Romans it 
was the duty of menials to bear the sandals of their 
masters. John's meaning, therefore, is: I am not 
worthy to do the least service to him that comes after 
me. 13 In the Orient, grain is thrashed out and then 
thrown by a hand-scoop against the wind. u By the 
Oriental thrashing-floor we have to understand a piece 
of the field, circular and beaten hard, on which grain 
was thrashed out, either by oxen or by a thrashing- 
wagon pulled by oxen. Here floor stands, by meton- 
omy, for the grain on it, which was not yet separated 
from the chaff". 15 Or granary. Grain was kept in the 
Orient, for the most part, in subterraneous vaults. 
ie Chaff was burned with the straw, either on the field 
or used as fuel. 



THE PREACHING AND BAPTISM OF JOHN. 



215 



heavens. In Greek, the plural "heavens" is used in 
imitation of the usage of the Hebrews, who under- 
stood by the "heaven of heavens," or "third heaven," 
the residence of Jehovah, as distinguished from the 
sky or aerial heavens, and the firmament, the place 
of the stars and other heavenly bodies. This term, 
"kingdom of heaven," is peculiar to Matthew; the 
other Evangelists use for it, "kingdom of God;" that 
the two terms are, however, identical in meaning 
appears from a comparison of Matthew iv, 17; v, 3; 
xi, 11; xiii, 11; xix, 4, with Luke vi, 20; Mark i, 15; 
Luke vii, 28; Mark iv, 11; x, 1-1; John iii, 3. These 
two expressions have two leading ideas or meanings; 
namely, the kingdom of glory, as Matthew v, 10-12; 
vii, 21, 22, 23; Mark ix, 46, 47; but for the most 
part, the kingdom of Christ on earth, of whose es- 
tablishment the prophet Daniel had prophesied, (ii, 
44:) "and in the day of these kings shall the God 
of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be 
destroyed." Of this kingdom the Old Testament 
theocracy, in which Jehovah was King of Israel, and 
Israel his people and kingdom, was a type This 
kingdom of God, however, was taken from the Jews 
and given to the Gentiles, (Matt, xxi, 43,) because 
they rejected in their carnal hearts the true Messiah, 
expecting a temporal one, who would come with 
signs from heaven, make war upon and conquer the 
nations, especially the Romans. In diametrical op- 
position to these false notions John announced the 
nearness of the Messianic kingdom as a spiritual 
kingdom, into which no one could enter without a 
change of mind. In this sense the term is also 
used, Matthew iv, 17; x, 7; Luke x, 9; xvii, 21; 
Mark i, 14; Luke xvi, 16; almost in all the parables, 
and in Matthew xi, 12; xiii, 11, 19, 52; xvi, 19; 
xxiii, 13; Mark xii, 34; Luke xiv, 15. In other 
passages it seems more to mean the kingdom of 
glory than that of grace, or both, as, e. g., Matthew 
v, 3, 19, 20; vi, 33; viii, 11; xix, 12, 24; xx, 21; 
Mark x, 19, 15, 23; Luke xviii, 29; xxii, 29. The 
leading idea of the " kingdom of God " is, that God 
reigns in it supremely; not, however, by physical 
force, as in the kingdom of nature, but by his grace 
in the hearts of the believers, who are thereby 
changed and sanctified. To this fundamental idea 
of the kingdom of God it is owing that it is spoken 
of at times as something inward and already pres- 
ent, (Luke xix, 21; Col. i, 13; Heb. xii, 28,) at other 
times as something future, (Matt, vii, 21; Acts xiv, 
22; 1 Cor. xv, 50.) Of the many parables used by 
our Savior to illustrate the nature of the kingdom 
of God, some set forth more particularly the time of 
its establishment, others the blessings and privileges 
dispensed to the members thereof, others its institu- 
tions, others, again, its outward, visible completion 
on earth, which, however, will not take place till the 
Church shall have spread over the whole earth, and 
been thoroughly sanctified from within. 

Verse 3. In John was fulfilled, what two proph- 
ets of the Old Testament (Isa. xl, and Mai. iii) had 



prophesied of the herald who should go before the 
Lord. As it was customary in the Orient for kings, 
who wanted to take a journey through desert or 
thinly-settled regions, to send heralds in advance, in 
order to make the roads passable, and to remove all 
obstacles, so John the Baptist was sent to preach 
repentance, and remove thereby all obstacles that 
were in the way of the reception of the coming Mes- 
siah; that is, those false views, worldly notions, and 
carnal expectations of the Jews concerning the Mes- 
siah and his kingdom, and thus to prepare for the 
Lord the way to the hearts of his people. By con- 
necting repentance with the kingdom of heaven, 
John shows plainly its spiritual character. 

Verse 4. How well adapted was John's whole 
appearance to stir up the consciences of the people! 
Every thing connected with him preached repent- 
ance — the desert, his raiment, his meat. He was a 
faithful copy of Elijah, (2 Kings i, 8;) for which rea- 
son, Malachi, (iv, 5,) beholding the character of the 
forerunner of our Lord in the image of Elijah, calls 
him Elijah himself. With the description of John 
and his public ministry given by the Evangelist, the 
Jewish historian, Josephus, agrees in substance, 
simply translating the term "repentance" into lan- 
guage intelligible and palatable to his Greek read- 
ers. He says, (Ant., XVIII, 5, 2,) that he exhorted the 
Jews to practice virtue, justice toward each other, 
and piety toward God, and to come together in order 
to be baptized by him. That Josephus notices only 
the moral element in John's preaching, and says 
nothing of his testimony of the Messiah, is not sur- 
prising. The contrary would give just reason to 
suspect the genuineness of his statement, for Jose- 
phus ignored the Messianic hopes of his nation in 
his whole history, perhaps apprehending to give 
offense to the Romans. 

Verse 5. The powerful impression which the 
Baptist produced is shown by the vast concourse 
of people, not only from the regions about the Jor- 
dan, but from all the parts of Judea — for this we 
have to understand by "all Judea" — and even from 
Jerusalem, whence the Sanhedrim sent an official 
delegation to him. Although many came not with 
singleness of heart, as was the case with the scribes 
and Pharisees, and although but comparatively few 
of those that were baptized by John actually received 
Christ, yea, although some of John's disciples as- 
sumed afterward a position hostile to the Gospel; 
yet we can safely say, that John by his preaching 
laid the preparatory foundation for the Church of 
the New Testament, for not only a part of the apos- 
tles, but most probably a majority of those five 
hundred brethren spoken of, 1 Cor. xv, 6, were 
brought to Christ by John. 

Verse 6. And were baptized of him. This was 
a new ordinance enjoined upon John by a special 
command of God, as we learn from John i, 33; 
Luke iii, 2, 3 ; vii, 30 ; and especially from Matthew 
xxi, 24-27; and was acknowledged as such by the 



216 



MATTHEW III, 1-12. 



people, (Matt, xxi, 26.) The question asked by the 
Pharisees, (John i, 25,) "Why baptizest thou then?" 
proves also, conclusively, that the baptism of John 
was not derived from the baptism or lustration of 
proselytes at their admission into the Jewish Church, 
a practice which was of later origin, and totally dif- 
ferent in its form. Such proselytes were circum- 
cised, and had to bring an oblation, preceded by a 
Levitical lustration; when the oblation ceased, with 
the destruction of the Temple, the lustration alone 
was left as a memorial of it. John's baptism was, 
like the symbolical washings prescribed by the Mo- 
saic law, an emblem of that moral renovation which 
was to be the condition of participating in the Mes- 
sianic kingdom now near at hand, for which reason, 
John says, (v. 11,) "I baptize you with water unto 
repentance;" and Mark and Luke calkhis baptism a 
"baptism of repentance," with the addition, "for the 
remission of sins;" that is, with the promise that the 
remission of sins would be granted by him who 
would baptize with the Holy Ghost. — The baptism 
of John was not intended to take the place of cir- 
cumcision, which remained the sign of the covenant 
till the institution of the Christian baptism ; for this 
reason John did not baptize whole families, as the 
apostles did, but only adults ; it was only a prepara- 
tory, (John i, 31,) transient institution. Those 
whom John baptized made no profession of their 
faith in the Messiah as having already come, and we 
may infer from this, that when they were afterward 
admitted into the Christian Church they were bap- 
tized in the name of Jesus, like the disciples of John 
mentioned Acts xix, 1-6. It is true, there is no in- 
dication, and no probability whatever, of the apostles 
themselves having received the proper Christian bap- 
tism, which they administered unto others; but this 
is not to be wondered at, since their personal inter- 
course with the Savior, their calling to the apostle- 
ship, and their receiving the Holy Ghost in a manner 
different from all other believers, made any other in- 
troduction into the Church of the New Testament 
unnecessary to them. — In Jordan. Inasmuch as the 
Jordan had a double bed, or two banks, this expression 
does by no means indicate that they were immersed. 
" If it be asked why John chose proximity to the 
Jordan, unless it was to obtain a depth of water ade- 
quate to the performance of this rite by immersion, 
it may be replied, that, in a country like Palestine, 
where water was not always and in all places found 
in sufficient quantity for the wants of large gather- 
ings of people with their beasts of burden, it became 
necessary to select a location near some river or 
lake. The wilderness of Judea, where John had 
spent much of his life, had no lake, fountain, or 
stream more suitable for the wants of a large con- 
course of people, like that which thronged around 
him, than the Jordan itself." (Owen.) What is 
more natural than to suppose that they came to the 
edge of the river, and were there sprinkled, or had 
the water poured upon their heads, as some ancient 



pictures really represent the transaction? See more 
on this, verses 11 and 16. But even admitting that 
John baptized by immersion, it follows by no means 
from this, that immersion is every-where an indis- 
pensable ingredient of Christian baptism. As bap- 
tism is merely a symbol of the inward cleansing, 
and as this can be symbolized by sprinkling and 
pouring just as well by immersion, we have no rea- 
son to believe that the quantity of water used at 
baptism, or the method of its application, is a neces- 
sary ingredient of a valid baptism. To suppose that 
Christ made immersion, which is in many countries 
almost impossible, at all events very difficult and 
dangerous to health, indispensably necessary for 
Christian baptism, is hardly consistent with the spir- 
ituality of the Gospel, which never makes the form 
or ceremonial part of any act of public worship some- 
thing essential, nor with its universality, from which 
we may conclude that its few external rites would 
be only such as can be observed in all countries 
and at all times. — Confessing their sins. This 
must not be understood as if every one had con- 
fessed his individual sins, but only that they 'con- 
fessed publicly and fully their guilt before God. The 
confession seems to have been similar to those re- 
corded in Ezra ix, Nehemiah ix, and Daniel ix. 

Verse 7. The Pharisees, whom John addresses 
here more especially, fancied in their self-righteous 
and vain trust in their theocratic descent, that so far 
from being objects of Divine displeasure, God could 
not dispense with their services. — It is very strange 
that the Sadducees presented themselves also as can- 
didates for baptism ; they did so, undoubtedly, in 
order to increase their popularity with the people. 
Josephus says that they often followed the principles 
of the Pharisees against their own convictions, in 
order to rival them in popularity. — ■ From Luke vii, 
30, it would appear, either, that from the great num- 
ber of the Pharisees and lawyers, only a compara- 
tively small number came to John for baptism, or 
that they were deterred from being baptized by bis 
sharp rebukes. — generation of vipers ! or, as 
the Rhemish version has it, brood of vipers. There 
seems to be an allusion to the seed of the serpent. 
(Gen. iii, 15.) — Who has warned you to flee? 
"Retaining the strict sense of the aorist, who warned 
you just now, or before you came out hither? The 
Greek verb elsewhere rendered forewarn, originally 
means to show secretly or partially, denoting a slight 
intimation or suggestion, as distinguished from a full 
disclosure. The infinitive which follows may be con- 
strued as denoting either the necessity of flight, or 
possibility of rescue. ' Who has shown you that you 
must flee ?' or, 'who has shown you that you can es- 
cape?' In either case, the words express surprise; 
on the former supposition, at their having been 
alarmed ; on the latter, at their venturing to hope. 
The first is the most probable." (Alexander.) 
Wrath to come. The word wrath does not denote 
exclusively the punishment of the wicked in the world 



THE PREACHING AND BAPTISM OF JOHN. 



217 



to come, but every impending manifestation of the 
punitive justice of God. It is not to be overlooked 
that the Baptist speaks here in the character of the 
true prophet, foretelling the wrath soon to be poured 
upon the Jewish nation. 

Verses 10-12. John predicts the great process 
of sifting in the kingdom of God, by which all that 
would not bring forth fruits meet for repentance 
would be cut off, cast out, and rejected, while all 
those that had been prepared for the kingdom of 
God by genuine repentance, symbolized and incul- 
cated by his baptism, would be baptized with the 
Holy Ghost and gathered as wheat in the garner of 
God. The effects of the first and second coming of 
Christ are here, as in similar prophecies of the Old 
Testament, (Isa. xl, 10, 11; Mai. iii,) blended to- 
gether. The Baptist sees the coming of Christ in 
its whole perspective development. The process of 
sifting to be completed by the second coming of 
Christ, has indeed commenced already with his first 
coming. Judgment and redemption, which our nar- 
row dogmatics have too far put asunder, are, in the 
Scripture sense, correlate ideas. Coupled with the 
highest grace is always the highest punishment, 
which God inflicts upon the despisers of his prof- 
fered mercy. — And the ax is laid, etc. In order 
to enforce his exhortation, he reminds them that 
they had no time left to put off their repentance, 
God's long-suffering with the Jewish people being 
almost exhausted. If they would continue — accord- 
ing to Luke the words were addressed to both the 
people and Pharisees — in their present state of im- 
penitence, in utter disregard of God's extraordinary 
dealings with them, and reject the Messiah, the Di- 
vine judgments hanging over their heads would be 
executed at once; and in order to set this the more 
clearly before them, he compares them to a tree 
doomed to be cut down, unto whose roots the ax is 
already laid. By this ax Dr. A. Clarke understands 
the Bomans. As early as 63 B. C. this ax was laid 
to the Jewish polity; Pompey then took Jerusalem, 
and made Judea a Roman province; yet the country 
might still be considered as being in the hands of 
the Jews, although it was tributary to the Romans. 
About forty years after this warning of John the ax 
did its work; the tree, of wLich, by earlier judg- 
ments, only some branches had been cut off, was 
now really cut down; with the destruction of the 
Temple and the city the Jewish polity and Church 
ceased to exist. But this judgment was, at the same 
time, the type of the coming wrath of God, which 
will on the great day of retribution be poured out 
upon all that have not become obedient to the Gos- 
pel of Jesus Christ during the dispensation of grace. 
— He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost 
and with fire — literally in (iv) the Holy Ghost and 
fire. The Baptists appeal to this in proof that 
baptizing ought to be rendered by immersing here. 
But the meaning of the Greek preposition kv is not 
restricted to locality; and if ftairrl^uv meant immer- 



sion here, the preposition ug would have been used 
for kv ; at all events, kv proves nothing for immer- 
sion, because Luke (iii, 16) uses no preposition at 
all, but the dative instrumenti, Man,, which can be 
rendered only "with water." Moreover, the baptism 
of the Holy Ghost is described, not as immersing, 
but as Jailing on, pouring out, descending, and 
sending down, (Acts ii, 16-18, 32, 33; x, 44-46; xi, 
15, 16; 1 Pet. i, 13; John i, 32.) The verb paitri- 
(siv, when used in the New Testament of a religious 
act, means to wash or cleanse with water, without 
determining whether this is done by sprinkling, pour- 
ing, or immersing. (A full and elaborate examina- 
tion of the meaning of fianr'L^eiv the reader will find 
in our comment on Matthew xxviii, 19.) Water 
baptism, or the cleansing by water, merely symbol- 
izes the internal and real cleansing by the Holy 
Ghost. — And with fire. These words are gener- 
ally understood as referring to the manner in which 
the Holy Ghost came down upon the apostles on the 
day of Pentecost; but the application of the term 
"fire" to this event is not warranted. Most com- 
mentators consider fire as a symbol of the purifying 
power of the Holy Ghost, as if John meant to say, 
"As water cleanses metal only from without, but fire 
purges it from within, removing all impurities, so my 
baptism can only symbolize and urge a change of 
heart, but the heart-renewing power can be commu- 
nicated only by the power of the Holy Ghost." But 
although the Holy Ghost may fitly be compared to 
fire, yet it would seem that John understood here 
by fire something else ; namely, the consuming fire 
of Divine judgments, in which sense the word is 
evidently used in the following verse. If he had 
intended to use the term "fire" merely as the an- 
tithesis of water, and as the symbol of the Holy 
Ghost, he would have said, "He shall baptize you 
with fire and the Holy Ghost." It is worthy of spe- 
cial notice, that Mark and John, who, in relating the 
Baptist's words, do not mention the Divine judg- 
ments announced by him, omit, also, the words 
"with fire;" in the same way, our Lord, (Acts i, 5; 
comp. Acts xi, 15, 16.) The objection, that we are 
not authorized to understand by "you" two classes of 
persons, penitent and impenitent, is not of sufficient 
importance. Moreover, by referring the "fire" to 
the consuming fire of the Divine judgments, its ap- 
plication to those that are baptized with the Holy 
Ghost is not fully excluded. The two views have 
the consuming property of fire in common. Where 
the fire of the Holy Ghost consumes the impurities 
of the heart, there is a judgment that is painfully felt; 
and hence would follow another contrast between 
water and fire baptism; namely, this, that hypocrites 
may submit to water baptism, because it does not 
necessarily include, like baptism by the Spirit, the 
painful death of the old man. 

Verse 12. We have shown, already, that this 
verse refers primarily to the sifting process to which 
the theocracy was to be subjected. Lange thinks 



218 



MATTHEW III, 13-17. 



that by the chaff must be understood both the tem- 
porary forms of the Old Testament economy which 
had been serviceable to the growth of the wheat, and 
its members, who, by mistaking the outward forms 
for the substance of religion, had become worthless 
chaff themselves. As Christ sifted, at his first com- 
ing, the Jewish Church on earth, so he shall sift his 
visible Church at his second coming. It is worthy 
of notice, that the Baptist, as well as Christ and his 
apostles, represent the punishment of those that are 
thrust out of the communion of God's people, after 
the time of grace, as being of endless duration. 
(John xv, 6; 2 Thess. i, 9.) — "To what amounts 
it," says Dr. Whedon, "that the fire is unquenchable, 
if the sinner may be snatched from it at any mo- 
ment? what cares he for the phantasm of a hell for- 
ever empty, though forever burning? Moreover, 
what sense in supposing a hell forever preserved 
flaming, yet forever void? But, in fact, hell is the 
penal condition of the condemned sinner, and the 
fire the penal essence itself; hell has no existence 
save as a penalty for guilt. Terminate the penalty, 
and the fire has gone out." 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 
Like John the Baptist, the preacher of the Gospel 
ought, 1. To remind men of their sins, and convince 
them of the absolute necessity of a chaDge of heart, 



showing its genuineness by fruits meet for repent- 
ance. For by nature we are all blind and dead, and 
but too prone to take the outside for the substance 
of religion. John insists upon fruit, not upon 
leaves. The only safe criterion of genuine repent- 
ance is a change of heart and conduct. Spurious 
repentance consists in mere wishes, sighs, resolves, 
regrets, or outward exercises. 

2. To direct every man to the Lord Jesus Christ, 
as him in whose blood alone we can find the forgive- 
ness of sins, and who will come to judge the world. 

3. To teach plainly and distinctly, that man, in 
order to be saved, must be a partaker of the Holy 
Ghost. We need not only what Christ has done for 
us, but also the work of the Holy Ghost in us, not 
only a claim upon heaven through the merits of 
Christ, but we must also be made meet for the inher- 
itance of the saints through the Holy Ghost. May, 
therefore, no one rest satisfied with water baptism 
alone, but strive to receive also the baptism' of the 
Spirit ! 

4. To warn the impenitent of the imminent dan- 
ger, to which they are exposed, of falling under the 
wrath of God, and to be condemned to everlasting 
fire. While humbly adoring God's long-suffering 
and mercy, we must not lose sight of his punitive 
justice, and constantly bear in mind, that there is 
not only a heaven, but also a hell. 

5. To comfort the believers by pointing them to 
the garner into which Christ will gather all his elect. 



§6. THE BAPTISM OF JESUS. 

From the record of Mark i, 9, it would seem that Jesus staid at Nazareth to the 
moment of his entry upon his puhlic ministry. But when his hour had come, which he 
recognized in the light of the Spirit with infallible certainty, he came, when about thirty 
years of age, as Luke tells us, to John at the Jordan, in order to be introduced by this 
herald of God into his Messianic office. The adverb "then" (tots) which introduces this 
section does not imply that Jesus came to the river at the close of the preceding dis- 
course, but it merely means that Jesus came while John was still preaching at the 
Jordan. From the manner in which the Baptist speaks (John i, 32) of the heavenly 
witness at the baptism of Jesus, and from a close examination of verse 16, where it is 
said, "The heavens were opened unto him," and again, "He saw," etc., we may infer 
that the opening of the heavens, the descent of the Spirit, and the voice of the Father 
did not take place before the assembled multitude, but that these heavenly manifesta- 
tions came within the perception of Jesus and John alone. From this it would follow 
that Jesus was not baptized before the assembled multitude, which seems most probable 
to us ; or, if this was the case, the multitude may, indeed, have had some perception 
of a miraculous transaction, they may have seen and heard, as the companions of St. 
Paul, (Acts ix, 7,) or as the multitude when the voice came from heaven, (John xii, 29,) 
something strange and inexplicable, without understanding, however, the whole phe- 
nomenon. 

Additional light will be shed upon this solemn transaction by considering the object 
of the baptism of Jesus and of the consequent witness from heaven. Both were destined 



THE BAPTISM OF JESUS. 



219 



for John and for Jesus himself. John was to receive, through the baptism of Jesus, and 
especially through the coming down upon him of the Holy Ghost, the infallible assur- 
ance that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah. The Baptist declares this ex- 
pressly when he says, (John i, 31 :) " That he [Christ] should be made manifest to Israel, 
therefore am I come baptizing you with water;" and, verse 33: "I knew him not; but 
He that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt 
see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with 
the Holy Ghost." But this baptism was also proper for Jesus as the Son of man. It 
was for his own self-consciousness, as it was for that of John, the ordination for the 
Messianic office. See more on this point in the exegetical notes. "As Jesus," says 
Neander, "followed, in his public ministry, always the Divine call addressed to him 
through surrounding circumstances, through the preparative course of historic develop- 
ment, so he did also at the opening of his ministry. For his outward calling and solemn 
introduction into office he looked to him who, as the last of the Old Testament prophets, 
was to appear in order to form the point of transition from the Old Testament to the 
Messianic dispensation. His baptism by John was the symbol of the preparatory con- 
secration for the establishing of the kingdom of God. But this general idea could apply 
in a twofold manner ; that is, with regard to those that desired to become members 
of this kingdom and with reference to Him that was to become the founder and ruler 
of this kingdom. If in the case of the former a confession of their sins took place, and 
their baptism had a close relation to repentance, all this was, as a matter of course, 
excluded in the case of Him who was revealed to John, in the very moment of his 
baptism, as the Messiah, as the Bedeemer from sin." 

"Verses 13— IT. (Compare Mark i, 9-11; Luke hi, 21, 22; John i, 31-33.) 

(13) The^ cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of 
him. (14) But John forbade him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and 
comest thou to me? (15) And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so 
now : for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness. Then he suffered him. 
(16) And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: 
and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descend- 
ing like a dove, and lighting upon him: (17) and lo a voice from heaven, saying, 
This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. 



Verse 13. To be baptized of him. As to the 
object and significance of the baptism of Jesus see 
the introductory remarks. 

Verse 14. But John forbade him. This state- 
ment of Matthew, according to which John knew 
Jesus even before his baptism, is perfectly consist- 
ent with the Baptist's declaration, (John i, 33:) "I 
knew him not; but He that sent me to baptize with 
water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou 
shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on 
him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy 
Ghost." It is, indeed, in the highest degree prob- 
able that John knew Jesus personally before the 
latter came to be baptized. But this personal ac- 
quaintance and what John might have heard from 
his mother about the extraordinary circumstances 
that had taken place before and after the birth of 
Jesus, would not have justified John in introducing 



Jesus to the people solemnly as the Messiah. For 
before John had received, in the descent of the Holy 
Ghost on Jesus, the promised infallible assurance 
that Jesus was the Messiah, he was not authorized 
to bear witness of him as the Messiah, and in this 
sense John said: "I knew him not.'' Other expos- 
itors, Watson, e. g., and Ebrard, however, think 
that, by a special interposition of Providence, John 
and Jesus did not know each other prior to the lat- 
ter's baptism, lest there might be any room for sus- 
picion that there had been a collusion between 
them. But as soon as John saw Jesus he received 
the positive witness of the Spirit, with which he was 
filled from his mother's womb, that this was the 
Messiah. The promised outward sign came to this, 
to seal the inward revelation. They say that it was 
quite natural that, on subsequent occasions, when 
John pointed out Jesus to his disciples as the Mes- 



220 



MATTHEW III, 13-17. 



siah, lie did not appeal to his inward assurance, 
which he received at the first sight of Jesus, but to 
the outward sign. 

Verse 15. Suffer it to be so now. The Lord 
does not contradict what John says about his per- 
son, but directs him as his inferior, to submit, for 
the time being, to the Divine arrangement, even 
without understanding it. Jesus refers John, the 
servant of the law, to the Divine commandment to 
baptize all Israelites that desired to enter into the 
Messianic kingdom. In what sense and for what 
purpose this baptism was to be administered to him 
also, who knew no sin, was set forth by the following 
sign from heaven. — ■ For thus it becomes xrs to 
fulfill all righteousness. This confession of 
righteousness forms a lofty contrast to the confes- 
sion of sin by all others that came to be baptized. 
(Verse 6.) To fulfill all righteousness means, "To 
observe to do all the commandments of God, as he 
has commanded us." (Deut. vi, 25.) This no one 
in Israel could say of himself, and for this reason 
John preached, at the close of the dispensation of 
the law, the baptism of repentance for the remission 
of sins. But he that applies now for baptism is no 
sinner, but the Righteous One, that is not in need 
of either repentance or forgiveness. Born of a 
woman, and put under the law which is given for 
sinners, he had already, up to this time, observed 
to do all the commandments of Jehovah, given to 
Israel. Although born without the foreskin of the 
heart, yet he had received circumcision. Although 
he was himself the sacrifice for the sins of the 
world, yet a sacrifice was brought for him as the 
first-born ; although the real Paschal Lamb, he is to 
keep the Passover. Fulfilling all the ordinances pre- 
scribed by the law, he submits also to the divinely- 
ordained baptism, as the last commandment of the 
old dispensation, by which it passes over into the 
New. It became him, who knew no sin, to present 
himself with sinners for baptism, because he was to 
take upon himself their sins. Jesus fulfilled all 
righteousness by being introduced into his Messianic 
office by baptism. John, by baptizing Jesus, ful- 
filled also all righteousness; for by baptizing him he 
did what was part of his office. 

Verse 16. And Jesus, when he was baptized. 
Literally, having been baptized. — Went up straight- 
way ' out of the water. These words are also 
quoted in proof that paitTi&iv means immersion. 
But the Greek preposition awo, here rendered "out 
of," means from, away from, rather than out of 
as in Matt, xxvii, 40, down from the cross, not out 
of the cross; or in ' Luke ix, 37, down from the 
mountain, not out of the mountain. If the Evan- 
gelist had wished to convey the idea that Jesus was 
immersed, he would, in all probability, have used the 
preposition ek for and. After having been baptized, 
Jesus went up from the bed of the river, in which 
he had been standing, whether the baptism was ad- 
ministered to him by immersion or affusion, and 



then the heavenly vision took place. — And, lo, the 
heavens were opened unto him. The opening of 
the heavens we must understand, as Acts vii, 55, as 
a visible manifestation of the glory of the Lord, 
(Shekinah.) In its outward appearance it may not 
have been unlike the dividing of the clouds at the 
flash of lightning. — Like a dove. Luke says : 
"And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape, 
like a dove, upon him." It was, consequently, not a 
real dove that came down from the opened heavens 
and alighted upon Jesus. As God appeared in the 
Old Testament at times in human form, at times in 
fire and smoke, so the Holy Ghost made himself 
here visible in the shape of a dove. On the apostles 
the Holy Ghost descended in the shape of cloven 
tongues, like as of fire, indicating, thereby, that he 
would illuminate and purify them; but in the case 
of Christ, who stood in need of neither illumination 
nor purification, he came down in the shape of a 
dove, the symbol of purity and innocence. The 
dove belonged to those animals which God had de- 
clared clean in the Old Testament, and was consid- 
ered a holy bird by many nations of antiquity. 
Christ himself uses it (Matt, x, 16) as the symbol 
of purity and gentleness. ■ — The question whether 
the transaction in question was a vision, as many 
of the early Fathers and some modern commenta- 
tors, as Neander and Bleek, etc.,. have maintained, 
or a real transaction, as those who dissent from this 
view call it, can in this form not be answered. It 
was a vision, but a vision of objective reality. Man, 
however, in his natural state has no organs of per- 
ceiving, or coming into contact with, such outward 
manifestations of the Deity. For this end his inter- 
nal sense must be quickened; in other words, he 
must enter into an ecstatic state in order to perceive 
such Divine manifestations. Man, in his natural 
state, does either not perceive any thing at all, or 
he hears a meaningless sound and sees a shapeless 
sight; so the companions of Paul on his way to 
Damascus: they heard the voice, but understood it 
not; they saw the light, but not Christ in the light. 
So the multitude, when a voice spoke to Jesus from 
heaven; they said: "It thundered;" others: "An 
angel spake with him;" evidently not understanding 
the meaning of the heavenly voice. (John xii, 29.) 
— And lighting upon him. Jesus, the incarnate 
Logos, did not receive the Holy Ghost as other men 
do. He descended upon him to indicate his official 
relation to Jesus — to testify that Jesus was the Son 
of God. In a similar manner did the Holy Ghost 
enter, on the day of Pentecost, into a new relation 
to the apostles, upon whom the Savior had breathed 
the Holy Spirit before his ascension. Neander re- 
marks : " As the Holy Ghost is represented as soar- 
ing over him in the shape of a dove, and remaining 
to the end of the vision, the idea that he came now 
for the first time upon Jesus is altogether precluded, 
and a higher union of the divine and the human 
in Jesus, dating from the very beginning, and not 



THE BAPTISM OP JESUS. 



221 






commencing now, is evidently presupposed." Gess 
takes a somewhat different view. He says : " For 
what purpose did Jesus need the outpouring of 
the Spirit, seeing he carried in himself the fullness 
of Divine life? To say that the Holy Ghost was 
poured out upon the human nature of Jesus does 
not explain the matter; for it is evident that the 
Divine fullness of the Logos might have commu- 
nicated itself to the human soul of Jesus. What 
end, therefore, answered the baptism of the Holy 
Ghost coming down from heaven ? Without ad- 
mitting the full force of the Scripture doctrine, 
that the Logos divested himself, at his incarnation, 
of his fullness of life, we can not understand this 
fact in the development of our Lord's life. Jesus 
sustained, indeed, an uninterrupted intercourse with 
the Father, and his whole life, before and after his 
baptism, was an uninterrupted receiving of the Holy 
Ghost. He had recognized himself as the Son of 
God and as the Messiah before his baptism. But he 
needed, in addition to his inward conviction, a Di- 
vine seal of his Messiahship, coming from without, 
similar to the one he received afterward, shortly be- 
fore he set out on his last journey to Jerusalem, on 
the mount of transfiguration, and again after his 
entry into Jerusalem. As soon as we fully realize 
the true humanity of Christ, we must conceive of 
Christ's career as a career of faith, and we shall 
understand how appropriate such tokens of Divine 
favor were to the incarnate Logos." Gess further 
thinks that it was the spirit of official wisdom and 
power of performing miracles with which Jesus was 
endowed at his baptism. 

Verse 17. For "this is" Mark and Luke say, 
" Thou art." Matthew gives either only the sense 
of the Divine voice, and Mark and Luke the very 
words — the verba ipsissima — that were addressed to 
Jesus, or the voice addressed itself first to Jesus, 
then to John. If the words of the Father, like those 
of the Son, (Acts xxvi, 14,) were not spoken in 
Greek, but in Hebrew, the expression is elliptical — 
that is, without the copula "thou art" or "he is" — 
and one or the other can be supplied. The slight va- 
riation of the Evangelists, however, in reporting the 
words used on this occasion — as also in many other 
passages — is fully justified by the universally-admit- 
ted principle "that one witness may report the sub- 
stance and another the exact form, without any in- 
consistency or violation of the truth." ■ — • From the 
silence of John concerning the heavenly voice, in 
his testimony of Jesus, (John i, 32-34,) Strauss finds 
another proof that John differs from the Synoptics. 
But this argument e silentio has no force whatever, 
as no one will contend that the Baptist was obliged, 
whenever he appealed to any fact, to mention in de- 
tail all the attending circumstances. It is sufficient 
that, according to the Gospel of John, the Baptist 
testifies that Jesus is the Son of God, and this test- 
imony was necessarily based on the voice from 
heaven which declared him to be the Son of God. — 



This is my beloved Son. Literally, this is my Son, 
the beloved one ; that is, as the only-begotten Son, 
loved by me in a higher sense than all others that 
are for his sake adopted and beloved. (John xvii, 
24, 26; Eph. i, 6; Col. i, 13.) God loves, in reality, 
only the only-begotten Son of his love, as the orig- 
inal has it, (Col. i, 13,) with all his eternal, infinite, 
and immeasurable love, and whomsoever else he 
loves, he loves only through him and for his sake, 
only with reference to the beloved one, only in pro- 
portion as he is beloved by the Son. — Ix whom I 
am well pleased. On this passage Dr. Alexander 
has the following excellent note: " I am well pleased 
is in Greek a single word, the aorist of a verb used 
sometimes to express volition, and then construed 
with a following infinitive, but sometimes perfect 
satisfaction or complacency, the object of which is 
then denoted by a noun or pronoun following. Ac- 
cording to the theory and usage of the Greek verb, 
both in the classics and in Scripture, the aorist (eb<56- 
Kriaa) is to be confounded neither with the present, 
/ am (now) well pleased, nor with the perfect, 1 
have (ever) been well pleased, but has respect to a 
specific point of time, I teas (once) well pleased. 
Although the deviations from this strict rule are 
sufficient to authorize a liberal construction when 
required by exegetical necessity, the latter is pre- 
cluded in the case before us by the obvious allusion 
to the Son's assumption of the Mediatorial office, 
which is here presented as the ground or reason of 
the Father's infinite complacency or approbation, as 
distinguished from what may be called, for want of 
any better term, the natural affection or intense love 
which enters into our conception of the mutual rela- 
tion of paternity and sonship. There is therefore 
no tautology in these two clauses ; but the first de- 
scribes our Lord as the beloved Son of God from all 
eternity, the second as the object of his infinite 
complacency and approbation as the Son of man, 
the Mediator, the Messiah. In this voluntarily-as- 
sumed or adopted character, the Son of God was 
recognized and set forth at his baptism. This sub- 
lime and solemn recognition of our Lord in his offi- 
cial character involves a striking exhibition of the 
threefold personality in the Divine essence, the Fa- 
ther audibly addressing and the Spirit visibly de- 
scending on the incarnate Son, as he assumes his 
Messianic office." 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 

Jesus now appears in public for the first time. 
Stupendous issues depend upon that mission, into 
which he is now publicly inaugurated by that bap- 
tism which he receives at the hand of John. Now, 
although the mission of Jesus was sui generis, every 
man has as truly a mission as he had. There is not 
one possessing a rational nature who has not some 
portion of Divine work, which he is both fitted and 



222 



MATTHEW IV, 1-11. 



required to do. Upon the right fulfillment of our in- 
dividual missions depend our true greatness and well- 
being, as well as our utility to the universe and our 
acceptance with God. Now, there are two things 
which Christ possessed at his inauguration, as here 
recorded, which every man must have if he would 
rightly " fulfill his course "■ — a spirit of self-renuncia- 
tion and a special connection loith the Spirit of God. 

I. A spirit of self-renunciation. When Jesus 
made application for baptism, John, conscious of 
his personal inferiority, modestly "forbade him, say- 
ing, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest 
thou to me?" To this Jesus replied, "Suffer it to 
be so now, for thus it becometh us to fulfill all right- 
eousness;" as if he had said, Baptism is a Divine in- 
stitution; and, although it is a ritual enactment, and 
not a moral principle, as it is not yet abrogated, and 
as I am "made under the law," it is binding on me. 
Whatever is duty, positive or moral— however appar- 
ently trivial or momentous — I shall obey. This is 
the spirit of duty — the spirit that now penetrated 
Christ in entering on his public mission, and which 
was the inspiration of his life and the soul of his 
history. And, my friend, wouldst thou be initiated 
into the grand business and blessedness of being? 
Wouldst thou start rightly on the course of an in- 
terminable existence? Wouldst thou be divinely in- 
augurated into the high offices of God's spiritual 
universe ? If so, thou must have that spirit which 
Jesus expressed to John on the banks of the Jordan, 
when he said: "It becometh us to fulfill all 

RIGHTEOUSNESS." 

II. A special connection with, the Spirit of God. 
There are three things in this wonderful scene which 
indicated Christ's special connection with God at this 
time. First, the vision of the opening heavens : " Lo ! 
the heavens were opened unto him." An impressive 
expression this of the fact mankind have ever over- 
looked; namely, that behind the vail of matter there 
is a spiritual universe which is deeply interested in 
the doings and destinies of a holy man. How would 
this vision strengthen the heart of Christ for the stu- 
pendous mission he had undertaken! He would 
feel, as his trials multiplied, and the nation grew in 



wrath against him, that up those heavens — where 
the vulgar could discern nothing but the quiet seas 
of blue, the swimming clouds, and the twinkling 
lights of night — there were spirits bent in earnest 
affection over him, and ready at any moment to 
throw open their glorious pavilion, and welcome 
him to their home. Secondly. The visit of the holy 
dove. In the symbolization of the Bible, certain 
animals — such as the lamb, the lion, the eagle, the 
bull — are frequently employed as the representatives 
of character. In this hieroglyphical system the dove 
is the emblem of purity; and its descending and 
abiding upon Christ now, indicated that he was the 
temple of the Spirit of holiness. This Spirit with 
Christ was not a transient visitant, as in the case of 
Saul, Samson, and others, but a permanent resident. 
The "dove abode" on Christ. Thirdly. The voice 
of the everlasting Father, " This is my beloved Son, 
in whom I am well pleased." ■ This approving voice 
was the greatest blessing of all. Now, all these 
things, indicating a special connection with God, are 
as necessary for every man who would happily real- 
ize the great purpose of being, as they were for 
Christ, Yes ; every man must have such a Divine vi- 
sion, visitant, and voice; the heavens must open; 
the thick vail of matter must be drawn aside; the 
sensuous firmament of the heart must be rent asun- 
der, and a deep and imperishable impression of a 
spiritual universe must be made upon the heart, and 
the whole man must be brought under the powers 
of the world to come. The heavenly dove must de- 
scend as the spirit of purity, not to pay a transient 
visit and wing its way again, but as a permanent 
resident, consecrating the entire nature as its ever- 
lasting temple ; and the approving voice of Heaven 
must verberate in the depths of conscience, that we 
may go forth, not with "doubts and fears," but with 
a cheerful spirit and courageous heart. " 0, that 
thou wouldst rend the heavens!" — unvail to us the 
spiritual world; "that thou wouldst come down" — 
descend on us as the permanent visitant of purity, 
and as a voice, " bearing witness with our spirits 
that we are the children of God I" (Abridged from 
"The Homilist") 



OHAPTEE IT. 



§7. THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD IN THE WILDERNESS. 

Rationalistic commentators regard the temptation of our Lord, recorded by three 
Evangelists, not as an actual occurrence, but either as a parable, in which Jesus intended 
to teach his disciples certain principles of his kingdom and certain fundamental maxims 
to guide them in their mission, or as a my thus, a tradition, which arose from the inten- 
tion of glorifying Christ as the conqueror of evil. It is not necessary to say any thing 
on the mythical interpretation, after the elaborate discussion to which the whole theory 



THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD IN THE WILDERNESS. 223 

in all its aspects has been subjected in our General Introduction. The view which 
regards the narrative as a parable has been given up, even by those who had sup- 
ported it. The entire character of the narrative, and especially the position it occupies 
between the baptism and public appearance of Jesus, show clearly that the Evangelists 
meant to narrate a matter of fact, and not a parable. Or can we suppose that the 
apostles misunderstood their Master on this subject, taking that to be actual history 
which he meant to be a parable? This would imply a stigma upon the teaching of Jesus 
himself, as if he had presented the matter to them in a very unintelligible way ; and 
Matthew was certaiuly well skilled in distinguishing parables from narratives. When 
Jesus spoke in parables the fact is always expressly stated by the Evangelist. Besides, 
as a parable, this account would have an unusual aspect, such as no where else occurs. 
Finally, when we reflect that it was involved in the human nature of Christ that he 
should be tempted, that the New Testament throughout knows nothing at all of a Savior 
who was not actually tempted, and that it lay in the nature of the case, that that which 
could be a temptation to him should present itself with special force at the commence- 
ment of his career, we are constrained to regard the account as the record of an actual 
fact in the life of Jesus. 

But even those who believe that Jesus was actually subjected to temptation, differ 
widely in their explanations of the mysterious transaction. The chief ground of these 
different and more or less forced explanations, is the personal appearance of Satan as 
the tempter of Jesus. It is argued that the bodily appearance of the devil is never else- 
where hinted at in the New Testament, and that the personal appearance of the devil, 
even if disguised in a human form — to which the text makes no allusion whatever — must 
at once have taken from the temptation all its force; for the Son of God must have rec- 
ognized him at a glance, and in order that evil may tempt at all it must take the alluring 
form of that which is good, and pleasant, and beneficial. 

Some have supposed that the temptations presented themselves to the Lord in a state 
of ecstasy, or in a dream. But would the Lord have imparted to the Evangelists a mere 
vision or dream in the form of a historical narrative? Would a temptation experienced 
in an ecstasy be a real temptation? And how unworthy is the conception that the sec- 
ond Adam should have resisted the temptations of Satan only in a vision or dream, not 
in a wakeful, conscious, and responsible condition ! 

More plausible is the interpretation which represents the event as a mental experi- 
ence, undergone in a state of perfect self-consciousness. According to this view, Satan is 
made to represent the false and carnal idea of the Messiah which was prevalent in the 
world around him, but which his pure spirit repulsed with perfect decision and without 
hesitation. This false idea of the Messiah, it is said, originated with Satan, and must 
have presented itself to Jesus when he was on the point of coming forward as the Mes- 
siah. Since, to his mind, the precise end for which the Father had sent him into the 
world stood clearly defined, so, with equal clearness, must he have taken cognizance of 
that which stood opposed to this his mission. This inward experience Jesus is supposed 
to have afterward communicated to the disciples in the more intelligible form of an out- 
ward temptation, in which he holds up to their view the process of thought through 
which he passed. In support of this view there may be quoted Scriptural representa- 
tions of a similar symbolical character; yet it is unworthy of our acceptance. The 
temptation is thus made either a real conflict in the soul of Jesus, which is inconsistent 
with his purity, or a merely-theoretical choice between a false and a true conception of 
Messiah, which would deprive the temptation of all force and significance. Besides, this 
interpretation does too much violence to the text. The Evangelists speak evidently of a 
personal tempter acting upon Jesus from without, in order to seduce him from the way of 
truth, and, more particularly, from that way which, as Messiah, he was called to walk in. 
Some who acknowledge this, but who, at the same time, wish to get rid of the idea of 



224 MATTHEW IV, 1-11. 



the tempter having been the devil, substitute for him some human tempter, whether an 
individual or a body of men, and have imagined that it was by a priest or a Pharisee, or 
by a deputation from the Sanhedrim, that the seductive propositions were made to Jesus. 
But, to say nothing of the lack of all evidence for such a supposition, it is precluded by 
the words of the text. Occurring without the article, the word Sidftpfoz might mean a 
tempter generally, human or other; but with the article it can only be understood of the 
chief of evil spirits; and the same is true of r.sipd^wv with the article. Besides, in the 
mouth of a man these temptations would be curious, strange, inadmissible, especially 
the demand to be worshiped, and the promise of dominion conjoined therewith. 

Accordingly, nothing remains to us but to understand the tempter to be Satan, as the 
Evangelists represent. Yet, even with this conclusion, we have an alternative presented 
to us. The one is to assume an outward, embodied appearance of Satan standing before 
Christ, This is defended by Ebrard, who says: " It pertains to the dignity of Jesus that 
the prince of this world should appear to him without a mask, neither as a deceptive 
juggler, nor as a specter, nor as an angel of light, but in the shape of the fallen angel- 
prince. How this shape was constituted I know not, and it were foolish to desire to 
know. Only this much is certain: 1. That it was no goat-footed caricature of a beast, 
derived from Germanic heathenism, but a shape analogous to the body of man, since 
all angels have appeared to men in a shape analogous to the human ; and, 2. That all 
the seductiveness of Belial, as well as all the terribleness of the malignity of Satan — the 
former enticing, the latter threatening in case of the failure of the enticement — was 
manifested in his appearance before Christ. The idea of Jesus being bodily in the 
power of Satan has been considered inadmissible; but it is no more so than that, at a 
later period, he should be, by voluntary submission, in the power of the children of 
Belial. The Spirit of his Father drove him into the wilderness, in order to endure the 
temptation. In being tempted he was entirely passive, but so much the more active in 
refusing to be led astray." 

The other alternative is to recognize Satan in the tempting personality, without 
admitting his outward visible appearance. Since the prince of darkness is a spirit, 
the opinion that his assault upon Jesus was of a purely-spiritual nature is not contra- 
dictory to the text, and is, on the whole, the most probable. Christ was tempted in all 
points like as we are. But to us Satan does not appear in bodily form, but tempts us 
through the suggestion of evil thoughts. The objection that if the temptation had taken 
place only in the mind of Jesus, it would be difficult to distinguish it from one arising 
out of his own heart and mind, has no weight at all; for if we consider the words of the 
temptation as thoughts thrust in by Satan, the temptation comes upon Jesus from with- 
out as really, and leaves Jesus as much unstained, as if Satan in corporeal presence had 
spoken the words. The only weighty objection to this interpretation appears to lie in 
the words, "Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a 
pinnacle of the Temple," (v. 5,) and " The devil taketh him up into an exceeding high 
mountain," (v. 8.) But Dr. Stearns, in an article in the Bibliotheca Sacra, has very 
ingeniously removed this difficulty without putting a forced construction upon these 
words. His argument is as follows. With reference to the first suggestion of Satan to 
change the stones to bread, the Redeemer, in a moment, recognized it as a temptation, 
and repulsed it instantaneously, because such an act would have manifested distrust in 
God, who had supported him during the forty days' fast, as well as impatience under 
afflictions which he should endure till his Father should be pleased to release him. In 
the second temptation we have to distinguish between the going to Jerusalem and the 
ascending of the pinnacle of the Temple, on the one hand, and the challenge to throw 
himself down, on the other hand. The former, as well as the latter, appears to have 
been a suggestion of Satan; for it is said: " The devil taketh him." But the first part of 
the suggestion had nothing wrong in itself, and the Redeemer might not have recognized 



THE TEMPTATION OP OUR LORD IN THE WILDERNESS. 225 

it as coming from the tempter. Many good reasons might have inclined Jesus to go to 
Jerusalem, and to ascend the pinnacle of the Temple. These reasons, though suggested 
to him from without, he might, as man, not have recognized as the suggestions of the 
invisible tempter, but followed them innocently. So soon, however, as the thought to 
throw himself down, in order to astonish the multitude by a miracle, and to rely, in 
doing it, on the promise of the Scriptures — so soon as this thought presented itself, the 
Redeemer discerned instantly that this proposal, involving the greatest presumption, 
came from the devil, and it was at once rejected. So, in the third temptation, it could 
not be sinful to ascend a mountain in order to view the surrounding countries. It is 
evident that what Luke says of the devil "showing Jesus all the kingdoms of the world 
in a moment of time," can not be taken literally. It must, then, have been through a 
working of Satan upon the imagination of Jesus. That Satan was permitted to hold 
before the soul of Jesus a picture of fancy, those also must admit who maintain a visible 
appearance of Satan ; for there is no mountain from which all the kingdoms of the world 
can be seen. To suppose that Satan held up a picture to the imagination of Jesus, is 
totally different from the attempt to resolve the whole narrative into a vision. By 
beholding this picture the soul of Jesus was not defiled, nor does the temptation thereby 
lose any of its force. So soon, however, as the proposal came to receive all the kingdoms 
as a gift at the hands of Satan, the Savior hesitated not a moment to repel the ignomin- 
ious and blasphemous proffer with the words: "Get thee hence, Satan." 

If none of all the explanations given is entirely satisfactory, we must not forget that 
we have here to do with a subject which must remain shrouded in mystery. This much, 
however, is plain, that whoever admits what the Scriptures teach us of the existence of 
the devil and of his influence over men, will find no difficulty to believe that he actually 
tempted our Lord. How Satan approached the Savior, vjhat was the status of the tempter, 
is not revealed to us. 

There are, however, other questions of too much importance to be passed unanswered. 
The temptation of our Lord forms an important part in the plan of our redemption, but 
belongs, at the same time, to the most difficult problems of theology. We are first met 
by the question, whether we must not ascribe to Christ an impossibility of yielding to tempta- 
tion, and, if so, whether the temptation could have had any reality for the Son of God. The 
answer generally given to this question is, that it was the human soul of Christ, in itself 
and apart from its union with the Divine Logos, that was tempted, and might have 
sinned; but that through this union sin became impossible. But such a separation of 
humanity from Divinity, in the person of Christ, is inadmissible. The fact stated in 
the Gospel records is, that the Word made flesh — that is, the Son of God as man — not a 
mere man — was tempted; and the full, practical import of this temptation lies in this 
very point, that the eternal Son of God entered into our very condition, and was tempted 
in all points like as we are, not only to succor us out of his own experience, but to show 
us that sin is no part of human nature in its original state; that God required of the first 
Adam no more than he — the second Adam — was willing to do and encounter himself. 
It is only from this point of view that we can draw proper encouragement in the imi- 
tation of the example -which our Savior set before us in his temptation. Because he 
manifested Divine virtue under truly-human conditions, our human virtue may become 
divine. While the humanity of Jesus differs from common humanity in this, that he 
presents, in his person, the true and ideal man which is sinless and perfect, we, the fallen 
progeny of the first Adam, are to be conformed to the image of the second Adam, by 
being born again of the Spirit of God. Regarding, then, as we do, the union of Godhead 
with manhood in the one personality of Christ to be such, that in him the Divine 
nature never excludes the human, nor the human the Divine — in other words, that what 
is Divine in Christ is, at the same time, human, and what is human in him is Divine — 
the question how the temptation could have had any reality for the Son of God, presents 

15 



226 MATTHEW IV, 1-11. 



to us a difficult problem. Let us see how the German Christologians solve it. Ebrard 
expresses himself as follows: "Since the Godhead assumed in Jesus the mode of human 
existence, it follows that his holy will assumed the form of choice between possibilities 
presented to his understanding; in other words, the holiness of the God-man must mani- 
fest itself, as a constant choice of what is good. The possibility, therefore, nay, the con- 
stant actuality of temptation, was the necessary result of the incarnation of the Son of 
God. His human holiness consisted not in an absolute inability to sin — non posse pec- 
care — but in a continual, genuinely-human, free decision for good; and therein lay the 
possibility of his being tempted." Ullmannsays: "The plan of redemption ordained of 
God, aforetime prepared for execution through thoiisands of years, and through thou- 
sands more designed to work out its results, could not fail of its end. Yet this must 
have happened, if we suppose that he who was appointed Eedeemer might himself fall 
away from God through sin. In this view it becomes a wholly-inadmissible, yea, mon- 
strous thought, that Jesus could have actually sinned. Thereby the plan of God would 
have been frustrated, and the pure center Of light for the world's history would have 
been extinguished. It ajDpears, indeed, to be a necessity, intrinsic and wrought into the 
moral order of the world, that Jesus should not sin. In him, however, necessity and 
freedom coincide. He could not be otherwise, but, at the same time, he would not be 
otherwise than sinless. With perfect freedom, in submission and self-renunciation, he 
conformed to that higher necessity which was fulfilling itself in his manifestation. Both 
necessity and freedom must be so associated in our conception that neither shall invali- 
date the other. The necessity of a goodness thus perfect is, at the same time, free and 
voluntary; it is not doubtfully choosing and vacillating, but firmly and victoriously 
directed to what is good. But this freedom does not exclude the possibility of evil in 
the abstract. Being human freedom, it does not lose itself in the Divine necessity; there 
is a possibility of evil, but it is only external, abstract, simply cogitable — cine b(o§e Denf* 
forfeit. The possibility of evil exists, but is never realized. Like a mathematical quan- 
tity evolved in calculation, which is not actually used, it is every moment eliminated by 
that which is higher, the consciousness and pure love of the Divine." More concisely 
and clearly does the pious Steudel express himself: "Although the idea of Christ as Ee- 
deemer implies that in him the possibility of sinning was never realized, yet is he the 
sinless one only in so far as it was possible for him to sin. He could not have been the 
Eedeemer if he had sinned, and, as Eedeemer, it is inconceivable that he should have 
sinned; but the idea of a Eedeemer can only be realized by one who, though he might 
have sinned, did not sin. In a word, he is the Eedeemer of men, not as one who had 
not the ability to sin, but as one who, though he had the ability to sin, did not sin." 
Gess, upholding the side of human freedom more strongly than that of Divine necessity, 
says: " How could Jesus be an example to us who, in the course of this earthly life, must 
decide for God's will amid the pressure of the world's temptation, if his will had been 
decided a priori, through an antemundane determination of the Logos, if, therefore, 
his self-determinations within his earthly life were but the natural and necessary work- 
ing of the antemundane determination ? The free disobedience of Adam has brought us 
into the state of sin ; and only the free obedience of the second Adam can place us in 
the state of righteousness. (Eom. v, 19.) The first Adam was not willing to learn obe- 
dience, though he was only a man ; the second, though very God, as well as very man, Avas 
ready to learn obedience even unto death." 

Another theological or philosophical difficulty is urged by the question, whether Jesus 
could be really tempted, and yet remain absolutely sinless. This question is based upon the 
presumption that an incitement to sin — which temptation necessarily implies — presup- 
poses, on the part of the tempted, some affinity to sin. This confounding of temptabil- 
ity with a penchant toward sin is thoroughly refuted by Ullmann. He says: "In order 
to answer this question, we must investigate the idea and nature of temptation. By 



THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD IN THE WILDERNESS. 227 

temptation we mean all that which acts on a free personality in such a way as possibly 
to give its life a direction away from the good and toward the evil. That which tempts 
may lie either in the man himself, as the lust of which James speaks — this kind of tempt- 
ation presupposes already a germ of evil within the man himself, and is, of course, not 
predicable of Jesus — or the temptation may be presented from without, in the shape of a 
motive to sinful action. Still, a temptation coming from without must enter the mind 
through the medium of thought, or imagination, or sensual impression. To be tempted, 
then, means to receive an impression which may move to evil. Every being is liable to 
temptation whose nature is, on the one hand, susceptible of good, and, on the other, does 
not necessarily shut out the possibility of evil. God can not be tempted, because the pos- 
sibility of sinning is forbidden by the absolute necessity of his nature. The idea of a God 
who could sin, or who could even be tempted to sin, were an absurdity. God and sin are 
two conceptions which absolutely exclude each other. Irrational creatures can not be 
tempted, because, being incapable of moral good, they are also below temptation. Man 
alone, free to choose, can be tempted; for he may be bent in both directions. Temptation 
begins for him when evil is presented, at some point of his inner or outer life, in such a 
way that he can directly take it up into his own being. But man is exposed in two ways 
to the seductive power of evil. On the one hand, he may be drawn to actual sin by 
enticements, and, on the other hand, he may be turned aside from what is good by 
threatened, as well as by inflicted, suffering. Moreover, temptation assails us at different 
points, in order to gain possession of our will. Hence, we may be tempted as truly 
through thoughts presented to our minds as through outward objects presented to our 
senses, and in each case the temptation may be either a seduction to evil or a preventive 
from good. 

"Where, then, is the point in temptation at which sin begins, or at which tempt- 
ation becomes itself sin? It is there where the evil which is presented to us begins to 
exert a determining influence on the heart — an influence which, extending onward to the 
will, leads it to act in a manner opposed to the Divine order. Then we find that a con* 
flict is awakened in man which is inconceivable without the presence of sin, be it only in 
the least degree. Disorderly desire and inward bias toward evil are themselves the be- 
ginning of sin; and if such desire had its root and source in our own inner being, it pre- 
supposes the ground of our life to be already corrupt. At this stage it is sin itself that 
entices to sin : sin as a condition leads to sin in act. But temptation does not imply sin 
when the evil, as a thing coming from the world without, merely offers its allurements, 
and is kept at a distance by the indwelling energy of the spirit, or when we are shaken 
by sufferings, whether of the body or soul, and, instead of giving way to ungodly states 
i of feeling and tendencies of the will, endure patiently, and are sustained by our inner 
moral power. 

" It is thus plain how the Redeemer might be tempted, and yet remain free from the 
least stain of sin. He was tempted in all points ; that is, he was tempted in the only two 
possible ways specified above. On the one hand, allurements were presented which 
might have moved him to actual sin, and, on the other hand, he was beset by sufferings 
which might have turned him aside from the Divine path of duty. But in the face of 
both kinds of temptation, his perfect agreement with the will of God remained pure and 
unimpaired. Temptations of the first order were concentrated in the attack made on 
Jesus by Satan. Temptations of the second order assailed him most severely during the 
struggles of Gethsemane, and when he felt himself forsaken by God on the cross." 

TJllmann proceeds, further, to show the twofold significance of the several temptations 
of our Lord. While he was tried prominently in his character of Messiah, he was also 
assailed as a man. His temptation had, therefore, a general human, as well as a special 
Messianic character. The thorough analysis of these points by the distinguished theo- 
logian to whom we are indebted for the greater part of these introductory remarks, we 



228 MATTHEW rv, 1-11. 



shall give in the exegetical notes on verses 3-10. The prominently-Christological sig- 
nificance of the temptation is elegantly set forth by Dr. Krumrsaeher in a sermon, of 
which we will quote the main points, though we have to dissent from some of them, as 
the reader will see in the notes : 

" Compare the situation of our Lord with that of our first parents before the fall. 
There is the garden of Eden, here the gloomy desert; there are the trees lovely to be- 
hold, with fruit inviting to the taste; here are thousands of thistles, the harvest from the 
sowing of sin; there is the eternal Father walking in the garden; here Satan is unfet- 
tered. Though in both cases the tempter is heard to say, 'Has God said?' yet in the 
one case the tempter is victorious, and in the other he is vanquished; there a curse is 
visited on the earth, here the curse is banished and the blessing restored. Forty days 
and forty nights did the Savior spend, as did Moses on Mount Sinai, without food and 
drink, in unbroken meditation and prayer. Then, at last, and doubtless with excrucia- 
ting hunger, that weakness of his human nature, which of itself is sinless, asserted itself. 
This condition served Satan as a medium for his first temptation. In the full conscious- 
ness of his power, the prince of darkness advances, and repeats, in substance, the same 
temptation that had proved so successful in paradise. His ' If thou be the Son of God ' is 
nothing else than a disguised 'Has God said?' alluding to the voice from heaven at the 
baptism. It involves the demand that he should prove himself to be the Son of God. 
' Show it that thou art the Son of God. It is unbecoming for a being of thy dignity to 
be in want and to suffer hunger. Make use of thy power, and help thyself. Why wilt 
thou perish? Spare thyself for thy great work. For thy own good and that of the 
suffering nation, employ thy miraculous powers, and begin thy work of the world's 
transformation. Every thing waits for it. Show thyself greater than Moses. Change 
the stones into bread, the thorns into vines, the thistles into fig-trees. Expel want, and 
sighing, and tears from the earth ; and, in order that the world may know who has 
appeared in thee, give order to the blasted paradise that it bloom again.' The Lord, 
without condescending to answer directly the question whether he was the Son of God, 
referred the devil to the manna given the people of Israel in the wilderness, and gives 
him to understand that he had not come into the world for personal enjoyment, but to 
suffer want as long as it was the will of God, who could sustain him without natural 
means. But, at the same time, this answer implies the truth: I have come to furnish the 
perishing people with another and more substantial bread than that which thou invitest 
me to produce from the stones of the wilderness; and thou canst not turn me out of the 
way of my mission, though it be a painful one. Tet Satan repeats the attempt in the 
second and third temptation. The leap from the Temple's summit, perhaps at the time 
of a feast, when the Holy City was thronged with priests, and scribes, and pious pil- 
grims — what mighty effects would it produce! A visible descent from the abrupt hight 
of the pinnacle, a safe arrival amid the wavering people, according to the Divine prom- 
ises, would instantaneously scatter all doubt as to the Messiahship, and extort from 
every one the confession: 'This man must have come from heaven. The angels of God 
bear him on their hands. He must be the Messiah, and it behooves us to do homage to 
him, and acknowledge him as our king.' But Jesus knew that an entirely-different 
course was divinely ordained for him, in order to find faith on the earth. As Moses had 
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so should he be lifted up, and thus draw all men 
unto him. To appropriate the promises of the Father to himself in any other way, 
would be tempting God. The Messiah must not expose himself to peril, presumptuously 
trusting in the miraculous help of God. So the devil was again confounded. Yet he 
makes another desperate assault. Mindful that, according to the Messianic programme, 
the Messiah should have not only Israel, but also the heathens for an inheritance, 
Satan, as the ruler of heathendom, ventured to offer to the Lord his cooperation in 
the conquest of the immense territory. The thought of Satan, expanded to its full 



THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD IN THE WILDERNESS. 



229 



dimensions, was this: 'Grant me the honor to receive at my hands the programme of the 
world's conquest. Confiding in me you will be able, without painful effort, to ground 
the new order of things upon the old, and to graft Christianity upon the stock of hea- 
thenism. The nations will then throng to you, and, with their noble and wise men, bow 
themselves with awe before thy scepter.' In this last temptation Satan displays himself 
as 'the ruler of the whole world,' attempting to make Jesus his organ, to transform 
Christ into antichrist, by endeavoring to dazzle him through the promise of dominion 
over the world, and the manifestation of its splendor. He makes, with his offer, the 
covert insinuation that, by virtue of his dominion in heathendom, he has the power to 
turn the whole world against Jesus, if he rejects the proposal. In this temptation Satan 
appeared undisguised, and Christ addresses him as such." 

"Verses 1 — 11. 

(1) Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of 
the devil. : (2) And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was after- 
ward a hungered. (3) And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the 
Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. (4) But he answered and 
said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that pro- 
ceedeth out of the mouth of God. (5) Then the devil taketh him up into the holy 
city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the Temple, 2 (6) and saith unto him, If thou 
be the Son of God, cast thyself down : for it is written, He shall give his angels 
charge concerning thee : 3 and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any 
time thou dash thy foot against a stone. (7) Jesus said unto him, It is written 
again, Thou shalt not tempt 4 the Lord thy God. (8) Again the devil taketh him 
up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the 
world, and the glory of them ; (9) and saith unto him, All these things will I give 
thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. (10) Then saith Jesus unto him, Get 
thee hence, Satan : for it is written, 5 Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and 
him only shalt thou serve. (11) Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels 
came and ministered unto him. 



Verse 1. The Evangelists state expressly that 
the temptation of Christ took place immediately 
after his baptism, by which he was solemnly intro- 
duced into his Messianic office. Mark says: "The 
Spirit driveth him into the wilderness," while Mat- 
thew and Luke say : " He was led up of the Spirit 
into the wilderness." By this "Spirit" the Holy 



Ghost alone can be meant. — Into the wilder- 
ness. This word is here used not in its wider sense, 
as in iii, 1, but means a dreary desert, on which ac- 
count Mark adds: "He was with the wild beasts." 
According to tradition, it was a place only a few 
miles from Jerusalem, between Jericho and Beth- 
any, called the wilderness of Jericho, in Josh, xvi, 1. 



1 AiajBoAot — devil. The Greek name of the prince of 
the fallen angels. It means an accuser, slanderer. His 
Hebrew name is Satan. Both terms are used only in 
the singular in the Scriptures. (See 1 Thess. iii, 5; 
1 Cor. vii, 5.) 2 A pinnacle; Greek, to Tnepvyiov. Proba- 
bly Herod's royal portico, which is described by Jose- 
phus as a dizzy hight. (Antiq., XV, 11, 5.) The New 
Testament distinguishes strictly between the Temple 
proper — vo.6<; — and the buildings surrounding it, which, 
with the Temple, constitute a whole, and are called Up6v. 
3 Psa. xei, 11, 12. The words " To keep thee in all thy 
ways " are left out by the tempter. This omission, 
however, does not seem to have the design, generally 



ascribed to it, since, as Alexander remarks, " Our Lord 
makes no charge on account of it; and ways, in the orig- 
inal, does not mean ways of duty, but of Providence. 
Neither the tempter's argument nor Christ's reply to it 
would be at all affected by the introduction of the words 
suppressed." * The Greek verb used here for tempt is 
" an emphatic compound, meaning to draw out by trial, 
to try thoroughly. As applied to God, it means to put 
him to the proof, to demand further evidence of what 
is clear already, as in this case by requiring him to show 
his watchful care by an extraordinary intervention in 
a case of danger, willfully and needlessly incurred." 
(Alexander.) 5 Deut. vi, 13; Ex. xx, 3-5; Ps. lxxxi, 10. 



230 



MATTHEW IV, 1-1.1. 



— To be tempted. The express purpose of "he 
was led up." The Greek word for tempting — Kupa- 
£eiv — means to try, to put to the test. In a material 
sense, the term is applied to metals; in a moral 
sense, to human character, either with a good pur- 
pose, as in John vi, 6 ; Gen. xxii, 1 ; or with a bad 
purpose; namely, to incite to sin, to seduce. (1 Cor. 
vii, 5.) In the latter sense it is said of God, that he 
tempts no one; that is, he incites no one to sin. 
When it is said that he tempts men, the meaning is 
that he puts them to the test by giving them an op- 
portunity to overcome evil and to show their faith- 
fulness and love to God. Christ was led into the 
wilderness as our prototype and Redeemer, that he 
might endure and overcome the most violent as- 
saults of Satan. — Op the devil. The first Adam 
fell through the temptation of the serpent, which is 
called in other places the old dragon, the devil, and 
the first promise with regard to the Messiah was, 
that he was to bruise the serpent's head. This is 
not the place to discuss the existence of fallen 
spirits. No believer in the Bible can deny that God 
created besides man other intelligences, that some 
of these intelligences apostatized from God, and 
that a purely-spiritual being can exert an influence 
upon the human spirit. The Bible teaches plainly 
the existence of good and bad angels, and the dis- 
courses and explicit declarations of Christ (Matt. 
xiii, 39; John viii, 44; xiv, 30) confirm the doc- 
trine that the kingdom of God is opposed by a king- 
dom of Satan or kingdom of darkness. Christ calls 
its head and leader "devil," "prince of this world," 
and "prince of darkness," and his accomplices " serv- 
ants " or " angels of Satan." This head of the fallen 
spirits, himself a fallen, powerful spirit, but possessed 
of no Divine attributes, neither omniscience nor om- 
nipotence, is the tempter of Christ. The rationalists 
understand by the devil nothing else than the princi- 
ple of evil. They might as well deny the personality 
of Christ in this whole transaction. 

Verse 2. The term " fasting" here means not a 
partial, but a total abstinence from food, as is indi- 
cated by the " forty days and forty nights," since 
the Jews used to eat by night during their usual 
fasts. This appears also from the words of Luke 
iv, 2: "And in those days he did eat nothing; and 
when they were ended, he afterward hungered." 
This fasting, which reminds us of the fasting of 
Moses, (Deut. ix, 9-18,) and of Elias, (1 Kings 
xix, 8,) was not undergone by our Savior for the 
purpose of bodily mortification ; but he was so over- 
whelmed by the magnitude of his mediatorial office, 
into which he had just been introduced by John, 
that, for forty days and forty nights, he felt neither 
hunger nor thirst. In proof that a total abstinence 
from food for such a length of time is not physically 
impossible, learned physicians have adduced some 
well-attested cases. The proof, however, is unneces- 
sary, as the fasting of the God-man is altogether 
unique iu its nature. 



Verse 3. And when the tempter came to him. 
Literally, The tempter, coming to him. The ques- 
tion arises here, what sense the devil attached to the 
term " Son of God," or what knowledge he had of 
the real divinity of Christ. Inasmuch as it is highly 
improbable that he would have dared or thought it 
possible to tempt a Divine person, we have to as- 
sume that he used the word "Son of God" in that 
lower sense in which it was sometimes applied to 
angels and to extraordinary men. He recognized 
in him the Messiah, but had, we may presume, very 
indistinct conceptions concerning the mystery of the 
incarnation. — The first temptation implies that the 
person to whom it was addressed was, on the one 
hand, so constituted that he could feel a want of 
food, which, in that moment, could not be grati- 
fied in any ordinary way, and that he was, on the 
other hand, one who was supposed to possess the 
power of satisfying that want in an extraordinary 
and miraculous manner. The temptation consisted, 
therefore, in this, that a person endowed with a 
power to work miracles was called upon to exercise 
that power to satisfy his human wants, at a time 
when he was hard pressed by physical need. 

Verse 4. Jesus replies to the tempter in words 
taken from Deuteronomy viii, 3. The majority of 
commentators understand the meaning of these 
words to be this: The preservation of the life of 
man is not necessarily connected with the ordinary 
means of subsistence; but it can be sustained with- 
out bread by the Word — that is, commandment that 
proceeds from the mouth of God — in an extraordi- 
nary way, as the Israelites were sustained by manna 
in the wilderness. This explanation does certainly 
correspond with the meaning of the words, as they 
occur in Deuteronomy, taken along with their con- 
text. Yet we have good ground for asking whether 
this sense must necessarily attach to the words as 
quoted by Jesus. There can be no doubt that Jesus 
and his apostles often gave to passages of the Old 
Testament a more general application, and raised 
them into a higher sphere. And there is reason to 
suppose that this is the case in this passage. The 
antithesis is not, as is generally supposed, between 
bread and any other means of life, but between it 
and the Word of God — in other words, between bod- 
ily nourishment and spiritual nourishment. Thus, 
when Jesus is asked by the tempter to make his 
power to do miracles available for supplying his 
physical wants — to use the higher, God-given fac- 
ulty in the service of mere human self-gratifica- 
tion — he replies : No ; for there is a higher life, which 
is not upheld by any outward nourishment, but which 
lives by all that comes from the mouth of God. In 
these words he says essentially the same thing which 
he afterward expressed thus: "My meat is to do 
the will of him that sent me, and to finish his 
work." 

Verses 5-7. The summons addressed to Christ 
to cast himself from the pinnacle of the Temple, 



THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD IN THE WILDERNESS. 



231 



goes, like the first temptation, upon the assumption 
of a peculiar personality in Jesus; namely, that the 
tempted was, as "the Son of God," under the special 
care and protection of Jehovah. The tempter ap- 
peals not so much to the wonder-working power of 
Jesus himself, as to the miraculous help of God. 
Jesus is not called to perform some unheard-of mir- 
acle, but to do something apparently dangerous. 
This view is confirmed by the Scripture passages 
quoted both by the tempter and by our Lord in his 
answer. The passage quoted by the tempter (Psa. 
xei, 11, 12) refers solely to the Divine protection, 
under which the Beloved of Jehovah stood. The 
reply of our Lord, taken from Deuteronomy vi, 16, 
is also without any reference to a miracle, and only 
points out how impious and vain it would be to 
tempt Providence by throwing one's self needlessly 
in the way of clanger. The enticing element in this 
temptation was the idea of calling forth the Divine 
protection, of proving whether God would preserve 
his anointed Son in circumstances of most immi- 
nent danger, and a danger which did not come in 
the simple, God-appointed path of duty, but was 
arbitrarily and vaingloriously incurred. There can 
be no doubt that a temptation like this has a certain 
charm for men who feel penetrated with a con- 
sciousness that they have a special mission to per- 
form ; and many a one whom an idea like this has 
blinded, has precipitated himself from the pinnacle 
of the Temple into the abyss of perdition. Thus 
the attempt might well be made with Jesus, who, 
though the Son of God, was yet truly man, to test 
whether the thought of putting the Divine protec- 
tion to the utmost proof had no attractions for him ; 
and this constitutes the second temptation. In it 
we have vividly brought before us what a contrast 
there is between a true and sound confidence in 
God, by the strength of which one who is conscious 
of a high mission is enabled to walk in the God- 
appointed way of his calling, and that false assur- 
ance by which a man may be led, in the vain idea 
of a higher protection, arbitrarily to select for him- 
self paths of danger. 

Verses 8-10. The temptation which is mentioned 
by Luke as the second, is rightly put last by Mat- 
thew; for it is the most trying and the most alluring 
of the three, and in it the tempter appears in a form 
undisguised. The devil calls upon the Savior to 
worship him, and promises that, if he does so, he 
will give him all the kingdoms of the world. This 
temptation has been generally held to consist in the 
invitation to found an earthly kingdom. But an- 
other view has also been maintained. It has been 
said that what the temptation really consisted in 
was the thought of employing a bad means in order 
to gain an end which might in itself be good. This 
exposition is correct, if we are to confine our view 
to the words spoken by Satan. But this we can not 
do. We must contemplate these words in the con- 
nection in which they stand. Immediately before 



we read that Satan had shown our Lord the king- 
doms of the world and their glory. To go no fur- 
ther than this expression, the "glory" of the king- 
doms of the world points to a kingdom, not of 
self-denying love, but of splendid dominion, and 
thus to a mere outward kingdom. Besides, Satan 
appears here as the prince of the world, (compare 
John viii, 44; xii, 31; Eph. ii, 2; vi, 12,) and offers 
to transfer to Christ his sovereignty over it. Now, 
such a kingdom as he could possess and offer, must, 
from its very nature, have been a mere earthly, un- 
godly kingdom. We see, then, that in this tempta- 
tion a kingdom of outward glory is offered to Jesus, 
as one who was fully conscious that he was destined 
to be a king. And the great point here brought out 
is the antagonism between these two kingdoms — a 
kingdom of the world, which could be set up only 
by the use of worldly means, and a kingdom of God 
which is not to be established in any carnal way, but 
must have its foundation in the pure worship of God 
alone. — We must regard it as highly significant that 
the power which tempts is brought before us in the 
unity of a person in the form of Satan; (that is, of 
him to whom are given over the kingdoms of this 
world.) We are thereby taught that not merely this 
or that form of sin, not only some individual evil, 
but the very principle of evil itself assailed Jesus, 
and was overcome by him. From this point of view 
both the temptation and victory of Jesus acquire a 
universal character and application. In the person 
of Jesus he was tempted whose destiny it was to be 
the founder of the kingdom of God. In the decisive 
rejection of the false and the adoption of the true 
idea of the Messiah, in the refusal of a worldly king- 
dom and the choice of the kingdom of God, a tri- 
umph was gained over the power of evil generally, 
and this achievement not only evinced the capability 
of Jesus to found a Divine kingdom, but constituted 
him, for all times, the prototype of victory over every 
species of temptation. — We have contemplated the 
three temptations in their Christological significance. 
But we must not overlook that, while Jesus was tried 
in his character of Messiah, he was also assailed as 
a man. It could not be said of him that he was 
tempted in all points like as we are, if his tempta- 
tions had only a special Messianic, not a general 
human character. They exhibit the spiritual Head 
of our race as tried like our natural, physical head, 
but with contrary results. The temptation, in the 
individual suggestions, seems to have consisted 
partly in that which would prove seductive to hu- 
man nature in its usual forms, and partly in that 
which is peculiarly alluring to men of a higher order, 
who are called to a higher vocation. The first tempt- 
ation may be regarded as a common, a universal hu- 
man temptation, if for the power to do miracles we 
substitute God-given faculties which every man pos- 
sesses, and which every man may either turn to 
purposes of selfishness and self-love or use in the 
service of a higher life. The second temptation can 



232 



MATTHEW IV, 1-11. 



apply more particularly only to that smaller circle to 
whom, by reason of great mental endowments or a 
high position in life, a peculiar mission has been 
assigned. And yet it may be viewed as in a sense 
applicable to all; for all, even the humblest, have a 
work to do and a God-appointed way to follow. The 
third temptation also has a special application only 
to the very small number of those who are called to 
a position of sovereignty ; and yet the general prin- 
ciple of the superior glory of inward and spiritual 
dominion to mere outward dignity and power may 
have some import for all. All the temptations have 
thus a more general application ; for in one form or 
another there is in all men some point assailable to 
their attack, and it is equally evident that the prin- 
ciples put forth by Jesus in opposition to the tempter 
are of universal application. 

Verse 11. The devil having left him, angels came 
and ministered unto him. After the powers of dark- 
ness had retired, the angels of light surrounded him 
and celebrated with him his victory. The tempter 
demanded of Jesus to serve him. Instead of this 
the angels served and paid their homage to Jesus, 
declaring thereby that he is the King of the king- 
dom of light. Some understand by the ministering 
of the angels that they brought refreshments unto 
him, such as his suffering nature stood then so much 
in need of, similarly as Elijah had been fed by an- 
gels. (1 Kings xix, 5.) 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 
The temptation of our Savior inculcates admoni- 
tions that ought to be pondered well by every Chris- 
tian. Let us learn from it: 

1. What a powerful enemy it is with whom we 
have to deal. He hesitated not to assail even the 
Lord Jesus Christ, and not satisfied with being re- 
pulsed once, he repeated his assaults. It was Satan, 
that introduced sin into the world, who assailed Job 
and caused Peter and David to fall; it is Satan, who 
never sleeps nor slumbers, but is constantly at work 
to drag men into ruin. There is no more dangerous 
enemy than he, whom we can not see, and who can 
approach us every-where and at all times. Let us 
constantly be on our guard against him by watchful- 
ness and prayer. 

2. As Satan dealt with the Lord in the wilderness, 
so he deals with his followers, and, alas! but too 
often success crowns his efforts. He approaches the 
afflicted child of God in disguise, and whispers: 
" Art thou a child of God, and art in more destitute 
circumstances than the children of the world ? thou 
hast not the necessaries of life, and art exposed to 
the storms of the elements and of man ; help thy- 
self and God will help thee." And but too many 
take his advice and go to work to convert stones 
into bread; that is, in order to help themselves they 
have recourse to unauthorized expedients, and thus 



fall a prey to Satan, whose yoke they had thrown 
off. Others, instead of waiting patiently for the 
help of the Lord, suffer shipwreck of their faith, 
saying : " There is no reality about Christ and his 
religion." Let such backsliders be a warning to 
you, and bear in mind that while you are to be puri- 
fied in the crucible of affliction, the Lord knows how 
to preserve his people ; for he has said to them : 
" Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she 
should not have compassion on the son of her 
womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget 
thee." (Isa. xlix, 15.) God is never at a loss how 
and whence to supply all our wants. — If the devil 
can not approach thee from the one side, he tries it 
from another. If he does not succeed to fill you 
with mistrust and discouragement, he tries to en- 
tice you to presumption. To expose ourselves to 
danger when neither the honor of God nor duty 
to our fellow-men calls upon us to do so, is pre- 
sumption. 

3. The devil and wicked men promise much to 
those who will serve them, but their wages is ruin. 
Whoever sets before others the things of this world, 
riches, honor, etc., as the objects of life, acts toward 
them the part of the devil. How often is this the 
position of parents toward their children ! — All 
compromises with the world must be unconditionally 
rejected, and this can be done only by a firm resolu- 
tion to serve God alone. The greater and harder 
the struggle, the more glorious and blessed the vic^ 
tory. At no other time is a man more contented 
and happy than when he has come victorious out of 
a great struggle. When the temptation is over, 
God's holy messengers visit us, tranquillity and 
peace fill the heart. 

4. Every Christian must expect temptations. In 
themselves they are not sinful ; but to yield to them, 
to give them room in the heart, is sinful. No one, 
not even the most advanced Christian, is exempted 
from temptations. The disciple is not greater than 
his Master, nor the servant greater than his Lord. 
Human nature, in the present stage of probation, 
has inclinations, wishes, desires, and passions, which 
are liable to abuse. 

5. The main weapon to vanquish Satan with, is 
the Word of God. By what means did Jesus repel 
the assaults of Satan? Not by a superhuman, mi- 
raculous, but by a moral power — by faith in God, by 
whom alone we can live — by faith in man's solemn 
obligation to serve God alone, and especially by faith 
in God's Word. How important is it, therefore, that 
we should daily search the Scriptures! The Word 
of God enables us to repel every attack of Satan, 
no matter in what form it is made. It is the sword 
of the Spirit, and those that understand to wield it 
best are most successful in their struggles with 
Satan. It is the lamp for our feet. How necessary 
is it, therefore, that we should be thoroughly familiar 
with the Scriptures, that we should read and medi- 
tate upon them daily! 



OUR LORD'S OPENING OF HIS MINISTRY IN GALILEE. 



233 



6. In all our temptations we can with certainty 
calculate upon the sympathy of our great High- 
Priest, " for in that he himself has suffered, being 
tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted." 
He is a powerful friend, who sympathizes with his 
people in all their trials. Are they tempted by Satan 
to doubt God's love and tender care for his people? 
So was Jesus. Are they tempted to expose them- 
selves unnecessarily to danger in presumptuously 
trusting in supernatural help? So was Jesus. Are 
they tempted to give heed to a false interpretation 
of a Scripture passage as an excuse of a forbidden 
act? So was Jesus. He is the very Deliverer of 
those who are tempted. To him they must take ref- 
uge; before him they must pour out their hearts; 
his ear is always open to hear; his heart is always 
ready to sympathize with them, and his power is 
able to succor them. 

1. Preachers of the Gospel especially may learn 



important lessons from the temptations of Christ. 
Their entry upon their office is often a time of trial 
in every respect, and Satan is not disposed, during 
their whole career, to let any opportunity pass un- 
improved, either to tempt them to presumption or 
despair, or to try to insnare them by the charms of 
this world. They can not reach the goal without 
being exposed to the fiery darts of the adversary. 
But let them, like their Lord and Master, commence 
their work with fasting and unceasing prayer, and 
spend much of their time in secret. 

8. In the temptation of Christ the Church has the 
dangers clearly marked out, to which she is exposed 
in the service of the Lord. She apostatizes when 
she strives to attain to influence and power by com- 
promising with the spirit of the world, when she at- 
tempts to change the world into the kingdom of God 
by placing her spiritual power at the disposal of 
Satan. 



OUR LORD'S 
THE CALL 



FORMAL OPENING OF HIS MINISTRY IN GALILEE, AND 
OF SIMON, ANDREW, JAMES, AND JOHN INTO HIS 
PERMANENT SERVICE. 



Inasmuch as it is not Matthew's design to follow a chronological order in his Gospel, 
he evidently does not intend to represent what he now relates of our Lord's ministry in 
Galilee, as being immediately preceded by the temptation in the wilderness. The fact 
that he explicitly confines his narrative to what happened after the Baptist's imprison- 
ment, of which event he gives us the particulars in chap, xiv, 3-5, refutes, for itself, the 
frivolous charge of Strauss that "Matthew is here in contradiction with John's Gospel." 
His statement that " Jesus departed into Galilee when he heard that John was cast into 
prison," forces the reader to the conclusion that the Evangelist had wittingly omitted all 
those events that had preceded John's imprisonment. Luke also speaks of Jesus as re- 
turning to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, (iv, 14;) that is, in the power of the same 
Spirit which he had manifested elsewhere. The many important events that took place 
between the temptation of our Lord, and his (second) return to Galilee, the reader will 
find in the synoptical table of the Gospel History, (Nos. 23-45.) 

Robinson and all other harmonists, so far as we know, except Andrews, put our 
Lord's leaving Judea for Galilee, spoken of Matt, iv, 12, Mark i, 14, and Luke iv, 14, 
soon after the first Passover, and assume it to have been occasioned by our Lord's hear- 
ing of the Baptist's imprisonment. Under this supposition the call of Simon, Andrew, 
James, and John to become his constant attendants, (Matt, iv, 18-22; Mark i, 16-20; 
Luke v, 6-11,) would fall into the first year of our Lord's ministry. This view Mr. 
Andrews refutes, and contends that, when our Lord left Judea for Galilee, after his first 
Passover, it was not in consequence of the Baptist's imprisonment, but in consequence 
of the Pharisees sowing dissensions between the disciples of the Baptist and his own, 
according to John iv, 1-3. According to this view, the departure for Galilee, spoken of 
by John, is not mentioned at all by the Synoptists, while, on the other hand, John makes 
no mention of our Lord's leaving Judea for Galilee after the second Passover, in conse- 
quence of the Baptist's imprisonment, to which the Synoptists refer. That this is the 
correct view Mr. Andrews makes very clear by the following irrefutable arguments : 
1. From John iv, 1, (compare iii, 23, 24,) we learn that, when Jesus retired into Gal- 
ilee, the Baptist's work was still in progress. He could, therefore, not yet have been 



234 MATTHEW IV, 12-25. 



cast into prison. 2. If we compare the account of what followed the return of Jesus 
to Galilee, as given by the Synoptists, with that given by John, (iv, 43-54,) it is evi- 
dent that there is a reference to two different periods. According to the Synoptists, 
(Matt, iv, 12-25 ; Mark i, 14-21 ; Luke iv, 14, 15,) so soon as Jesus heard of John's 
imprisonment, he began his labors in Galilee, gathering a body of disciples, working 
miracles, and teaching in all the synagogues. His fame spread immediately through 
the whole region, and wherever he went crowds followed him. According to John, 
Jesus went to Galilee, not to begin his public ministry there, but to find retirement. 
It is true he did not find the privacy which he sought, because the Galileans had 
seen all the things that he had done at Jerusalem at the feast, and held him, there- 
fore, in honor. Very soon after his arrival in Galilee the nobleman from Capernaum 
sought his aid; but, aside from .this, there is no indication that he performed any 
miracles, or engaged in any public teaching. No disciples are spoken of as with him, 
nor any crowds of people. And when he goes up to the feast, spoken of by John, 
(v, 1,) the second Passover, he does not appear to have been attended by any disciples. 
3. When Jesus heard of John's imprisonment he was in Judea, and there is no reason to 
suppose that, after he gave up baptizing and retired into Galilee, he came again into 
Judea till the feast. (John v, 1.) It was at this time — April, 781 — that he heard at 
Jerusalem of John's imprisonment, to which he alludes in his address to the Jews. 
(John v, 35.) We may, therefore, place the imprisonment of John a little before this 
feast— about March, 781. 

To put the return to Galilee, of which the Synoptists speak, after the second Pass- 
over, as Mr. Andrews does, is not only of great chronological importance, but it also sets 
the relation of the Judean to the Galilean ministry in the right light, and gives us the 
best reason that may be assigned for the silence of the Synoptists concerning our Lord's 
ministry in Judea. This deeply-interesting subject is thoroughly discussed by Mr. An- 
drews, (Life of our Lord, pp. 120, 121; 124-130; 186-192,) who makes the essential dis- 
tinction between our Lord's work in Judea, and that in Galilee, to consist in this, that 
the former, having reference to the Jewish people in their corporate capacity, as a nation 
in covenant with God, aimed to produce a national repentance, while the Galilean min- 
istry was based upon the fact that the ecclesiastical rulers of the Jews would not receive 
him, and had sought to kill him, and that, therefore, our Lord went to Galilee, the place 
designated centuries before, as the prominent scene of the Messianic ministry, in order 
to organize there a body of disciples, by whom the foundations of the New Testament 
Church were to be laid, into which the Gentiles were to be invited and ingrafted, and 
which was to take the place of the Jewish Church, if she persevered in her rejection of 
the Messiah. If we look in this light upon the first year of our Lord's ministry in 
Judea — a subject which we will more fully discuss in the Gospel of John — it is not sur- 
prising that the Synoptists should pass it over in silence, as being of a merely-prepar- 
atory character, and failing of accomplishing its end, the national recognition of the 
Messiah, and that they should, therefore, date the ministry of our Lord from his depart- 
ure into Galilee after the imprisonment of the Baptist ; for this event was really, as 
they represent it, the turning-point, the dividing-line between the old and new covenant. 
So long as the Baptist was yet at work, our Lord takes no step toward the formation of a 
Church on a new foundation. 

For other reasons which may be assigned for the omission of the Judean ministry by 
the Synoptists, see § 32 in the General Introduction. Entirely untenable and unsatisfac- 
tory is the reason given by Alford ; namely, "that the Synoptists' sources of information, 
till the last visit to Jerusalem, seem to have been exclusively Galilean, and derived 
from persons who became attached to our Lord at a later period than any of the events 
recorded in the first portion of John's Gospel." 



OUR LORD'S OPENING OF HIS MINISTRY IN GALILEE. 



235 



Verses 13— 25. 

(12) 'Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed 
into Galilee; (13) and leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, 1 
which is upon the sea-coast, in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim : 2 (14) that 
it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, (15) The land 
of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, 3 beyond 4 Jordan, 
Galilee of the Gentiles; 5 (16) the people which sat in darkness saw great light; 
and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up. 
(17) From that time Jesus began 6 to preach, and to say, Repent : for the kingdom 
of heaven is at hand. (18) And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, 7 saw two 
brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea : 
for they were fishers. (19) And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make 



1 According to the best readings, Ka<J>apva6un — Kapliar- 
naum — that is, the town of Nahum, or, as some of the 
Fathers translated Nahum, town of comfort. As the 
place is not mentioned in the Old Testament or Apoc- 
rypha, it probably arose in the century before Christ. 
Josephus mentions the town once by the name of Ce- 
pharnome, and also a fountain Kapharnaum. Its exact 
site has been much contested. As nothing hangs on the 
decision, we pass over the discussion on this point, which 
can be of interest only to those who visit the Holy Land, 
or can identify the different spots by accurate descrip- 
tions. It was in the land of Gennesaret, (Matt, xiv, 34,) 
that rich, busy plain, which we know, from the descrip- 
tions of Josephus and other sources, to have been, at 
that time, one of the most prosperous and crowded dis- 
tricts in all Palestine. Being on the north-west shore 
of the lake, Capernaum was lower than Nazareth and 
Cana of Galilee, from which the road to it was one of 
descent. (John ii, 12.) It was of sufficient size to be 
always called " a city " — iroAi? — had its own synagogue, 
in which our Lord frequently taught — a synagogue which 
was built by the Roman centurion. (Luke vii, 1.) Be- 
sides the Roman garrison, it had also a custom-station, 
where the dues were gathered, both by stationary and 
itinerant officers. If the "way of the sea" was the 
great road from Damascus to the south, the duties may 
have been levied not only on the fish and other com- 
merce of the lake, but on the caravans of merchandise 
passing to Galilee and Judea. The main interest at- 
taching to Capernaum is that it wa3 the residence of our 
Lord, (Mark ii, 1,) and of Andrew and Peter, James 
and John, and probably of Matthew. 2 Zebulun and 
Naphtali were the names of two of Jacob's sons, (Gen. 
xxx, 8, 20,) and of the tribes descended from them. 
(Num. i, 8, 9.) The slight difference in orthography 
between these and some other names in the Old and 
New Testaments results from their difference of sound in 
the Hebrew and Greek. 3 That is, near, adjacent to the 
Sea of Galilee. iu Beyond is in Hebrew a noun, origin- 
ally meaning jxissage or crossing, then the side or bank 
of a stream, whether the nearer or the further side. In 
the Old Testament it usually means the country east of 
Jordan, but in some cases no less certainly the west 
side. As here used it is understood by some to mean 
the country east of Jordan— called, in Greek, Pcrea — 
and to describe a different tract from those mentioned in 



the previous clauses. But, more probably, it means here 
the country lying along Jordan, on the west side, and is 
in apposition to what goes before ; that is, descriptive 
of the same tract or region ; namely, the land of Zebu- 
lun and Naphtali, which was partly adjacent to the Sea 
of Galilee and partly to the River Jordan." (Alexander.) 
5 Galilee — Hebrew, Galil — means circle or circuit. The 
" circuit of the Gentiles" was called the upper part of 
the country of Zabulon and Nephthalim, which, by the 
old division of the tribes, bordered on the Sea of Gal- 
ilee. (Gen. xlix, 13.) Even as early as in the days of 
Isaiah, Galilee's population was a great deal mixed. 
This mixture had since greatly increased, whence the 
expression, "Galilee of the Gentiles." All non-Jews 
were called Gentiles. The population, especially in the 
northern part — Upper Galilee — consisted, to a great ex- 
tent, of Egyptians, Arabs, and Phoenicians. 6 Namely, 
more publicly and regularly. He had preached before, 
both in Galilee and Judea. 7 It was called, in the Old 
Testament, the "Sea of Chinnereth " or "Cinneroth," 
(Num. xxxiv, 11,) from a town of that name, which stood 
on or near its shore. In the later Hebrew its name is 
"Ginesar." Josephus calls it "Lake of Gennesaris " — 
rewrjo-apiTis Ai>nj. At its north-western angle was a 
beautiful and fertile plain, called "Gennesaret," (Matt, 
xiv, 34,) from which the name of the lake was taken. 
In the New Testament the lake is called " Sea of Gal- 
ilee," from the province of Galilee, which bordered on 
its north-western coast, and "Sea of Tiberias," from 
the celebrated city on its south-west shore. Through 
its center, from north to south, runs the River Jordan. 
On both sides of its inlet, at the northern extremity of 
the lake, stood the double town of Bethsaida ; further 
west, Chorazin and Capernaum ; south-west of the lat- 
ter, the plain of Gennesaret; still further south, the city 
of Tiberias. On the curve of the shore, south-east of 
Bethsaida, was most probably the grassy plain of Bu- 
taiha, where the five thousand were miraculously fed; 
further down, on the eastern shore, Gergesa, the place 
of the two demoniacs and the possessed swine. The 
lake is of an oval shape, about thirteen geographical 
miles long and six broad. Its most remarkable feature 
is its deep depression, being no less than seven hundred 
feet below the level of the ocean. On the east the banks 
are nearly two thousand feet high, destitute of verdure 
and of foliage ; on the north there is a gradual descent 



236 



MATTHEW IV, 12-25. 



you fishers of men. (20) And they straightway left their nets, and followed him. 
(21) And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zeb- 
edee, and John his brother, in a ship 8 with Zebedee their father, mending their 
nets; and he called them. (22) And they immediately left the ship and their 
father, and followed him. (23) And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their 
synagogues, 9 and preaching the Gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner 
of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. (24) And his fame went 
throughout all Syria : 10 and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken 
with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, u 
and those which were lunatic, 12 and those that had the palsy ; and he healed them. 
(25) And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from 
Decapolis, 13 and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond Jordan. u 



Verse 12. This journey to Galilee is the one 
referred to in Mark i, 14 ; Luke iv, 14 — not the one 
mentioned by John iv, 1-3. See on this and on the 
time of the Baptist's imprisonment, the introduc- 
tory remarks to this section and § 37 in the General 
Introduction. 

Verse 13. And leaving Nazareth. In Luke 
iv, 16-31, we are informed of the circumstances of 
his visit to Nazareth, and his rejection by his fellow- 
townsmen, -r- He came and dwelt. "This is not a 
pleonastic or superfluous expression, but a distinct 
statement of the fact that he not onlv went to 



Capernaum, as he often did at other times, but that 
he now took up his abode there. What is here re- 
corded is our Lord's adoption of Capernaum, in- 
stead of Nazareth, as the center of his ministry, 
from which he went forth on his missions or official 
journeys." (Alexander.) 

Verse 14. That it might be fulfilled. The 
meaning is, that Jesus went to Galilee in order to 
fulfill the purpose of God, which he had declared 
through the prophet ; namely, to send the bright 
light of the Gospel to this benighted and despised 
country. 



from the table-land to the valley of the Jordan, and 
then a gradual rising again to a plateau of nearly equal 
elevation, skirting the mountains of Upper Galilee. The 
western banks are less regular; yet they present the 
same general features — plateaus of different altitudes 
breaking down abruptly to the shores. In Summer the 
heat is intense, and the vegetation is almost of a trop- 
ical character. Snow very rarely falls. The water of 
the lake is sweet, cool, and transparent. The lake 
abounds in fish now, as in ancient times; but the fishery 
is greatly neglected. 8 A small fishing-boat. 9 Syna- 
gogues were the places of religious assembly among the 
Jews after the return from the captivity. Tradition 
and the Targums ascribe a very early origin to syna- 
gogues ; and Deut. xxxi, 11, and Psa. lxxiv, 8, are cited 
as testimonies to it. But the former passage does not 
necessarily imply it, and it is doubtful whether that 
Psalm was not itself written after the captivity. They 
are generally supposed to have originated in Babylon, 
and thence to have been brought, on the return, into the 
mother-land. (See Neh. viii, 1-8.) At the Christian 
era there was a synagogue in every town, and in some 
larger town? several. (See Acts ix, 2, 20.) In Jerusa- 
lem, according to the Rabbinical writings, there were 
upward of four hundred and fifty. (Acts vi, 9.) The 
people assembled in them on Sabbath and festival days, 
and, in later times, also on the second and fifth day of 
each week, for public prayer and the hearing of por- 
tions of Scripture. (Luko iv, 16; Acts xiii, 15.) The 
officers of the synagogues were : 1. The ruler, (Luke viii, 
49; xiii, 14; Acts xviii, 8, 17,) who had the care of 
public order and the arrangement of the service ; 2. The 
elders, (Luke vii, 3,) called rulers of the synagogue by 



Mark, (v, 22,) seem to have formed a sort of council, 
under the presidency of the ruler of the synagogue ; 
3. The legatus or angelus ecclesiae, who was the 
reader of prayers, and also secretary and messenger 
of the synagogues; 4. The vnripir^, (Luke iv, 20,) the 
chapel clerk, whose office was to prepare the books for 
reading, sweep, open and shut the synagogue. Besides 
these there appear to have been alms-gatherers. The 
synagogue was fitted up with seats, of which the first 
row was an object of ambition with the scribes. (Matt. 
xxiii, 6.) A pulpit for the reader, lamps, and a chest 
for keeping the sacred books appear to complete the 
furniture of the ancient synagogue. Punishments — 
e. g., scourging — were inflicted in the synagogues. 
The catechising also of children seems to have taken 
place there, as also disputations on religious questions. 
(Abridged and quoted from Winer, by Alford.) 10 The 
term seems here not to be used with geographical exact- 
ness. Mark says : " Throughout all the region round 
about Galilee." Syria was a Roman province, extend- 
ing from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, from the 
mountains of Taurus and Amanus in the north to the 
borders of Egypt in the south. n On demoniacs see the 
notes on chap, viii, 28. 12 Or moonstruck; persons af- 
flicted with epilepsy. The name originated from the 
opinion that this disease was subject to the influence of 
the moon. 13 Literally, ten cities. They are enumerated 
by Pliny and Ptolemy ; but the names of some are un- 
certain. It was a district east of Jordan, and not far 
from the Lake of Galilee, inhabited, for the most part, 
by Greeks. H That is, Perea, the country east of Jor- 
dan, between the rivers Jabbok and Arnon. (Jos, Bell. 
Jud., Ill, 3, 3.) 



OUR LORD'S OPENING OF HIS MINISTRY IN GALILEE. 



237 



Verses 15, 16. The Evangelist gives the proph- 
ecy (Is. ix, 1, 2) in an abbreviated form, beginning 
with the last words of a sentence, which he intro- 
duces to identify the subject. That part of the 
memorable prophecy, which Matthew quotes in an 
abbreviated form, will be better understood in the 
translation of Lowth : 

" But there shall not hereafter be darkness in the land 

which wa3 distressed : 
In the former time he debased 
The land of Zebulun, and the land of Naphtali ; 
But in the latter time he made it glorious : 
Even the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of 

the Gentiles, 
The people that walked in darkness have seen a great 

light; 
They that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, 
Unto them hath the light shined." 

The prophet then continues to describe the king- 
dom of the Messiah, the Prince of Peace. The 
night of ignorance and sin had been constantly on 
the increase during the seven centuries that had 
elapsed since this prophecy was first uttered, and 
the Evangelist was, therefore, fully justified in say- 
ing that, prior to the coming of the Savior, they 
sat in — that is, they were for some time in a state 
of — darkness. Olshausen remarks : " Of the inhab- 
itants of these northern provinces it could very 
properly be said, that they dwelt in the land of the 
shadow of death, partly because they were far re- 
moved from the theocratic center, Jerusalem and 
the Temple, where the knowledge of God that was 
enjoyed by the nation mainly centered, and partly 
because they came into frequent contact with their 
heathen neighbors, and were, therefore, legally un- 
clean. But these Galileans, whom the strict Jews 
despised as semi-Gentiles, were, at the same time, 
best prepared for the new doctrine of the kingdom 
of God, having been freed, by their intercourse with 
the surrounding nations, from all Jewish exclusive- 
ness, and their deplorable condition making the 
want of redemption the more keenly felt. In like 
manner, as the penitent sinner is nearer the king- 
dom of God than the self-righteous moralist, so 
the Lord revealed himself to the poor Galileans be- 
fore the other inhabitants of Palestine." 

Verse 17. From that time Jesus began to 
preach. That is, the regular Galilean ministry 
dated from the imprisonment of John and the de- 
parture into Galilee that immediately followed it. 
In what sanse this preaching was distinguished from 
our Lord's previous labors, we have shown in the 
introductory remarks of this section. " Luke seems 
plainly to intimate that the first teaching of the 
Lord in the synagogues was that which he records 
at Nazareth. That his enemies at Jerusalem re- 
garded his labors as first taking positive form and 
character in Galilee, appears from their accusation, 
(Luke xxiii, 5:) 'He stirreth up the people, teach- 
ing throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to 



this place.' (See also Acts x, 37.) As God had 
ordered that Galilee should be the chief theater of 
his teaching, so he providentially overruled the po- 
litical arrangements of the time, that there he could 
labor without hinderance, since the tetrarch Herod 
Antipas did not trouble himself concerning any ec- 
clesiastical movements that did not disturb the pub- 
lic peace. And here the people were also less under 
the influence of the hierarchy, and more open to his 
instructions." (Andrews.) 

Verse 18. From John i, 35-42, we learn that 
the four disciples mentioned by Matthew were al- 
ready acquainted with Jesus. It is worthy of note 
that John mentions only Philip as having been ex- 
pressly called, on that occasion, to follow Jesus. 
Though all those disciples mentioned by John be- 
came, at that time, followers of Jesus, recognizing 
in him the Messiah, they became not, at that time, 
his personal and constant attendants, but returned, 
after having attended the Passover, to their occupa- 
tion as fishermen. Their actual vocation to the 
apostleship is here described; but even this is to be 
distinguished from their proper ordination or install- 
ment into the apostolic office, narrated chap, x, 1-4; 
Mark iii, 14; Luke vi, 13-15. Neander observes: 
" Christ suffered the first impressions produced by 
his personal appearance, his teaching, and his mir- 
acles upon the hearts of these susceptible youug 
men, to develop themselves, and attached them per- 
manently to his person only after he had thus im- 
pressed them a number of times." The call of the 
four disciples is also recorded by Mark, (i, 14—20,) 
and by Luke, (v, 1-11.) The three accounts evi- 
dently refer to the same transaction, notwithstand- 
ing some seeming discrepancies in the details. The 
principal discrepancy lies in this, that Matthew repre- 
sents Simon and Andrew as still engaged in casting 
out their nets when Jesus came to the Sea of Gal- 
ilee, while, according to Luke, they had left their 
boats by that time. But this discrepancy will at 
once disappear if we bear in mind that Matthew re- 
cords simply the coming of Jesus to the coast, with- 
out saying whether he made there a longer or a 
shorter stay, while we have to infer, from Luke's 
statement, that the Savior staid for some time on 
the shore. The fishermen may have been still en- 
gaged in fishing when Jesus arrived at the shore; 
but the boats may have landed soon afterward, and 
the fishermen gone ashore. Meanwhile the people 
had gathered around him, according to Luke, and, 
pressed by them, he entered into one of the boats, 
that was Simon's, thrust out a little from the land, 
and taught the people from out of the boat. And 
though Luke does not mention, by name, Andrew, 
who was, according to Matthew and Mark, with his 
brother Simon, he distinctly intimates that there was 
some one with Simon in the boat. " Launch out 
into the deep" is the singular, but "let down your 
nets" is the plural, (v. 4.) Simon answers, (v. 5:) 
" We have toiled, and have taken nothing;" and in 



238 



MATTHEW IV, 12-25. 



verse 6 it is said: "They inclosed a great multi- 
tude of fishes." Luke's object was to give promi- 
nence to the impression produced by Jesus, and as 
this impression appeared most plainly from the 
words of Peter, Luke mentions him alone. But it 
is further objected " that, according to Matthew, the 
two brothers, Simon and Andrew, followed Jesus at 
his word; according to Luke, in consequence of the 
miraculous draft." In this there is certainly no con- 
tradiction whatever. Matthew does not mention the 
miraculous draft at all. His sole object was to re- 
cord what seemed most important to him; that is, 
the calling of the apostles. But Luke goes into de- 
tails, and gives the concomitant circumstances. Af- 
ter the draft had been done, and the boats been 
brought to land, as Luke states, the Lord said the 
words: "Follow me." Sooner he could, at all 
events, not have said them. Another discrepancy 
is found in this, that, according to Luke, Simon 
called James and John to help him in pulling out 
the net, while, according to Matthew, the Lord, 
" going on from thence," met these two brothers 
"mending their nets." But what is more natural 
than to assume that the two brothers, James and 
John, returned to their boat after they had helped 
Simon and Andrew, and that the Savior, proceeding 
further, came to the place where they were, and 
called them also ? In short, all the alleged discrep- 
ancies consist in this, that Matthew and Mark men- 
tion facts which Luke has not noted, and Luke in- 
troduces circumstances which the others omit. That 
the miracle which Luke records occurred at the time 
of the call of the disciples, narrated by Matthew, is 
apparent from the manner in which the three Evan- 
gelists relate the call, and from the fact that this 
call can not be supposed to have occurred on more 
than one occasion. 

Verse 22. Mark adds: "And straightway he 
called them, and they left their father Zebedee in 
the ship with the hired servants, and went after 
him." It seems that he mentioned the hired serv- 
ants for the purpose of accounting thereby for the 
conduct of the two brothers ; namely, how they could 
leave their father so suddenly without embarrassing 
him and neglecting their filial duty. It appears, 
moreover, from this little item, as well as from other 
incidental remarks in the New Testament, that the 
family of James and John was, by no means, in in- 
digent circumstances. The same may be said of the 
family of Simon and Andrew, who owned a house 
in Capernaum. The fisheries on the Galilean lake 
are to this day very lucrative. 

Verse 23-25. This is to be considered a general 
description of our Lord's itinerancy in Galilee, though 
the parallel passages (Mark i, 35-39, and Luke iv, 
42-44) seem to point it out as our Lord's setting out 
for his first circuit. Matthew makes no mention of 
the demoniac's cure, and relates, also, the cure of 
Peter's wife's mother out of the chronological order. 
Compare the Synoptical Table. 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 

1. Of the Galilean ministry Mr. H. W. Beecher 
makes the following practical improvement: "By 
commencing his work in Galilee, Christ established 
a precedent, in some respects, for his Church to fol- 
low. He has shown not only that his Gospel is 
needed by the poorest and most ignorant, but that it 
is adapted to them, and that they are often more 
ready to be won to Christ, and more faithful, earnest, 
simple-hearted in doing his work, than those who 
look down upon them, proud of their superior intel- 
ligence and station. The first successes of Chris- 
tianity, as it was proclaimed by Jesus himself, and 
some of its most glorious and most permanent fruits, 
were among the degraded and the poor. And if the 
Church in the present day, or the Gospel, as it is 
held and administered by the Church, is failing to 
gain like successes and to gather in like fruits, if it 
is failing to reach and to relieve, to raise up and in- 
struct the multitudes in Christian lands, who occupy 
the same positions that the Galileans did among the 
Jews — the heathen at home — must we not begin to 
think that there is some element in the Gospel of 
Christ which is wanting, or at least is but very im- 
perfectly developed, in our Gospel? or that in some 
way, by our traditions and philosophies, we have 
overlaid and stifled the simplicity of the truth — 
teaching for doctrines the commandments of men, 
and so making the Gospel of God's infinite grace 
repulsive to the minds of men, blocking up, instead 
of making easy, its access to their hearts, and fail- 
ing to convince them that it has any gifts to bestow 
which they either need or desire ? When we see 
how little impression, in the large cities of every 
Protestant land, the Church makes upon the mass 
of more than Galilean depravity and darkness that 
is increasing around it, and when we see that not in 
the large cities alone, but almost every-where, the 
class of those who are utterly without God in the 
world, strangers to Divine worship and to the influ- 
ences of Christianity, is growing larger and larger, 
must we not feel that something has brought a cloud 
over the great light which shone in Galilee, and 
which was designed to shine upon all people that 
sit in darkness and in the shadow of death ? And 
if, by seeing how Jesus did his work in Galilee, we 
can learn how to do ours — if, by learning the relig- 
ion he taught and practiced there, we can under- 
stand the religion we ought to teach and to practice 
here — if, in the principles and spirit of om-'Christian 
labors, we can imitate him who went about all Gal- 
ilee, healing all manner of sickness and all manner 
of disease among the people- — in other words, giving 
sympathy and aid to all their wants, temporal and 
spiritual— then we may be sure that the great light 
and power of Christ himself will shine upon us, and 
much darkness will be scattered before it." 

2. On the call of the Galilean fishermen to the 
apostleship Neander remarks: "It may, indeed, 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



239 



seem strange, that Christ chose for his particular or- 
gans men, whose training for their future calling 
imposed on him so persevering and strong efforts, 
when he might have chosen others that would seem 
to have been better prepared by a thorough acquaint- 
ance with Jewish theology. Christ had weighty and 
good reasons for doing as he did. We hear him 
thank his Heavenly Father for having hid the great 
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven from the wise 
and prudent. For the very reason that these illiter- 
ate men attached themselves to him with childlike 
confidence, they were best prepared to become the 
receptive organs of his spirit, to receive and propa- 
gate with the simplicity of children what he revealed 
unto them. All they could teach had come to them 
from the new creation through the Spirit of Christ. 
This would not have been the case with those who 
would have come to him with a previous training de- 
rived from other sources. Although the disciples 
also were beset with carnal notions, which they had 
to lay aside before they could rightly apprehend the 
doctrines of Christ, yet owing to their childlike will- 
ingness to learn they presented by no means so 
great an obstacle as a previous systematic training 
of the mind would have been. Yielding with the 
full susceptibility of children to the influence which 
their constant intercourse with their Master exerted 
upon them, they could not fail to be more and more 
spiritualized in their whole mode of thinking by re- 
ceiving into their inmost life the image of their 
Master spotless and free from any admixture of their 
own. But to develop the revelations, received pas- 
sively by the first organs of Christianity, Divine "Wis- 
dom saw fit to add a man like Paul, who was enabled, 



by a previous thorough discipline of mind, to digest 
and systematize by the force of independent thought 
the subject-matter of the revealed truth, under the 
guidance of the same Spirit of Christ." These re- 
marks of the great Church historian go far to confirm 
the principle, that a man must be born again and 
have a special calling for the ministry before he can 
be prepared for it in the higher schools of learning. 
These higher institutions of learning answer great 
and important purposes, but to prepare young men 
for the ministry without the call and qualification of 
the Spirit of God, is neither their object nor within 
their power. From the fact that a man has received a 
good moral education and thorough mental training, 
it follows by no means that he has the necessary 
qualifications for the Gospel ministry; nor is it true 
that a man without a classical education is at no 
time and under no circumstances qualified to dis- 
charge the duties of the Gospel ministry successfully. 
3. The weaker the instruments appeared which 
Christ chose, and the greater the work was, accom- 
plished through them, the more it was made manifest 
that the work was wrought by Divine power, (1 Cor. 
i, 25; ii, 1,) and that the glory of it was due to God 
alone. The religion of Jesus Christ must be the 
true religion of heaven, or it could never have spread 
over the earth. A religion that did any thing but 
flatter the rich, the great, the learned — a religion 
that is so diametrically opposed to the carnal, sinful 
inclinations of the human heart — a religion whose 
first teachers were poor fishermen, without wealth, 
without position in society, without power — such a 
religion could not possibly have taken roots and 
spread upon earth if it had not been divine. 



CHAPTERS T-TII. 



§9. THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 

So many difficulties beset the question respecting the identity of the sermon in Mat- 
thew with that given in Luke vi, 12-49, that Alford, in his critical commentary, simply 
states them without attempting a solution. All the objections which are made against 
the identity of the two discourses, in Matthew and Luke, may, however, be summed up 
and answered under three heads : 

1. It is contended "that the variance between the two Evangelists, if we assume them to 
report the same discourse, is so great as to be incompatible with their being inspired writers. 
Nor could the difference be satisfactorily explained by regarding Luke's report as an 
epitome of Matthew; for while he passes over a large part of the discourse reported by 
Matthew, he adds much which the latter has omitted, and brings some of the sayings of 
our Lord into a different connection." This objection must, indeed, be an insuperable 
one to those who hold to verbal inspiration in the strictest sense; namely, to the notion 
that the Holy Ghost constrained the Evangelists at all times to report the events and the 
discourses to their full extent and in the most exact order, just as they took place or 
were spoken. But that this theory of inspiration must give way before an accurate 



240 MATTHEW v-vn. 



examination of the Gospel records, we have shown in our General Introduction to the 
Gospels, § 33. If we, on the other hand, dispense with this theory, holding to such plen- 
ary inspiration as prevented the Evangelists from attributing to the Lord any words of 
their own imagination, and as enabled them to record, in the freedom of the Spirit, not 
in the bondage of the letter, the sayings of our Lord, we shall find no difficulty in ac- 
counting for their variance in their report of the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew,, as 
well as Luke, gives us our Lord's discourse in an abbreviated form, with this difference, 
that the former gives a much fuller epitome than the latter. The Evangelists wrote 
independently of each other. The selection and arrangement of the subject-matter were 
left to human agency, under Divine guidance, and corresponded with the special object 
which each Evangelist had in view. While conceding so much to human agency in the 
inspired records, we are not willing to admit the supposition that Matthew collected into 
a systematic discourse various sayings of our Lord spoken on different occasions. Such 
a supposition can not well be reconciled with the inspired character of the Gospel; and, 
apart from this consideration, there are internal evidences against such a hypothesis. 
This is conceded even by rationalistic writers, like Baur, who says "that the discourse, 
breathing throughout the spirit of vital polemics against the Pharisees, makes undoubt- 
edly the impression of being original and immediate." With regard to the objection 
" that many parts of the sermon, as recorded by Matthew, are found in Mark and Luke, 
connected with quite different occasions," Stier remarks very properly: " It was, in every 
respect, worthy of the Great Teacher, and in accordance with his Divine wisdom and 
human condescension, to repeat his sententious sayings on different occasions," and he 
adds: "This custom of our Lord should make some preachers blush, who are vain 
enough to think it is incumbent upon them, whenever they speak in public, to say some- 
thing new." 

2. The difference in the order of time, assigned by Matthew and Luke, is urged against 
the identity of the two discourses. According to Luke it follows the selection of the twelve 
apostles, while in Matthew it seems to have preceded that event. How improbable, it is 
said, that Matthew should report this most important discourse prior to his own call to 
the apostleship, if our Lord has delivered the Sermon on the Mount after the selection of 
his apostles! A sufficient reply to this objection is the acknowledged fact, that Matthew, 
for some reason or other, does not mention his call to the apostleship in the proper chro- 
nological order, as Mark and Luke do. He does, in general, not bind himself to a precise 
chronological order, rather arranging his subject-matter in groups, according to the 
nature of the subjects narrated. That he should assign so early a place in his Gospel to 
that sermon in which our Lord for the first time fully developed the fundamental princi- 
ples of his kingdom, need not surprise us; but that our Lord delivered this discourse not 
before the middle of his ministry, is indicated by Matthew's remark, (iv, 23-25,) and by 
the open manner in which Jesus attacks the Pharisees and declares himself to be the 
Messiah. 

3. Against the identity of the two discourses, there is further urged the difference of 
some local circumstances attending the delivery of the discourse. According to "Matthew, 
Jesus went up into a mountain and was sitting in delivering his sermon ; but Luke says, 
he came down from the mountain and stood on the plain. These variances, however, 
may easily be reconciled. By " mountain " we are most probably tb understand one of 
the high plains so common in Palestine, and his descending refers to a hill, overhanging 
this high plain, to which he had before ascended for solitary prayer, a circumstance not 
mentioned by Matthew. As regards, the position of Jesus while delivering this discourse, 
the standing may have occurred a few moments before he commenced his regular dis- 
course, while the multitude was pressing around him. Even if we had not the statement 
of Matthew respecting our Lord's sitting down to teach, we would have to complete the 
statement of Luke by supposing that Jesus, standing at the beginning, soon after sat 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 241 

down, because the Jewish teachers usually delivered their instructions sitting. From the 
difference of these local circumstances Lange draws the following inference: that Matthew 
reports a discourse which Jesus held on the top of a mountain, in the secluded circle of 
his proper disciples; and that Luke gives a succeeding discourse, delivered on a declivity 
of the same mount to the multitude which had followed him. To corroborate this suppo- 
sition, he remarks, that the sermon recorded by Matthew would have greatly endangered 
the work of Christ, if spoken before the masses at that time; that the presentation of the 
fundamental doctrines of his kingdom, as we find them in Matthew, was adapted only to 
his real followers. The discourse in Luke, on the contrary, being condensed, lively, figu- 
rative, and concrete, had all the characteristics of a popular address. We object, however, 
to this theory of Lange for the following reasons: 1. Matthew must have understood by 
the term "disciples" (v. 1) more than the small circle of the twelve, for he says, (vii, 28,) 
"when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine." 2. 
That our Lord should have delivered in immediate succession two sermons with such 
identical conclusion, is improbable in the highest degree. The other remark of Lange 
needs no formal refutation. 

Having seen that all the objections against the identity of the discourse, reported by 
Matthew and Luke, can be removed, we find the identity positively proved, 1. By the 
striking resemblance of the whole discourse, and especially of the exordium and con- 
clusion ; 2. By the fact that according to both Evangelists the same events follow the 
discourse — namely, our Lord's entering Capernaum and healing the Centurion's servant; 
3. The selection of the apostles, immediately preceding this discourse according to Luke, 
gave our Lord the most appropriate occasion to make that open and full declaration re- 
specting the nature of his kingdom, and the terms of admission which characterizes the 
Sermon on the Mount, as we find it in Matthew; and although that Evangelist does not 
connect it with the choice of the apostles, yet we find several passages (v, 13-14; vii, 6) 
evidently referring to persons previously called to the ministry. 

Having examined into the time and place of our Lord's Sermon on the Mount, let us 
proceed to consider its scope and character. Following closely the selection of the apos- 
tles, it is an inaugural address both to the disciples and to the people at large. Ebrard 
remarks: "Our Lord had cured the sick, raised the dead, and in enigmatical words and 
allegories had spoken of the kingdom of God which he was going to establish. The ears 
of the people were open ; all had, with more or less confidence, conceived the hope that 
Jesus was the promised Messiah; they followed him, and were willing to take a part in 
his kingdom. The time was now come that he should fully enlighten these undecided, 
perplexed masses respecting the nature of his kingdom and its requirements." The Ser- 
mon on the Mount has been called the Magna Charta of the kingdom of God. It is a 
practical commentary of the repentance which the Baptist preached, (iii, 8,) and presents 
to all the disciples the unchangeable principles, from which the new life of faith must 
proceed. Neander says on this point: "There runs through the whole discourse, implied 
where it is not directly expressed, a rebuke of the carnal tendency of the Jewish mind, 
as displayed in its notions of the Messianic kingdom, and of the requisites for participating 
therein, the latter, indeed, depending entirely upon the former. It was most important 
to convince men that meetness for the kingdom of God depended not upon alliance to the 
Jewish stem, but upon alliance of the heart to God. Their mode of thinking had to be 
corrected accordingly. A direct attack upon the usual conceptions of the nature and 
manifestation of the kingdom would have been repelled by those who were unprepared 
for it ; but to show what disposition of heart it required, was to strike at the root of the error." 

It is proper to speak here, also, of the relation which the Sermon on the Mount bears 
to the Evangelical doctrine of salvation by grace through faith. The Socinians and ration- 
alists appeal to this discourse as sustaining their position that our Lord did not inculcate 
the belief of mysterious doctrines, that he insisted only upon the practice of the great 

16 



242 MATTHEW V-VII. 



moral duties, " not perceiving that the practice of these great moral duties is only required 
as the fruits of the grace so kindly offered in the exordium; that the preacher on the 
mount is the personification of that grace, which, indeed, was not fully manifested before 
the work of redemption had been completed; and, finally, that Christ indirectly refers 
to this redemption as to the instrumental cause of the righteousness required by him 
when he promised to the poor in spirit the kingdom of heaven, and to those who hunger 
after righteousness full satisfaction. What else is this but that, by faith in him, there 
shall be given the power to fulfill that righteousness which he demands, and which ex- 
ceeds that of the Pharisees ? How could the Messiah have justified the hopes of his 
people if, by his advent, he only had raised the requirements without imparting a higher 
power?" (Stier.) That the peculiar doctrines of the Gospel are not expressly mentioned 
in this discourse is certainly not surprising. As yet pur Lord's hearers were not able to 
understand these truths. Even the apostles themselves, before the resurrection of their 
Master, had no true conception of his atonement and of its effects, justification and 
regeneration. These fundamental articles of the Christian faith refer to the great facts 
of the incarnation, the sufferings and death, the resurrection and ascension of our Lord, 
and could not be fully taught before the completion of the plan of salvation. That, how- 
ever, which these doctrines presuppose — that is, the doctrine of the depravity of the 
human heart, and the necessity of regeneration — our Lord sets forth and inculcates in 
his sermon in the clearest and most forcible manner; the more so as he speaks less as a 
teacher of the law than as the king and only lawgiver, condemning those who oppose his 
reign and reject his salvation. He presents his laws in their bearing on the future and 
eternal condition of men, on which condition he throws more light than Moses, Solomon, 
or all the prophets ; for, in accordance with his triple office as prophet, priest, and 
king, he declares himself to be not only the true expounder or teacher of the law, but the 
fulfiller of the same, so as to redeem his people of its curse, and the final judge. 

The connection between the different parts of the sermon, as recorded by Matthew, 
has been very differently apprehended. Stier discovers in its progress from the gracious 
invitation of the exordium, where the kingdom of heaven opens wide for the poorest, to 
the terrible threatenings at the close, where the strait gate is firmly closed against the 
transgressors, that progress which every sermon ought to have, from promise to require- 
ment, and hence to warning, and from this stand-point he divides the sermon into three 
parts. The first part he makes to close with the twentieth verse, and traces in this por- 
tion again the same progress: First, promises, (3-12;) then requirements on the 
ground of the promises, (13-16;) then a reference to final judgment, implying warning, 
(17-20 ;) but the key-note of the first part is the word of promise : I am come to fulfill. 
In the second part — from v, 21, to vii, 14 — Stier thinks, our Lord represented to his disci- 
ples the righteousness he requires in three great contrasts, not like the Pharisees, (v, 21- 
vi, 18;) not like the Gentiles, (vi, 19-34;) not like unsound disciples, (vii, 1-14.) In the 
third part, (vii, i5-27,) though predominantly warning and threatening, Stier observes 
again the above-mentioned progress : First, a repetition of promise, in what is said about 
the planting of the good tree, (15-20;) then the repeated enjoinment of the Divine requi- 
sitions, (21-23;) upon which follows the sublime and terrific contrast between the great 
fall of the house built upon the sand and the unlimited, gracious invitation with which 
the discourse begins. Ingenious as Stier's analysis is, it seems somewhat too intricate, 
and also inconvenient for practical purposes. The division which we have adopted is 
constructed on the basis of Tholuck's, but departs from his in several particulars, es- 
pecially in the seventh chapter. 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



243 



A. THE FUNDAMENTAL CONDITIONS OF ENTERING INTO AND PARTICIPATING IN THE 

KINGDOM OF GOD. 

I. The beatitude op those that long, in the right spirit, por the kingdom of God, (vs. 3-6,) show the 
fruits of the righteousness thereof, (vs. 7-9,) and willingly take upon themselves the persecutions of a 
hostile world, (vs. 10-12.) 

II. The high calling and dignity of the true disciples of Christ or of the members of his kingdom, 
(vs. 13-16.) 

Chapter V, 1— ie. 

(1) And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain : l and when he was 
set, his disciples came unto him : (2) and he opened his mouth, 2 and taught them, 
saying, (3) Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (4) 
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. (5) Blessed are the 
meek : for they shall inherit the earth. (6) Blessed are they which do hunger and 
thirst after righteousness : for they shall he filled. (7) Blessed are the merciful : 
for they shall obtain mercy. (8) Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see 
God. (9) Blessed are the peacemakers : for they shall be called the children of 
God. (10) Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake : for theirs 
is the kingdom of heaven. (11) Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and 
persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. 
(12) Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so 
persecuted they the prophets which were before you. (13) Ye are the salt of the 
earth : but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted ? it is thence- 
forth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. 

(14) Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill can not be hid. 

(15) Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, 3 but on a candle- 
stick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. (16) Let your light so 
shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father 
which is in heaven. 



Preliminary Remarks on 3-12. — Before we con- 
template the beatitudes in the light in which they 
appear to the Christian reader, who possesses the 
perfect revelation of the New Testament, and is 
filled with the Spirit of Christ, a sound and thorough 
exegesis will lead us first to inquire into the circum- 
stances and stand-point of those who heard the dis- 
courses of Christ, so that we may ascertain their 
primai'y bearing upon them. An application of this 
exegetical rule will throw much light upon the ex- 
ordium of our Lord's sermon. Tholuck remarks: 
" From Josephus, as well as from the New Testa- 
ment, we learn that the Jews, in the time when Jesus 
entered upon his public ministry, were anxiously 
waiting for the blessings of the promised Messiah. 



The people in general, however, understood the 
prophecies of Isaiah (xli, 1; lxi, 1; lxiii, 4, 6) to re- 
fer to a political deliverance and a divine vengeance 
upon their temporal oppressors. The more spiritual 
Israelites, like Zacharias and John the Baptist, ex- 
pected the Messiah to establish a spiritual kingdom, 
a reign of righteousness. Nevertheless, they con- 
nected with it the idea that he would sit on Da- 
vid's throne and subject to his scepter the Gentile 
nations." If we take into consideration this state 
of mind among the hearers, how perfectly adapted 
to it appear the spiritual benedictions, with which 
our Lord commenced his discourse! "Glancing at 
the poor," says Neander, "who probably comprised 
most of his congregation, Christ says: Blessed are 



1 In Greek, " The mountain," which may either mean 
the one above the place where the people were assem- 
bled, or the mountainous region, as distinguished from 
the lowlands of Palestine. Tradition points to a mount- 
ain situated within a beautiful region, with an extensive 
plain at its base, two and a half miles from Mount Ta- 



bor. At present it is called " Mount of Beatitudes " — 
from the event — or " the Horns of Hattin." 2 Express- 
ive of a solemn and important discourse. 3 The Greek 
word for bushel has, in the text, the definite article be- 
fore it, to designate that it was a vessel found in every 
house. It held about a peck, according to our measure. 



244 



MATTHEW V, 1-16. 



the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 
Happy are they who feel the spiritual wretchedness 
of the theocratic nation, who long after the true 
riches of Messiah's kingdom, who have not stifled 
the higher cravings of their souls by worldly de- 
lights, by confidence in their Jewish descent, by the 
pride of Pharisaic righteousness and wisdom; but 
are conscious of their spiritual poverty, of their lack 
of the true riches of the Spirit and the kingdom. 
Such are they to whom the kingdom of God belongs. 
Christ then describes the concomitants of that pov- 
erty of spirit, and promises dominion over the world 
to that disposition of heart which is most averse to 
it; a contrast which serves to point out the peculiar 
kind of world dominion promised, as distinguished 
from the prevailing Jewish ideas on the subject." 

After these remarks, let us consider the consecu- 
tive order of the beatitudes, and their strict in- 
ternal connection, which has been most profoundly 
apprehended by Stier, whose exposition we follow in 
the main. Verses 3-12 exhibit all the Christian 
graces in their gradual development, yet so that each 
succeeding grace presents the former in a new phase 
and preserves inviolate all the previously-received 
ones. No step on this ladder may be leaped over, 
no link in this chain must be lacking ; and yet, we 
must not, on the other hand, separate the beatitudes 
by an abstract, mechanical succession of time. Ori- 
gen compares them "with a cluster of grapes, of 
which the one having first ripened remains while the 
last one is ripening." No single one of the spiritual 
states here described, as for instance the first one, is 
to be considered a mere transition state; each one 
remains a fundamental feature of the Christian char- 
acter, an essential ingredient of the righteousness 
which Christ requires and imparts. The first con- 
dition of salvation is the consciousness of spiritual 
poverty. Every subsequent requirement is made 
only because the grace previously imparted enables 
man to comply with it. As soon as the kingdom of 
heaven, which is offered to us as a free gift, begins to 
be established in the soul, fully awakened to a con- 
sciousness of her poverty before God, so soon the 
germ of all that the kingdom of heaven implies is 
planted. Man never mourns spiritually, before the 
Spirit of grace has convicted him of his poverty. 
From the mental conviction of poverty springs the 
painful feeling of guilt as the cause of that poverty, 
and from this godly sorrow springs that meekness, 
with which James exhorts us to receive the Word of 
God. It is only when the conviction of spiritual 
poverty has properly influenced our affections and 
volitions, that the soul, in the full sense of the word, 
hungers and thirsts after righteousness. The right- 
eousness which satisfies this hunger and thirst will 
beget the exercise of mercy to the souls and bodies 
of our fellow-men, and accordingly as the Christian 
exercises mercy he will purify himself, even as He 
is pure; he will become perfect as his Father in 
heaven is perfect; and again, the more the heart is 



purified, the more will he become a peacemaker iu 
the highest sense of the word, the more successful 
will he be in beseeching the world to be reconciled 
to God. But as the world will misconstrue this en- 
deavor, the Lord adds, that his followers even as 
peacemakers shall meet with persecution. — The first 
four beatitudes may be said to represent the strait 
gate, or the seeker of salvation ; the succeeding four 
the narrow way, or those who, having obtained mercy, 
perfect holiness in the fear of God. To each state 
of mind upon which the Savior pronounces a bene- 
diction, there is promised a corresponding blessing; 
with this difference, that in the first four beatitudes 
the conditions of the promised blessings are spiritual 
wants, and the promised blessings are the supply of 
these tvanls. In the succeeding beatitudes the prom- 
ised blessings are gracious rewards for the faithful 
use of previously-received blessings. " The merci- 
ful" have obtained mercy before they exercise mercy; 
but only if they continue to exercise it, shall they 
obtain mercy in the day of judgment. '' The pure 
in heart" became such, when they first believed, and 
have thereby attained already to a spiritual knowl- 
edge of and communion with God ; but only if they 
retain and perfect that purity, shall they see God in 
glory. "The peacemakers" are already children of 
God, but only if they execute their mission, and re- 
main faithful to their holy calling, shall they be fully 
acknowledged to be the children of the Most High 
before the assembled universe of created intelligences. 
Verse 3. The Pooe in Spirit. Some of the 
fathers have translated: "Blessed in spirit [that is, 
in temper and disposition] are the poor," as if the 
Lord had pronounced a blessing upon voluntary 
poverty. The erroneousness and arbitrariness of 
such interpretations are self-evident. Blessedness — 
true happiness, happiness in its highest sense — is not 
to be found in any outward circumstances, but is 
pronounced by Christ upon certain states of the 
heart, that are the very opposite of those with which 
the world is wont to identify happiness. Who is it 
that pronounces blessed? He who has come to make 
blessed, and who imparts this blessedness as he saves 
from sin. The blessedness increases at every step 
of the road, which the Savior has pointed out; for 
the further we proceed, the more our capacity for 
blessedness increases. It is self-evident, that the 
consciousness and feeling of spiritual destitution, 
not the destitution in itself, is pronounced blessed 
here. The prodigal son was not to be pronounced 
blessed, when he had wasted all his substance, and 
before the sense of his destitution had produced in 
him a longing after the riches in his father's house. 
Poor is he who has not as much as he needs for sus- 
tenance. Spiritually poor is, consequently, he who 
has not what he needs before God. He who knows 
and feels this, who becomes thus conscious of his 
moral destitution and helplessness, is poor in spirit 
and to be pronounced blessed, because the conscious- 
ness of his state makes him humble and anxious to 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



245 



find what lie lacks. Humility stands at the head of 
all the benedictions, because it is the foundation of 
all religion. He that is a stranger to poverty in 
spirit, understands nothing of Christianity. The 
poorer a man feels himself in the sight of God, the 
richer he becomes in God. "He fills the hungry 
with good things, and sends away empty the rich." 
The gate and way that lead unto life are, conse- 
quently, not strait and narrow in themselves, but 
become so for those who, instead of coming naked 
and needy, desire to enter the kingdom of heaven 
"rich and increased with goods." None can pray 
acceptably without a sense of his poverty. — The 
very opposite of those that are poor in spirit, are on 
the one hand the indifferent, who are not sensible 
of being destitute of that which God requires of 
them, who have never thought it worth their while to 
meditate upon their own guilt and God's righteous 
claims; on the other hand, those who would fain per- 
suade themselves that they have abundantly what 
they need before God, and claim the ability to do 
even more than God really requires of them. — For 

THEIRS IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. On the kingdom 

of heaven see notes on Matthew iii, 2. The king- 
dom of heaven here means the blessedness which 
commences in the kingdom of grace by faith. Worthy 
of note is the expression: "the kingdom of heaven 
is theirs" — that is, has come to them — and not as in 
v. 20 : " they shall enter into the kingdom of heaven." 
The seeker of salvation may and shall claim at the 
very outset the promises of the Gospel. 

Verse 4. They that mourn are, in the first place, 
those that weep over their own sins and those of 
others; they are also those in general whom chas- 
tisements have made susceptible of Divine conso- 
lation. Lange understands by this mourning that 
state of the mind in general, which is no longer sat- 
isfied with any thing that the world can afford. 
Wretched is he who has never shed tears, who has 
never wept over his own sins. Blessedness is not 
only not inconsistent, but actually connected with 
the deepest spiritual sorrow, in as far as the heart 
has thereby been brought into harmony with the will 
of God. The very opposite of such mourners are 
the merry ones, who having never seriously reflected 
on the destiny and object of their lives, are running 
from one sensual enjoyment to another and sup- 
pressing every feeling of want or danger. — For they 
shall be comforted; this comfort will be, of course, 
in consonance with the nature of their mourning. 
The forgiveness of sins is the foundation of this con- 
solation, yet the promise includes also the removal 
of the causes of their mourning by the blessings of 
the kingdom of heaven, promised to the poor in 
spirit. 

Verse 5. We have seen how the conviction of 
spiritual poverty affects the emotions and produces 
godly sorrow. We are now taught that those who 
are brought to feel their misery, learn also to sur- 
render their self-will. The meekness here under 



consideration refers, like the preceding poverty and 
mourning, to man's relation to his God, and is that 
frame of mind in which man submits fully to God's 
law and dealing; in short, a cheerful and willing 
obedience to God in contrast with the stubborn self- 
will of the natural man. It is the same meekness 
which James requires, (i, 2,) and which is thus de- 
scribed by Rambach: "It is a fruit of the spirit that 
is found on the field of spiritual poverty, sadness and 
sorrowing, a noble flower, that grows from out of the 
ashes of self-love on the grave of pride, when man 
feels, on the one hand, his total depravity, his worth- 
lessness and wretchedness, but sees, on the other, the 
friendliness and condescension of God in Christ, 
whereby the heart is made soft, pliant, and tractable, 
and loses its natural hardness and stubbornness." — 
For they shall inherit the earth. This is a 
promise of the Old Testament, (Ps. xxxvii, 11; xxv, 
13; Isa. Ivii, 13; lx, 21,) and has primary reference 
to the land of Canaan, which was for the Jews the 
object and sum total of all Divine promises and 
blessings. But the earthly Canaan was only a type 
of the kingdom of God, which is to extend over the 
whole world, (Rom. iv, 13,) and in which only the 
meek can have a part. This promise forms, there- 
fore, a contrast to the carnal expectations of the 
Jews, that the Messiah would subdue the whole earth 
by force of arms, as their forefathers had conquered 
Canaan. The kingdom of God is to extend its sway 
more and more over all men and all human affairs, 
till all the kingdoms of this world shall have be- 
come the kingdom of God, and meekness is the power 
which will accomplish this end. The full import, 
however, of the promise seems to be the possession 
of the new earth, which God will create with the new 
heaven, (Isa. lxvi, 22,) and which is the realization 
of the original destiny of Adam. Thus the bene- 
diction reaches into the far distant consummation of 
all things. — The kingdom of God is a gift for the 
poor, a consolation for those that mourn, a power 
for the meek. How striking is the contrast with the 
pharisaical pride, the Sadducean worldliness and the 
perversion of the natural mind in general as con- 
tained in these three benedictions ! — Those that 
refer the meekness in question to man's relation to 
his fellow-men, draw from the third benediction the 
moral application, that while the world fancies to 
possess the earth and to protect its own by using 
force, Christ teaches us that we possess the earth 
through meekness. While one act of violence only 
calls forth another, meekness disarms wrath, and 
God vindicates the rights of the meek in spite of 
fraud and malice. Moreover, whatever He gives to 
the meek, be it much or little, is perfectly satisfactory 
to them, because God wills it thus, so that they can 
with truth be said to possess the earth. In the hope 
of faith, in the power of the Spirit, it is now already 
said to the children of God: "All things are yours." 
(1 Cor. iii, 22.) The moralist, the man of genius, or 
the conqueror, stalks about and domineers a short 



246 



MATTHEW V, 1-16. 



time with his guilty conscience on the earth, till he 
is hurled down into the pit; but the meek of Jesus' 
school have a rightful claim upon the earth, which 
God will vindicate to them at last. 

Verse 6. Only he that has learned to know his 
own poverty, and has, thereby, become humble; he 
who has experienced the wretchedness of his sinful 
state and in meekness suffers his heart to be trans- 
formed by Divine grace, can sincerely desire right- 
eousness — that is, a perfect agreement with God's 
holy and righteous will — and this desire is not a weak 
and transient wish, but becomes a hungering and 
thirsting. Hunger and thirst are the strongest im- 
pulses of our nature, and when excited once, they 
increase in strength till they are satisfied by food 
and drink. There is in man a hunger and thirst 
which is not implanted by God, but has arisen in 
consequence of the fall; after a momentary gratifi- 
cation it proves an illusion and must forever suffer 
the pains of unsatisfied craving. But the hunger 
and thirst after righteousness, wrought by God and 
having God alone for its object, carries in itself the 
certainty that it will be completely satisfied and is 
the sure criterion of the new spiritual life. As nat- 
ural life and health are supported by food and drink, 
partaken of in obedience to the calls of hunger and 
thirst, so the spiritual health and life depend on the 
spiritual food that is partaken of to satisfy this hun- 
ger and thirst after righteousness. ■ — ■ For they shall 
be filled — that is, abundantly satisfied. This must 
not be understood as if this hunger and thirst would 
ever cease in this world, but each new sensation of 
hunger and thirst will be removed by a correspond- 
ing new measure of the desired food. The perfect 
fullness, however, shall not be received before the 
resurrection of the body, (Phil, iii, 20, 21;) on the 
new earth, where righteousness dwelleth, (2 Pet. iii, 
13,) we shall neither hunger nor thirst any more. 

Verse 7. By being merciful we must not under- 
stand, as Nitsch says, "that effeminate sentimental 
sympathy, to which even ungodly selfishness is not a 
stranger, and which would fain palm itself off for 
true religion — not that false clemency to others, which 
goes hand in hand with unrestrained indulgence to- 
ward one's own dear self," but the genuine love of 
our neighbor, which is described by Paul, (1 Cor. xiii, 
4—7,) and has reference to the spiritual as well as 
bodily wellbeing of our fellow-men. It is the first 
and necessary fruit of the Spirit, and is intimately 
connected with genuine faith, which the apostle 
describes as "working by love." In the same sense 
John says: "He that loveth not his brother, whom 
he has seen, how can he love God, whom he has not 
seen ?" Thy mercifulness is the touchstone, by which 
thou canst know whether thou hast really passed 
through all the stages of the new life mentioned be- 
fore, whether thou art really renewed in the spirit of 
thy mind; if thou art not merciful, the gate of Divine 
grace will be shut against thee and thou canst not 
enter heaven, for thy spiritual poverty was only im- 



aginary, or thou hast lost it again. "Be ye, there- 
fore, merciful, as your Father also is merciful," says 
our Lord, according to Luke. Every act of mercy 
imparts to him that performs it present blessedness. 
"It is more blessed to give than to receive." Never- 
theless, God has added special promises to the merci- 
ful. (Isa. lviii, 6-11.) — The promise, "They shall 
obtain mercy," is applicable both to the day of judg- 
ment and to the present world, both with regard to 
God and our fellow-men. He who practices mercy 
will obtain mercy of God day by day, and in like 
manner will he, who has relieved his suffering fellow- 
man to the extent of his ability, find relief for him- 
self in time of need. The merciful is honored and 
loved even by the world. 

Verse 8. The pure in heart. The Lord looks at 
the heart. (Comp. Ps. Ixxiii, 1 ; li, 8, 12; xxiv, 4, 6.) 
This benediction implies a contrast both to the Le- 
vitical cleanness, on which the Pharisees insisted, 
and to an outward morality, which was the boast of 
the heathen philosophers. By the purity of heart 
here spoken of, some understand freedom from all 
violations of the seventh commandment, others free- 
dom from the polluting influence of sin in general, 
but neither is in keeping with the context, the former 
being too limited, the latter too indefinite. Purity 
in heart means here guileless sincerity opposed to 
all impure and hypocritical motives. This purity of 
heart is an essential trait of character in the regen- 
erate. The pure heart is for the spiritual life, what 
the sound heart is for the natural life. In the same 
manner as the functions of life proceed from the 
physical heart, the central organ of the circulation 
of the blood, so all the vital motions of the soul pro- 
ceed from and react upon the moral heart. (Prov. 
iv, 23.) And because the heart, is the central organ 
of all spiritual knowledge, feeling, and volition, the 
mysterious hearth of the life of the spirit, the seat 
of conscience, the Scriptures say that God looks at 
the heart. What is done from the heart, shows what 
a man is in reality, in opposition to mere outward 
appearance. (Rom. vi, 17; Comp. Matt, xv, 8; 1 
Tim. i, 5.) The natural heart is depraved. What is 
really good in man is the new heart, created by the 
Spirit of God. — The pure in heart are to be pro- 
nounced blessed in the first jjlace, because it is easy 
for them to do the will of God, and because all things 
are pure to them— that is, sanctified by God. There 
is, moreover, given to them the promise: "They 
shall see God." By this seeing God we must un- 
derstand not merely the spirit's communion with 
God by faith, but the actual real sight of him in the 
resurrection body. (1 John iii, 2; Rev. xxii, 4.) 
We can realize and know God only so far as we have 
become partakers of the Divine nature; but the 
saints' final perfect knowledge of God will be a real 
sight of God, of course of God's face in the Son, 
through whom alone God has, from the beginning, 
manifested himself to his creatures. Passages such 
as Exod. xxxiii, 20; John i, 18; vi, 46; 1 Tim. vi, 16, 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



247 



are not in conflict with the promise of an actual sight 
of God, because they speak of seeing God with the 
natural eye. 

Verse 9. A peacemaker is he who seeks to recon- 
cile parties that are at variance with each other, 
whether he is one of them or not. All such con- 
tentions proceed from sin, selfishness, avarice, ambi- 
tion, vindictiveness, and envy: To restore the peace 
destroyed by sin, Christ, the great peacemaker, came. 
By the peacemakers here we have, therefore, to un- 
derstand not only those peaceable characters, that 
hate all strife, wrangling, and contention, and, there- 
fore, take pains to restrain the violent passions of 
men, and to reconcile parties that are at variance, 
but rather those who make it their business to unite 
men through the peace that comes from God, the 
peace-messengers of the New Testament, so called 
from their personal, not official character. It is 
likewise worthy of note, that the pure in heart are 
mentioned before the peacemakers, and we are re- 
minded of the words of James, (iii, 17,) "The wis- 
dom that is from above is first pure, then peace- 
able." True peacemakers do not cry peace where 
there is no peace; they make no spurious peace, 
which merely covers but does not remove sin. In 
this sense the great Prince of Peace says, (Luke xii, 
51,) "Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on 
earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division." He 
who enters the lists for truth and combats error, 
must not be called a disturber of the peace; on the 
contrary, the zeal which he displays for the truth and 
against error, proves that he has the true and abiding 
peace at heart. Peace that is not based on truth is 
worth nothing. The temporary discord that is gen- 
erally produced by the defense of the truth, is more 
than compensated for by the peace which follows the 
acknowledgment of the truth. On the other hand, 
it will not do to hold up to a lost, wicked world, the 
testimony of the truth haughtily, without love and 
humility. The pure in heart alone can offer the 
world the true peace out of the good treasure of their 
hearts. Corresponding with their lofty character is 
the promise : They shall be called the chil- 
dren of God. "What they are, and what the name 
they even now bear indicates, will be fully and au- 
thoritatively declared by the God of peace. It is 
worthy of note, that the rapid spread of Christianity 
in the first centuries was mainly owing to the fact, 
that the heathens had to exclaim in astonishment: 
"Behold, how these Christians love each other," 
while on the other hand, the kingdom of God has 
suffered more from the wranglings and contentions 
of the Christians, than from any other causes. It is, 
therefore, no wonder that the peacemaker occupies 
here the highest stage of religious development. 
When the disciples of Christ shall have attained this 
stage, and when the prayer of their Master shall be 
fulfilled, that they are one, as the Father and Son 
are one, then the great promise will also be ful- 
filled, that "one nation shall not lift up the sword 



against another, and that they learn war no more." 
(Isa. ii, 4.) 

Verse 10. The eighth benediction presents the 
marks of the child of God from a new stand-point, 
and confirms all the preceding promises. — For 
righteousness' sake implies that the persons ad- 
dressed are in the possession of righteousness — that 
the new life has been fully developed in them from 
the state of spiritual poverty to that of peace-making. 
There is, consequently, no new development of spir- 
itual life introduced; the previously-received graces 
are simply represented as having been found equal 
to the severest tests. Our Lord means to say: Do 
not deem it strange that the world should persecute 
you for your benevolent intentions and actions; for 
this very persecution is the highest criterion of your 
discipleship, and seals your title to the kingdom of 
heaven. — For theirs is the kingdom of heaven — 
and remains theirs — having been theirs from the com- 
mencement of their spiritual poverty. Thus the Lord 
seals his discourse by connecting its beginning and 
end. The declaration "is theirs" is paradoxical, 
forming a strong contrast with their sore persecu- 
tion by the world, similarly as the first promise 
forms a contrast to the spiritual poverty. 

Verse 11. The Loid makes now a personal ap- 
plication of what he had said before. The subjects 
of the benedictions are the disciples, in so far as 
they acquit themselves as disciples. The righteous- 
ness is personally represented in the Lord himself. 
To suffer for righteousness' sake implies, therefore, 
faith in him. The persecution spoken of before in 
general terms is here described as consisting, first, 
in revilings, then in acts of violence, especially in 
malicious calumnies. This has been fulfilled to 
the very letter by the treatment which the believers 
of all times received at the hands of the world. 
The first Christians were charged with heinous mur- 
ders and acts of unnatural lewdness; nor has this 
spirit of lying and persecution been idle since their 
times. Witness, for instance, the treatment of the 
Waldenses, of Wickliffe and Huss, of the reformers, 
of Wesley and Whitefield. — Falsely is wanting in 
some manuscripts, and seems to be unnecessary on 
account of the following "for my sake." Stier, how- 
ever, defends it as part of the text, and implying the 
additional idea, "At the same time examine well 
whether they really lie, since men are very apt to 
mistake well-merited censure for slander, and then 
count it an honor; be, therefore, on your guard not 
to give any other cause for persecution than your 
faith and its fruits, the purity of life." 

Verse 12. Rejoice and be exceeding glad. 
How gloriously has this benediction been confirmed 
in the case of the martyrs ! While the flames were 
consuming their bodies, the pains of the outward 
man were swallowed up by the superabundant in- 
ward happiness and the foretaste of heaven, so that 
more than one martyr exclaimed: "Be astonished, 
ye persecutors, for in these flames I feel no more 



248 



MATTHEW V, 1-16. 



pains than if I were lying on feathers or walking 
on roses." — For great is tour reward in heaven. 
Here is something indicated that goes beyond the 
general blessedness of the saints. The Lord, who 
says that no cup of cold water given to one of his 
disciples shall be forgotten, promises here graciously 
to his followers a particular reward, a perfect indem- 
nification for every suffering which they have en- 
dured for his sake. Corresponding with your suffer- 
ings shall he your reward. This, as well as other 
passages of Scripture, plainly teach that there are 
different degrees of blessedness and glory in heaven. 
The degree of our blessedness in heaven will be de- 
termined by the extent of the capacity of blessed- 
ness which we have acquired here. Two persons 
may hear the same piece of music, but their enjoy- 
ment may be very different. Grace is the common 
title to heaven for all; but the recipient vessels 
differ greatly in capacity as one star differs in glory 
from another. — To encourage his disciples still 
more, the Lord reminds them that the persecuted 
prophets constituted the true Israel of God, while 
the hosts of their persecutors proved by their acts 
their apostasy from Jehovah. By this reflection the 
disciples are prepared properly to appreciate what 
the Lord tells them immediately afterward of their 
high mission. 

Verse 13. Having just made a direct personal 
application of the preceding benedictions, and par- 
ticularly that which had respect to persecution, our 
Lord proceeds now to define more fully the relation 
of his followers, as a separate body, to mankind at 
large. Their distinct existence as a peculiar people, 
if not as an organized society, had been implied al- 
ready in the warning against persecution, presup- 
posing two antagonistic parties. He now sets forth 
their blessed influence upon the world in two beautiful 
metaphors, derived from every-day experience, and 
admirably suited to illustrate the important truth to 
be communicated and enforced, (vs. 13-16.) — Salt is 
proverbially one of the first necessaries of life. The 
metaphor implies, therefore, the idea that the true 
disciples of Christ are an indispensable necessity for 
the world. The property of salt is to season that 
which is insipid, and to preserve that which is cor- 
ruptible. Exactly corresponding to these physical 
effects of salt is, or ought to be, the moral influence 
exerted upon the world by the followers of Christ. 
Stier understands by the salt the inward grace, the 
cause of all moral efficacy, and by light its outward 
manifestation. To this Tholuck justly objects, main- 
taining that, as salt has an outward manifestation, 
like light, so, on the other hand, light must be in- 
wardly possessed as well as salt. It is also well re- 
marked by Alford that those whom the Lord calls 
here the salt of the earth and the light of the world, 
are all his true followers, without special reference 
to the ministry. Yet while all are to season and 
enlighten the world, we might, perhaps, by way of 
practical application, refer the salt to the influence 



exerted by the membership of the Church, the light 
to that of the ministry. The sphere of the efficacy 
of the salt is more inward, that of the light more 
outward, analogous to the relation between the par- 
ables of the mustard-seed and the leaven. — The 
term earth is synonymous with "world" in verse 
14, and means the whole human race in its state of 
apostasy from God, and, therefore, exposed to moral 
putrefaction. — But if the salt have lost its 
savor. The preceding clause, by itself, supposes 
that the salt performs its office and accomplishes its 
purpose; but now the Lord suggests the possibility 
of failure and its necessary consequence. Whether 
salt can really lose its savor and become insipid or 
not, is a question of but little importance, because 
the force of the comparison, if such a case should 
not occur, would only be enhanced by the supposed 
impossibility. Any hypothesis, however, drawn by 
our Savior from material objects, we have reason to 
consider as based on an actual fact. Pure salt can, 
indeed, not thus degenerate, while salt mixed with 
foreign ingredients does. Maundrell found in the 
region of Aleppo salt that had effloresced and be- 
come tasteless; in the same manner the salt that is 
obtained in hot countries by evaporating salt water, 
loses its admixture of chloric magnesia, and is then no 
longer fit for salting meat. According to Dr. Thom- 
son, (vol. ii, p. 44,) such salt "is not only good for 
nothing in itself, but it actually destroys all fertility 
wherever it is thrown, and this is the reason why it 
is cast into the street. No man will allow it to be 
thrown on to his field, and the only place for it is in 
the street, and there it is cast to be trodden under 
foot of men." — Wherewith shall it [that is, the 
insipid salt] be salted? Wherewith shall its orig- 
inal strength be restored ? As the persons addressed 
are called the salt of the earth, mainly on account 
of what they are to be and to do unto others, we have 
here only the idea advanced, that if they lose their 
fitness to reform the world, there are no other human 
organs or instrumentalities to restore unto them this 
qualification. Alford paraphrases the passage : "If 
you become untrue to your high calling, and spirit- 
ually effete and corrupted, there are no ordinary 
means by which you can be brought back to your 
former state, inasmuch as you have no teachers and 
guides over you, but ought yourselves to be teachers 
and guides to others." Hence the exhortation : Re- 
main true to your state of grace, to your new nature. 
Beware of disqualifying yourself for your high mis- 
sion, and remember that, as you cease salting others 
you cease to remain salt. The possibility, however, 
of being restored again by the grace of God is here 
not referred to, and, on this very account, not ex- 
cluded. Yet it is intimated that the loss of grace, 
here compared to the salt losing its savor, may attain 
a point, which makes a second renewal impossible. 
(Heb. vi, 4-6.) — It is henceforth good for noth- 
ing BUT TO BE CAST OUT AND TO BE TRODDEN UNDER 

foot of men. As insipid salt has no good properties, 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



249 



but is positively hurtful, so a dead profession, and 
especially a dead Gospel ministry, loses not merely 
all influence for good, but becomes a positive nui- 
sance ; nor has the world been slow, as Church history 
testifies, to render its verdict. Both apostate priests 
and people have repeatedly met the fate which our 
Lord here foretells them. The true professor of re- 
ligion is hated and persecuted by the world, because 
the power of truth and righteousness is felt by it — 
while a dead profession, insipid salt, is the object of 
supreme and well-deserved contempt. 

Verse 14. Jesus Christ alone is the true light of 
the world, yet in his infinite condescension he gives 
this epithet also to his disciples, who are in reality 
lighted candles, candlesticks. (Phil, ii, 15.) Be- 
cause they have their light from him alone, Jesus 
could with propriety say of them, what no merely- 
human teacher could have said of his disciples, with- 
out unheard-of arrogance, and it must have greatly 
astonished the unlearned disciples themselves, and 
may have given ample material for ridicule to the 
scribes, just as even in our days the world can ill 
repress a sneer, when this text is applied to the Gos- 
pel ministry. — In the nature of the case the high 
mission of the disciples can not be concealed, for 
where there is light it shines, every force of necessity 
manifests itself. In order to show the impossibility 
to be hid, still more plainly, the Lord uses two more 
comparisons; namely, that of a city that is set on a 
hill, and of a candle that is put on a candlestick. 
The first metaphor refers more to the whole body of 
believers than to the ministry. As Jerusalem, from 
its lofty position, could be seen afar off, so the Church 
of the New Testament will be seen in all countries. 
And is the Christian Church of our time not more 
than ever a city set on a hill? Has she not become 
that large tree, under whose shade all nations of the 
earth seek rest, protection, and refreshing? Chris- 
tianity is now recognized as the only rule of what 
is just and good. Its influence is felt and acknowl- 
edged in all branches of life, in literature, commerce, 
politics, legislation, diplomacy, etc. The destiny of 
the world is in the hands of the Christian nations; 
the as yet unchristian nations feel their weakness 
more and more, and manifest a willingness to re- 
ceive the salt and light of Christianity. 

Verse 15. Men are not guilty of the absurdity of 
placing lighted lamps in such a position as to render 
them useless, much less does God impart the light 
of his Word and Spirit to be concealed. He en- 
lightens us to the end that we should illuminate the 
world. He that puts his light under a bushel, vir- 
tually extinguishes it. This is applicable to every 



individual Christian, as well as to the Christian 
Church as a body. No man, filled with the glorious 
light of the saving knowledge of God, should hide it 
from a false prudence, bashfulness, fear of persecu- 
tion, or a mistaken humility. 

Verse 16. Let your light so shine before men. 
"The particle 'so' is not to be construed merely with 
what follows — so as, so that— -but with what precedes, 
thus, likewise. As men do with lamps or candles, 
so must you do with the light of truth in this dark 
world." (Alexander.) Their light is to shine, not 
they themselves, as being only the candlesticks for 
the bright light of the Heavenly Father. The idea 
is also included, that their light will shine, provided 
they do not put it under a bushel, do not hide it from 
men; this is not contrary to chap, vi, 1-5, since in 
the latter place, self-praise is the motive of action, 
but in our text the honor of the Heavenly Father as 
the author of all good works. (Comp. John xv, 8.) — 
That they may see your good works. By good 
works we have to understand not isolated acts, but 
the whole tenor of a man's life, his whole walk and 
conversation. (Eph. v, 8-13.) Prominence is given 
here to their good works, both because it forms the 
transition point to what follows, where the righteous- 
ness of the disciples is represented as the fulfillment 
of the law, and because external deportment is the 
only means by which men can judge of character. — 
That they may glorify your Father which is in 
heaven. To glorify God is to acknowledge the glory 
due to him. We are not to do our good works for 
our own glory. That they may be promotive of the 
glory of God, we must join to our good works the 
confession of Divine grace. On this point Stier 
says: "The men of the world, who know not God, 
are apt to praise the good works of God's children 
as human virtue, instead of acknowledging them as 
the effect of Divine grace. For this reason must be 
united to good works the confession with the mouth 
by which man proclaims his indebtedness to Divine 
grace, saying: 'This is my Father's light through 
Christ, in whose name I do this.' Insufficient as a 
profession is without the corresponding works, are 
also the works without the profession. Unwarranted 
is evidently the common appeal to this passage on 
the part of those who neglect to profess Christ with 
the mouth, as if good works alone were sufficient. 
By putting our good works in the place of a proper 
confession, we do not promote our Father's honor, 
but at best our own, while by honoring God with our 
walk and profession we constrain men, as far as is 
in our power, to praise God for the grace that he 
has given unto us." 



250 



MATTHEW V, 17-20. 



B. THE RIGHTEOUSNESS REQUIRED BY THE LAW— TO BE FULFILLED IN 
THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 

Verses 17— SO. 

(17) Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets : I am not 
come to destroy, but to fulfill. (18) For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and 
earth pass, one jot l or one tittle 2 shall in no wise pass from the law, till all he 
fulfilled. (19) Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, 
and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven : but 
whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom 
of heaven. (20) For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed 
the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the 
kingdom of heaven. 



Verse 17. By what Jesus had said of the perse- 
cution of his disciples for his and for righteousness' 
sake, he had pointed out the contrast between the 
righteousness necessary for an entrance into the 
kingdom of heaven and that of the scribes and the 
Pharisees. The question, therefore, came very nat- 
urally, what position he would occupy with his doc- 
trine concerning the kingdom of God in relation to 
the law and the prophets. His hearers evidently 
desired that he might define his position, while some 
had already formed an opinion for themselves. 
Jesus meets their case by the emphatical declara- 
tion, "Think not." One party, especially the com- 
mon people, indulged the false expectation that the 
Messiah would set them free from the stern and gall- 
ing demands of the law, and establish his glorious 
kingdom without insisting on repentance and refor- 
mation of life. (Jer. xxxi, 31.) Others, especially 
the popular leaders of the Pharisaic school, charged 
Jesus with the design to set the law at naught, be- 
cause he did not recognize their traditions and addi- 
tions to the law; and as his whole life did not answer 
to their Messianic expectations, based on their false 
interpretation of the figurative language of the 
prophets, many apprehended that he would treat the 
prophets with no greater deference than the law. 
For these reasons the Lord emphatically declares: 
"I am not come to destroy or set at naught either 
the law or the prophets, but to fulfill; that is, to con- 
firm and complete them." This solemn declaration 
of the Lord, by which he places himself in the 
midst, between the Old and New Testaments, as the 
living unity and truth of both, involves the whole 
doctrine concerning his person and work. The 17th 
and 18th verses form the center and theme of the 



whole discourse, and constitute, with verses 19 and 
20, the introduction to the second part, reaching as 
far as chap, vi, 18. That we may, however, not sep- 
arate the exposition too far from the text, we detach 
verses 17-20 from the rest. — That I am come. The 
prophets had been sent, and had prophesied of him 
that was to come. Jesus alone came forth from the 
Father. (John xvi, 27, 28.) — The law, or the 
prophets. This was the grand division of the whole 
Old Testament, both as to its commandments and 
promises. The whole Old Testament in the twofold 
aspect of legal requirement and prophecy is a reve- 
lation of the Divine will, requiring fulfillment and 
promising a future in which this fulfillment will 
take place. It is both a law, to which full obedience 
has not yet been rendered, but which, nevertheless, 
insists upon a perfect obedience to its command- 
ments; and a promise, as yet equally unfulfilled. 
But when this fulfillment comes, the Old Testament 
gives way to the New — yet the latter is nothing abso- 
lutely new, it is merely the truth and reality of the 
old, its fulfillment and end. Some have given to the 
conjunction "or" the meaning of "and," translating: 
"the law and the prophets," but the Greek particle 
?! always means "or," never "and." Others, again, 
understand by the "law" merely the moral law, the 
decalogue, since, as they say, the ceremonial and 
civil law of the Old Testament have actually been 
abrogated by Christ. This restriction, however, is 
not well founded, because the Jews understood by 
the law the whole law without distinguishing be- 
tween moral, ceremonial, and civil law, and more- 
over, because not even the least ritual or civil enact- 
ment was abrogated by Christ in its spiritual and 
true import. So likewise with regard to the prophets; 



1 " Jot "—Greek, iota; Hebrew, yodh — was the small- 
est letter in the two languages. 2 " Tittle " means either 
the turn of the stroke which distinguishes one Hebrew 
letter from another similar to it, or, in its literal mean- 



ing, a "little horn," a fine hair-stroke, which, as a sort 
of flourish, was added to certain letters in Hebrew man- 
uscripts. The least in or about the law is,, consequently, 
important. 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



whatever these holy men, moved by the Holy Ghost, 
had written concerning the Messiah, had necessarily 
to be fulfilled by Him, who by his full obedience to 
the whole law was to become our righteousness be- 
fore God. Because the law and the prophets are 
essentially one, the Lord says with deep significance : 
"Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or 
the prophets — that is, neither the one nor the other. 
If I did not fulfill the law, neither would the proph- 
ets be fulfilled." — To destroy here means to set 
at naught, to abolish, to declare, or put out of force, 
applied especially to revolutionary abrogation of laws 
and constitutions. This the Pharisees virtually did 
by making the Word of God of none effect by their 
traditions, (Mark vii, 13,) and "by omitting the 
weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and 
faith," (Matt, xxiii, 23,) while they attended scrupu- 
lously to the observance of outward forms and cere- 
monies. For this reason Jesus, although speaking 
here of the whole law, confines himself, in the prog- 
ress of his discourse, to the exposition of the moral 
law, and requires of his disciples a righteousness far 
exceeding that of the scribes and Pharisees, who were 
then considered by the people the most scrupulous 
observers of the law. Nor was Jesus come to de- 
stroy the ceremonial law before every thing symbol- 
ized by it was really fulfilled. The ritual law, abol- 
ished after the death of Christ, (Eph. ii, 15,) was 
merely a barrier, necessary for the divinely-ordained 
pupilage of Israel. By removing this barrier, Jesus 
did fulfill, not destroy the law, in the same sense as 
a flower is not destroyed, but developed, when the 
leaves surrounding the bud burst and drop, or as a 
picture is not destroyed, when the painter fills up the 
original sketch. Nor did he come to destroy the 
prophets, which he would have done, had he con- 
firmed the false interpretations of such as expected 
the Messiah to set up a temporal kingdom in great 
splendor, discarding the requirements of the moral 
law. For these reasons the Lord emphatically adds : 
"I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill." The 
word "fulfill," according to the original, signifies to 
practice, to confirm, and to fill up or complete in 
opposition to destroying or abrogating. This applies 
to the whole law, as contained in the Old Testament, 
in all its bearings. Jesus is come to give by word 
and deed finish and completion to all that in the 
old dispensation was merely a foreshadowing sketch. 
He was the first that by doctrine and practice com- 
pleted the law, developing on the one hand its spirit 
out of the shackles of the letter, and on the other 
hand fulfilling all righteousness in perfect obedience. 
The fulfillment of the moral law by Christ, implies, 
in the first place, that he completed and confirmed 
it by explaining its full meaning, its purity, and 
spirituality. Secondly, he fulfilled it in a still higher 
sense by meeting in his own person all the claims 
the moral law had on human nature; and by doing 
so fulfilled, at the same time, the ceremonial law; 
for in his active and passive obedience he became 



the all-sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the world, 
redeeming us from the curse of the law— not the law 
itself — that the righteousness, required by the law, 
might be fulfilled in us. By fulfilling the law Christ 
is the end of the law. We are no longer under the 
law, in so far as through Christ the law lives and is 
fulfilled in us. When he said — in this discourse — "I 
am come to fulfill," he had not yet fulfilled what he 
had come to fulfill; it was not fulfilled before he ex- 
claimed on the cross, "It is finished." Stier, in ad- 
dition to the foregoing exposition, gives to the signifi- 
cant declaration of our Lord the following general 
application: "I am by no means come to destroy or 
abrogate any thing whatsoever that is good or true, 
the object of my coming is quite the reverse ; I am 
come to preserve, develop, and complete all begin- 
nings and preparations for the kingdom of God in 
this world. Thus he goes beyond the narrow limits 
of Israel, and embraces also the Gentile world, which 
was likewise to share the fruits of his coming. The 
Gentiles had also a law in their conscience and fore- 
shadowings in their religious traditions ; they had 
fragments of the original moral law in their civil 
enactments, and prophets in their sages and poets. 
(Acts xvii, 28; Tit. i, 12; Rom. ii, 14.) All such 
longings the Lord has come to satisfy, destroying 
nothing but sin — the work of Satan — in order to 
develop into life and growth every germ planted by 
God in the human heart. But let no one vainly 
imagine, that he has come for any other purpose 
than to establish and fulfill the will of God as de- 
clared first in the law and the prophets. Every plant 
that was not planted by his Heavenly Father he roots 
up. Let no one look for his favor to free him from 
the law. Woe to the deluded disciple who fancies to 
be set free, not from the curse of the law, but the 
law itself; who fancies himself to be saved by Christ, 
not from, but in his sins !" Marcion, the Gnostic, who, 
with the other Gnostics, denied the inspiration of the 
Old Testament by the Supreme Being, because he 
could not reconcile its teachings with those of Christ 
and of the apostle Paul, altered our Savior's words so 
as to make him say: "What think ye? that I have 
come to fulfill the law or the prophets? I have 
come to destroy, not to fulfill." 

Verse 18. For verily. We hear here for the 
first time the word verily from our Savior's lips, 
which at the beginning of a sentence implies a sol- 
emn assurance, the same as to say, I solemnly 
affirm; I say unto you. Both the prophets and 
the mediator or giver of the law, Moses, could only 
say: "Thus saith the Lord." But here speaks the 
Lord himself, the author of the law, and the judge, 
who admits into and excludes from the kingdom of 
God, (chap, v, 19,) and he says accordingly: I say 

UNTO YOU, ONE JOT OR ONE TITTLE SHALL IN NO WISE 

pass from the law. Here, as well as in the sequel, 
the Lord speaks, as we have remarked before, mainly 
of the moral law. — Till heaven and earth pass. 
The heaven here is not the heaven of v. 12; as the 



252 



MATTHEW V, 21-48. 



earth here is not the earth promised in verse 5. 
Heaven and earth, as they now are, are transitory. 
They shall be changed and renewed. (Rev. xxi, 1.) 
But the changes which the universe is yet to undergo, 
being mere changes of its form without annihilation 
of its substance, the perpetuity of God's universe is 
a fit emblem of the perpetuity of his law. The 
meaning, therefore, can not be, that, when the pres- 
ent heavens and the present earth shall pass away, 
the law also shall be nullified, a declaration which 
would be irrelevant in this connection, and unsup- 
ported by reason or Scripture. Even when all is 
fulfilled, when, according to 1 Cor. xv, 28, "all 
things shall be subdued unto him, and the Son also 
himself be subject unto him that put all things under 
him," then God will be all in all, and the authority 
of his law is then supreme to the fullest extent. 

Verse 19. Whosoever, therefore, shall break 
one of these least commandments. Some refer 
this breaking, etc., to the division of God's moral 
law by the Pharisees into greater and less command- 
ments, similar to the division into mortal and venial 
sins by the Roman Catholic Church in modern times, 
and understand by it the violation of any command- 
ment, however little in appearance. But this view is 
not correct. Our Lord understands by the least 
commandments, what he himself had designated as 
a jot or tittle, as is evident from the particle, ovv ; 
therefore, intimately connecting the 19th with the 
preceding verse as its logical consequence. — The 
term "break" — Greek, to loose — means not so much 
actual violations of a commandment as rather the act 
of regarding it as of no binding force, and teaching 
people accordingly. — To make the expression, "the 
least in the kingdom of God" synonymous with 
being entirely excluded from the kingdom of God, is 
a forced interpretation, and the point in question is 
the recognition of the importance of the least com- 
mandments, not the legal observance or non-observ- 
ance of this or that part of the law. According to 
Olshausen the Lord refers here to a person, who in 
heart belongs to the kingdom of God, without 
being, at the same time, fit to teach others. Tho- 
luck finds in the expression the general idea, that 



God judges man according to his treatment of the 
Divine law. 

Verse 20. Except tour righteousness, etc. In 
these words our Savior declares unto his hearers, 
that the real fulfillment of the law, both by expound- 
ing its full meaning and practicing it, must not be 
expected from their authorized teachers, the scribes 
and the Pharisees. Most, if not all, of the scribes 
belonged to the party of the Pharisees, (Luke xi, 44, 
45 ; Acts xxiii, 9,) which passed for the straitest sect, 
(Acts xxvi, 5,) enjoyed, according to Josephus, the 
highest reputation with the common people, and had 
in its ranks some real Israelites, as, e. g., Nicodemus, 
Joseph of Arimathea, Gamaliel, and the scribe men- 
tioned in Mark xii, 21. Some commentators are 
of the opinion that the Lord meant this better por- 
tion of the Pharisees, because it would have been no 
recommendation for his disciples to go merely be- 
yond the sanctimoniousness of the great bulk of the 
party, which even the Talmud reproves, and because 
even this better portion did not rise above the popu- 
lar interpretations of the law, that are mentioned in 
the following verses. We must, however, reject this 
view, and understand by " the scribes and Pharisees " 
their whole sect, because it is plain from the context, 
that our Lord's object was to forcibly set forth the 
contrast between the teaching and conduct to be ex- 
hibited by his disciples and that of the scribes and 
Pharisees, who claimed and were by the multitude 
admitted to be the best exponents and keepers of 
the law. The righteousness taught by the scribes 
and practiced by the Pharisees consisted almost 
exclusively in the observance of ceremonies, was, 
moreover, hypocritical, (Matt, xxiii, 14, 25-28,) de- 
ficient in the keeping of the most important com- 
mandments, (Matt, xxiii, 23,) and based upon impure 
motives. (Matt, xxiii, 5-7.) At the same time 
these separatists — for this is the import of the term 
"pharisees" — claimed to be much better and holier 
than other people. But the Lord declared unto 
them that their righteousness was none at all, that 
with it they could not enter into the kingdom of 
God; while the publican is justified after his first 
penitential prayer. 



C THE RIGHT AND GENUINE FULFILLMENT OF THE LAW AS OPPOSED TO THAT 
TAUGHT AND PRACTICED BY THE PHARISEES, 

With regard, 1. To the passion of anger, (vs. 21-26;) 2. To incontinence and adultery, (vs. 27-32;) 3. To 
swearing, (vs. 33-37;) 4. To retaliation, (vs. 38-42;) 5. To the love of enemies, vs. 43-^7.) 

"Verses Ql— 48. 

(21) Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill ; 
and whosoever shall kill shall he in danger of the judgment: l (22) but I say unto 
you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause 2 shall be in danger 



1 That is, liable to the punishment inflicted by the in- I to the rabbins, of twenty-three members. This judg- 
ferior tribunal estaolished in the cities and towns, and ment was liable to appeal, and could amount, in capital 
consisting, according to Josephus, of seven, according I case3, to execution by sword. 4 .Eiioj — without cause — 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



253 



of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, 3 Raca, 4 shall he in dan- 
ger of the council : 5 but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, 6 shall be in danger of hell- 
fire. 7 (23) Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest 
that thy brother hath aught against thee; (24) leave there thy gift before the altar, 
and go thy way ; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy 
gift. (25) Agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou art in the way with 
him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, 8 and the judge de- 
liver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. (26) Verily I say unto thee, 
Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing. 
(27) Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit 
adultery : (28) but I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after 
her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. (29) And if thy right 
eye offend 9 thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee : for it is profitable for thee that 
one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into 
hell. (30) And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee : for 
it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy 
whole body should be cast into hell. (31) It hath been said, "Whosoever shall put 
away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement : (32) but I say unto you, 
That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, caus- 
eth her to commit adultery : and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced com- 
mitteth adultery. (33) Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old 
time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths : 
(34) but I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is G-od's 
throne : (35) nor by the earth ; for it is his footstool : neither by Jerusalem ; for it 
is the city of the great King. (36) Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because 
thou canst not make one hair white or black. (37) But let your communication 
be, Yea, yea ; Nay, nay : for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. (38) Ye 
have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth : 
(39) but I say unto you, That ye resist 10 not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee 
on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. (40) And if any man will sue thee 
at the law, " and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. (41) And who- 



is omitted in many manuscripts and ancient versions, 
and not imperatively demanded by the context. Pos- 
sibly it may have been intended to soften the rigor of 
the precept. 3 His fellow-man, whom he is bound to love 
as his brother. * Raca is a Syrian word, and means block- 
head, worthless fellow. 5 The council was the Sanhedrim, 
consisting of seventy-two members, which decided ques- 
tions of war and peace, as well as the higher crimes of 
false prophets. It inflicted the severer capital penalty 
of stoning to death. (Matt, xxi, 23; Luke xxii, 66; 
Acts v, 21.) 6 Thou fool. The word rendered "fool" 
had, in the Hebrew usage, the prominent idea of impi- 
ety, atheism, and was an epithet of the highest oppro- 
brium. " Greek, liable into Geenna; that is, liable to be 
thrust, by the council, into Geenna. To the south-east 
of Jerusalem was a deep valley, called in Hebrew the 
"Vale of Hinnom," in Greek, Geenna. In this valley 
did the idolatrous Jews (Jer. vii, 31) burn their children 



to Moloch, and Josiah therefore polluted it, (2 Kings 
xxiii, 10;) and thenceforth it was the place for the con- 
signment and burning of offal and the corpses of crim- 
inals. Hence, it signified hell proper — the place of 
punishment of the damned, where the worm does not 
die and where the fire is not quenched. (Isa. lxvi, 24; 
Jer. vii, 32, 33; Mark ix, 44, 46, 47.) Possibly it was 
part of the highest capital punishment that the corpse 
of the criminal was burned in this valley. 8 In ancient 
times the plaintiff had the right, in case of necessity, to 
bring the defendant by force before the judge. 9 The 
terms " offend," to " take and to give offense," mean, in 
the Scriptures, to make a person sin by throwing some- 
thing in his way, and to sin on account of something 
thrown in the way. (Matt, xvi, 23; xviii, 8; Mark ix, 
47; 1 Pet. ii, 8, etc.) 10 Resist, hero, means to offer re- 
sistance by striking back, abusing in return, taking back 
again by force. u To commence a lawsuit. Whoever 



254 



MATTHEW V, 21-48. 



soever shall compel 12 thee to go a mile, go with him twain. (42) Give to him that 
asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. (43) Ye 
have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine 
enemy. (44) But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do 
good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and 
persecute you ; (45) that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven : 
for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the 
just and on the unjust. (46) For if ye love them which love you, what reward have 
ye ? do not even the publicans the same ? (47) And if ye salute your brethren only, 
what do ye more than others ? do not even the publicans so ? (48) Be ye' therefore 
perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. 



Preliminary Remarks. — In this part of his ser- 
mon Christ does not oppose his words as a new 
doctrine to the law of Moses, but merely gives the 
real meaning and spirit of the law. It is erroneous 
to say that the law required merely an outward obe- 
dience, and that it is only the Gospel which demands 
the disposition of love toward God and our fellow- 
men. True, some of the commandments had been 
adapted to the infant state of the people of God; 
yet a thorough study of the law and the polity of the 
children of Israel shows plainly, that the spiritual 
law lay throughout at the bottom, and was limited 
only because of the hardness of their hearts. (Matt, 
xix, 8.) Thus we find in the Old Testament from 
the very beginning the germ that was to burst, in the 
course of time, through its surrounding shell, and 
which, to some extent, actually broke through it; 
but the scribes and Pharisees, instead of seeking the 
Spirit of God to lead them into a more spiritual un- 
derstanding of the law, hedged it in more and more, 
and confined themselves almost exclusively to its 
letter. In opposition to them Christ explains and 
confirms the law by enlarging its individual precepts. 
In interpreting the following expositions of our 
Savior, we must guard against two errors : 1. That 
of the Roman Catholic expounders, who main- 
tained "that these declarations of Jesus did not con- 
tain commandments binding for every Christian, but 
only so-called Evangelical counsels for a particular 
class of persons, that aimed at an extraordinary de- 
gree of holiness." Surely, the words of Christ con- 
tain not even the least hint that some of his com- 
mandments were intended for only a portion of his 
followers. Nearly allied to this Romish doctrine is 
the view of some Protestant commentators, who will 
have it that these words of Jesus apply to a glorious 
state of the kingdom of God, not yet realized, in 
which there will be neither courts, nor oaths, nor 
divorces ; and that what Christ here forbids is through 
necessity lawful for Christians, as long as they have 



to mingle with the unconverted. 2. Others err in 
taking each and every one of these commandments 
literally. Accordingly they look upon every oath, 
every kind of resistance, every refusal of alms, etc., 
as an unchristian act, thus transferring to the out- 
ward act what Christ intended for the disposition of 
the heart. For in these very commandments the 
Lord wanted to make his hearers feel, that a tem- 
poral kingdom, such as the Jews expected, was an 
impossibility, since a literal keeping of them in a 
commonwealth governed by law, which can not change 
the disposition, would necessarily lead to anarchy, in 
fact, to a complete overthrow of organized society. 
If, e. g., all resistance to wrong was to be given up, 
the spirit of violence would be encouraged and 
thereby we would violate the love which we owe to 
our own families and even to the aggressor himself; 
by giving alms to all that apply for them indiscrim- 
inately, idleness and vice would be promoted. Such 
sayings, therefore, must be interpreted by the tenor 
and spirit of Christ's whole doctrine. Whenever the 
Christian, after a thorough examination, can truth- 
fully say, that the honor of God and the well-being 
of his neighbor are the only motives of his action, 
then he has not only the right, but is obliged to 
depart from the letter of these commandments, as 
Christ himself and his apostles have done. 

Verse 21. Ye have heard that it was said. 
This phraseology is owing to the fact that the Jews 
did not read their sacred books themselves, but heard 
them read and expounded by their scribes, who repre- 
sented their comments on the sacred text as tradi- 
tions handed down from the Fathers. — By them "Is- 
old times — according to the idiom of the Greek lan- 
guage, it ought to be rendered "to them of old 
times," that is, to the ancients, the generation which 
received the law. (Acts vii, 53.) Dr. Alexander 
paraphrases the whole verse thus: " You have [often] 
heard [it said by the scribes and Pharisees] that our 
fathers were commanded not to murder, and that 



intends to take away by a lawsuit thy coat — the cheaper 
inner garment — let him have, of thy free accord, thy 
cloak — the more valuable outer garment — also. n To 



compel to go a mile. People were anciently impressed 
or compelled to go as messengers for the government, and 
to carry burdens, as, for instance, Simon of Cyrene. 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



255 



consequently only he who murders [in the strict 
sense of the term] is liable to be condemned and 
punished under this commandment." The Pharisees, 
by confining themselves to the letter, reduced the 
Divine commandment to a mere civil law, as if it 
forbade nothing more than actual murder, just as if 
a minister of the Gospel would enforce the sixth 
commandment by no higher consideration than by 
saying : " The law of the country forbids murder — 
you must, therefore, not commit murder, because if 
you do the court will condemn you to death." 

Verse 22. By the words, "But I say unto you," 
the Lord represents himself as the lawgiver, of 
whom Moses had said, (Deut. xviii, 15:) "The 
Lord thy God will raise up a prophet like unto me ; 
unto him ye shall hearken." While the scribes re- 
stricted the commandment to actual murder, the 
fulfiller of the law teaches that it is the intent and 
purpose which constitute the criminality, and that 
the disposition or frame of mind from which the 
deed proceeds, is just as criminal in itself before 
God as the outward deed. (1 John iii, 15.) Ac- 
cording to Christ, the commandment " Thou shalt 
not kill" means, "Thou shalt not hate," and is vio- 
lated even by unholy anger, by harboring hatred in 
the heart, and still more by giving vent to it in spite- 
ful words. Beyond this, the exhibition of the sinful 
frame of the mind in words, the Lord does not go, 
because the outward deed, the act of violence, was 
admitted even by the Pharisees to be sinful. In 
order to set forth the different grades of guilt in the 
development of the sinful frame of the mind, the 
Lord refers to the different criminal courts among 
the Jews and the sentences pronounced by them — 
that is, death by the sword, inflicted by the lower 
court of seven; death by stoning, to which was, 
sometimes, added the burning of the corpse in the 
valley of Hinnom, by the council of seventy-two 
members. Here, however, we must bear in mind, 
1. That the three punishments enumerated are all 
capital punishments, differing from each other in 
degree, not in kind. In the same manner will the 
sentences of death pronounced on the great day of 
judgment on all finally-impenitent sinners be the 
same in kind, but in a manner transcending our com- 
prehension they will vary in degree according to the 
degree of guilt of the condemned. It is, moreover, 
self-evident, that by the "in danger of the judgment" 
and the "in danger of the council" the Lord does 
not understand penalties inflicted by earthly tri- 
bunals any more than by the "in danger of hell-fire." 
For how would a human judge take cognizance of 
and pronounce death upon anger in the heart? 2. 
The degree of guilt attaching to the terms of re- 
proach mentioned in the text is determined by the 
degree of the hatred and enmity which they express. 
Yet the degree of guilt of the sinful emotion can not 
always be ascertained by its expression in word and 
deed. The emotion in itself may often be more 
heinous in the sight of God than the outward word 



| and deed — a hastily-uttered "raca" may be less sin- 
ful in the eyes of God than anger concealed by words 
of flattery. If Christ had determined the degree of 
guilt by the outward manifestations of the sinful dis- 
position, not by the intensity of the sinful emotion, 
he would, to a certain extent at least, have substi- 
tuted one kind of outward righteousness for another. 

Verses 23 and 24. A practical inference is here 
drawn from the foregoing declaration of our Savior. 
If such a doom awaits those who indulge in angry 
feelings and expressions, what care should be ex- 
ercised not to give offense and to remove every just 
cause of complaint which any one may have against 
us ! The most sacred act is to be interrupted in 
order to make speedy reparation of a wrong done to 
our fellow-man. As Christ addresses Jews, not 
Christians, he refers to the sacrificial worship of the 
Old Testament; he introduces the Jew, waiting in 
the outer court for the priest to receive at his hands 
the victim, in order to kill it in the court of the 
priests and to offer it upon the altar of burnt-offer- 
ings. Any thing that would cause and justify an in- 
terruption in this most solemn moment, must be of 
the utmost importance. It is significantly said: "If 
thou rememberest that thy brother has aught against 
thee," not that thou hast aught against thy brother, 
in which case, though thy brother might have just 
cause of complaint against thee, you might say: "I 
have nothing in my heart against my brother, and 
can, therefore, go on with my worship." This sub- 
terfuge is cut off at once by our Savior. Not before 
the offended brother is really reconciled or before 
every thing has been done on our part to remove his 
cause of complaint, we can come and offer sacrifices 
acceptable unto the Lord. This is the further ex- 
planation of the. sixth commandment — it includes 
not only the offender, but also the implacable. Every 
one that does not love is a murderer. The absence 
of love to our neighbor can not be atoned for by any 
act of worship. All worship without love is worth- 
less. If the Jew must be at, peace with his neighbor 
when he is about to offer an ox or a sheep, how much 
more a Christian when he is about to celebrate the 
memorial of the sufferings and death of his Savior ! — 
And then come and offer thy gift. This precept 
strikes at the root of that godless morality, which 
fancies that God requires nothing of man than to 
love his neighbor, and that, when this duty is dis- 
charged, we owe nothing more to God. 

Verses 25 and 26. Tholuck takes these two verses 
correctly for an application of what goes before, as 
if the Lord meant to say: "Be not surprised at my 
insisting so positively on your becoming reconciled 
without delay to your brethren, for if you go out of 
this life, which is so short and uncertain, with an un- 
forgiving heart, your passion, of which you did not 
repent, and the injury for which you made no repara- 
tion, become your accusers before the judgment-seat 
of God, and your punishment will then be endless." 
order to set this in a still clearer light, the Lord 



256 



MATTHEW V, 21-48. 



introduces a new comparison ; namely, the relation 
of a debtor to his creditor. The debtor, in this com- 
parison, is the man that wrongs his neighbor, the 
adversary is the injured party. For the debtor it is 
wise and an imperative duty to make reparation of 
the inflicted wrong as soon as he can ; for if death 
overtakes him while his heart is full of anger, or be- 
fore he had made amends for the injury inflicted, 
the law of God violated in the person of the injured 
party will, as it were, accuse him before God, and 
God will be an inexorable Judge ; on the day of 
judgment not even the least portion of his debt will 
be remitted. In applying the metaphor to our recon- 
ciliation with God, we must be very careful. It is 
taking unwarrantable liberty with the Word of God, 
to understand by the adversary directly the law; by 
the Judge, God, or Christ; by the officer, the devil; 
and by the prison, hell. — Those that deny the endless 
duration of the punishment of hell, appeal to the 
conjunction "till" in favor of the restoration of all 
things; but how is it possible that the sinner should 
pay the least portion of his debt to God, much less 
all of it, as implied here by the uttermost farthing ? 
If deliverance from out of hell were possible, it 
could be brought about only by grace, by a free 
pardon, not by a full payment of all our debts or by 
an endurance of the punishment due for our sins. 

Verses 27 and 28. Having thus explained the 
spirit and the sanctions of the sixth commandment, 
our Lord proceeds to a similar elucidation of the 
seventh. The Pharisees taught that the violation of 
this commandment, as well as that of the former, 
consisted only in the external act, while they con- 
sidered impure thoughts and desires as something 
harmless and not forbidden. It is not the involun- 
tary rising of a desire, but the looking on a woman 
for the purpose of feeding this desire — this is the 
force of the Greek preposition npog — that our Lord 
pronounces incipient adultery. He speaks here not 
of affections planted in our nature, whose risings we 
can not prevent, but of a carnal desire to which the 
will consents. Thus Luther on this passage: "It is 
impossible to prevent the devil from shooting evil 
thoughts and lusts into the heart; but take heed that 
you do not suffer his arrows to stick fast in your 
heart, but throw them out and do as one of the 
Fathers has said: 'I can, indeed, not prevent a bird 
from flying over my head, but I can prevent it from 
nestling in my hair!' Thus it is not in our power to 
escape being tempted by evil thoughts; but this is in 
our power, to dismiss these thoughts before our will 
consents to them and they become a purpose or de- 
sign." He that fosters an evil desire in his heart 
and does not carry it out merely because time, place, 
and circumstances are unfavorable, is in the sight 
of God, who looks at the heart, guilty of the deed, 
although the actual deed would highten his guilt. 
Stier remarks that our Lord speaks here after the 
Old Testament usage, in which both in the sev- 
enth commandment and elsewhere adultery includes 



fornication, and that, therefore, fornication is here 
forbidden as well as adultery; for marriage being 
the becoming one flesh, every such union, except 
that after the manner and in the state appointed by 
God, is a violation and contempt of that holy ordi- 
nance, and the desire of such a God-forbidden union 
is, therefore, equally forbidden. 

Verses 29 and 30. How difficult it is to comply 
with what is required in the preceding verse, in every 
point of view, is self-evident; but the Savior, far from 
softening his statement in the least, insists on the 
most rigid self-denial, which he enforces by the bold- 
est metaphors. That his language is metaphorical, 
not literal, requires no proof — for if the right eye 
were literally plucked out, the left would take its 
place, and the sinful desire and lust would be still 
where they were before, in the heart, the real seat of 
all evil thoughts. (Matt, xv, 19.) The command, 
therefore, is not to pluck out the right eye or to cut 
off the right hand, in a literal sense, but "to mortify 
the deeds of the body" (Rom. viii, 13) which corre- 
spond to these members. The eye and the hand are 
mentioned as being the organs of temptation — the 
epithet right means, according to the popular view, 
the better member. This mode of expression, put- 
ting the organ or member for the lust or desire act- 
ing through it, is very common in every language. 
The eye symbolizes the temptation to sin, the hand the 
sinful deed. Verse 29 warns against carnal desires, 
verse 30 against the deed. The meaning of the whole 
is this : If thy hand or thy eye tempt thee to sin, treat 
them as being not thine, oppose thine own members, 
hate thyself — that is, thy flesh, thine own life, when it 
prompts thee to sin ; throw away with decision and 
energy every thing that entices thee to sin, even if it 
should cost thy life! This injunction is enforced by 
the further consideration that our best interests are 
subserved thereby; it is profitable for thee. 

Verse 31. It has been said. Our Lord passing 
here from a Sinaitic commandment to a civil ordi- 
nance founded on the commandment, chooses pur- 
posely the shortest, most general expression: "It 
has been said," or rather it was said; although it is 
a condensed quotation of what Moses has said. 
(Deut. xxiv, 1.) — Whosoever shall put away his 

WIFE LET HIM GIVE HER A LETTER OF DIVORCEMENT. 

The Mosaic law (Deut. xxiv, 1) was, that if "some 
uncleanness" were found in a wife, the husband 
might "write a bill of divorcement and put it in her 
hand, and send her out of his house." On the mean- 
ing of the word "uncleanness" the schools of the 
two rabbins, Shammai and Hiller, differed, the former 
understanding by it adultery alone, the latter any 
defect of person or character, any thing in the woman 
that displeased her husband. The object of the 
Mosaic enactment was not to weaken, but to protect 
matrimony and to allow divorce only under certain 
conditions. Tradition and a false interpretation per- 
verted the enactment and said : " Moses has com- 
manded." (Matt, xix, 7.) 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



257 



Verse 32. Causeth her to commit adultery — 
that is, drives her to adultery — which she commits 
by marrying another, while she is yet in the bonds 
of the first marriage ; and he that marries her — thus 
capriciously divorced — commits adultery for the same 
reason. The expulsion — " a mensa et thoro " — from 
the table and the bed, is in itself not yet adultery, 
but the liberty to marry again Christ pronounces as 
adultery, and forbids it positively in all cases, except 
when one party by adultery has dissolved the bonds 
of matrimony before. The only cause which justi- 
fies a divorce is adultery. This, however, leaves the 
question still open, whether the other party is still in 
bondage, after the first has virtually dissolved the 
marriage-contract, which Paul answers in the nega- 
tive. (1 Cor. vii, 15.) See more on this subject in 
Matt, xix, 3-9. 

Verse 33. Thou shalt not forswear thyself, 
but shalt perform unto the lord thine oaths. 
This is an abridgment of the precept in Lev. xix, 
12: "Ye shall not swear by my name falsely, neither 
shalt thou profane the name of thy God." From 
this precept the false inference was drawn, that no 
swearing was forbidden except false swearing or 
swearing by the name of God. This false inference 
Christ refutes in verses 34-37, taking for granted the 
criminality of swearing falsely. 

Verses 34-36. Swear not at all. From this 
emphatic not at all, from verse 37, and James 
v, 12, some of the ancient Fathers, and more 
recently the Quakers, and some others have drawn 
the inference that every act of confirmation by oath 
is here indiscriminately forbidden by our Lord. It 
is conceded that true Christians need no oath in 
their intercourse with each other. God must always 
be so vividly present in the Christian's consciousness, 
that his yea and nay have both for him and other 
Christians the solemnity and force of an oath, for 
which reason no Church or denomination that claims, 
in the least, to be a communion of true believers, 
exacts an oath from its members. Christ forbids 
here, moreover, every oath that is taken to give our 
words a force and obligation, which a mere affirma- 
tion without an oath would not have even in our own 
eyes, as if man was not as much bound by his word 
as by an oath. It is also evident that it is very sin- 
ful to make an appeal to the sacred majesty of God 
without necessity or for selfish ends. But to sup- 
pose that our Lord meant here to forbid all appeals 
to God in attestation of the truth, especially when 
required by the civil authority and for the best inter- 
ests of society in the suppression of vice and in the 
protection of the innocent, would be inconsistent 
with the Divine commandment requiring the oath. 
(Exod. xxii, 11; Deut. vi, 13; x, 20.) It is also to 
be borne in mind that Christ himself used solemn 
asseverations and respected the solemn adjuration 
of the high-priest, (chap, xxvi, 63,) and that the 
apostle Paul in many passages of his epistles calls 
God to witness from the bottom of his devout heart. 



17 



(Rom. i, 9; Phil, i, 8; 1 Thess. ii, 5-10; 2 Cor. xi, 
11,31; i, 23.) Many commentators, moreover, main- 
tain that the injunction of the Lord "swear not at 
all," has no reference whatever to oaths proper, but 
only to profane swearing and cursing, because, as 
they say, the different asseverations enumerated had 
not the force of oaths before Jewish judicatories, and 
the term "conversation" means only the daily inter- 
course with our fellow-men, to which, therefore, all 
the, words of our Savior must be referred. — From 
the various objects by which our Lord forbids his 
followers to swear, we learn the unparalleled frivolity 
of the Pharisees, who pretended that since heaven 
and earth would pass away, an oath by them would 
also pass away, and to swear falsely by them was, 
therefore, no perjury. This quibbling the Lord re- 
proves by reminding them that swearing by any thing 
that God has created, is to swear by the Creator him- 
self. The reason given by our Lord why a man 
should not swear by his own head has its difficulty. 
Dr. Alexander remarks: "The difficulty may be 
somewhat lessened by explaining ivhite or black as a 
proverbial expression, meaning any kind whatever, 
and giving to the verb its strongest sense, that of 
creation. ' Thou canst not make, that is, bring into 
existence even one hair, whether white or black' It 
is, then, a denial of man's power, not to change the 
color of his hair, which is continually done by arti- 
ficial means, but to produce one of any color, which, 
however trivial the effect may be, is a creative act. 
Being, therefore, an oath by God himself, it is the 
more to be avoided, because destitute of even that 
slight pretext which might seem to justify the oaths, 
just mentioned, by his throne, his footstool, and his 
royal city, all of which may be used to represent him 
in a way that is entirely inappropriate to the human 
head." It is, however, to be borne in mind, that 
though we may color our hair, the new growth of 
hair will not be affected by the dye, but will retain 
its natural color. 

Verse 37. To use solemn asseverations in their 
daily intercourse and business transactions always 
has been and still is in vogue among the Jews. 
(Ruth, i, 17; 1 Sam. xiv, 44, 45; 2 Sam. iii, 9.) 

Verse 38. An eye for an eye, etc. This is a 
rule laid down in the Old Testament for the admin- 
istration of justice. (Ex. xxi, 23-25; Lev. xxiv, 
19, 20; Deut. xix, 21.) This Mosaic law is based 
on the right of retaliation, which we find at the bot- 
tom of the oldest legal enactments. The violation 
of the law calls for retribution— that is, as the law 
has been treated by the offender, so it treats him in 
turn in order to teach him the nature and extent of 
his offense. Christ's object was not to oppose this 
law, in itself, but only the interpretation of it by the 
Pharisees, who acted and taught as if the law read: 
"The injured party shall return like for like to 
gratify private revenge." The injured party, for 
whose benefit magistrates are appointed, may seek 
redress, but is under no obligation to do so. For 



258 



MATTHEW V, 21-48. 



even the Old Testament forbids this seeking of retal- 
iation, in so far as it is based on passion and revenge. 
" Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against 
the children of thy people," (Lev. xix, 18,) and, 
" Say not I will do so to him as he has done to me ; 
I will render to the man according to his work." 
(Prov. xxiv, 29.) The Lord, therefore, contradicts 
here, not what was said by Moses and the prophets, 
but. the false application which the Pharisees made 
of the law, who perverted the right of retaliation 
into a duty, and did not always sanction even the 
judicial decision, merely that they might gratify their 
revengeful spirit. To this spirit which seeks retalia- 
tion either by judicial proceedings or by private re- 
venge, the Lord opposes the long-suffering of love, 
which makes man willing rather to suffer a double 
amount of wrong than to be avenged. — We have 
shown before, that what the Lord says in verses 39-42 
has reference to the disposition, not to a literal out- 
ward practice. 

Verse 39. Whosoever shall smite thee on the 
right cheek. Christ does not mention here danger- 
ous injuries, as in the preceding verse, but speaks of 
insulting treatment, a point that may materially 
assist us to get at the real meaning of his words. 
Christ did not say nor would he have said : "Whoso- 
ever shall knock out your right eye, offer to him also 
the left." Moreover, Christ explains his words him- 
self by his conduct. (John xviii, 22, 23.) To the rude 
officer, who struck him with the palm of his hand, 
he did not offer the other cheek, whereby he would 
merely have tempted him to highten his guilt, but he 
mildly reproved him. What Christ here inculcates 
is the very opposite of that heathenish code of honor 
which will not brook an insult and by which dueling 
has been kept up among Christian nations, even to 
this day. The reverse of this so-called code of 
honor is the Christian manliness which manifests 
itself in suffering and endurance. Its motto is: we 
will not return the blow and thus take the law and 
justice into our own hands. With this spirit, how- 
ever, is a lawful vindication of one's rights not in- 
consistent. I have a perfect right to vindicate my 
rights and my honor in every possible lawful man- 
ner, but this can be done without a spirit of revenge. 
Some are of opinion that Christ laid down here 
merely prudential maxims for the first Christians, 
who in their sorest persecution could get no redress 
from the magistrates, and did, therefore, best to en- 
dure to the uttermost. But such temporizing is in 
diametrical opposition to the character of our Lord. 

Verse 40. And if ant man will sue thee at the 
LAW. In the same sense in which the Lord con- 
demns the spirit of revenge for personal indignity, 
he condemns the spirit of litigiousness with one who 
designs to commit a legal wrong. To the same 
effect Paul wrote to the Corinthians, (1 Cor. vi, 7:) 
"There is utterly a fault among you. Why do ye 
not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer 
yourselves to be defrauded [than go to law] f" — 



Now, since it is only the spirit of litigiousness which 
Christ forbids, an appeal to the law in order to secure 
one's rights is not inconsistent with this precept. 
So Luther: "It is not forbidden to go to law and to 
complain of injustice and violence, provided the 
heart is right and equally patient as before, and the 
only object is to vindicate the right and resist in- 
justice." It is, therefore, not strange to find the 
same apostle, who exhorts the Corinthians rather to 
suffer wrong than to go to law, appealing to magis- 
trates in order to have his rights protected. (Acts 
xvi, 35,40; xxii, 23, 29; xxv, 9.) 

Verse 41. The true sense of this verse is: the 
follower of Christ, rather than render in an angry 
spirit a service which is forced upon him, should 
from motives of love render it voluntarily, and even 
twice, if necessary. Such conduct, though not in 
all cases practicable, is the model to be aimed at; 
and how salutary are its effects ! It disarms the op- 
pressor and makes him blush, restores peace and 
prevents injustice. 

Verse 42. The parallel passage (Luke vi, 32-34) 
makes the import and connection of this precept 
perfectly clear and plain. The individual asking 
and wishing to borrow of thee is the adversary men- 
tioned in the preceding verses. Alford remarks very 
judiciously on this passage : " Our gracious Savior, 
who promised his disciples that he would do what- 
ever they might ask in his name, (John xiv, 14,) 
knowing what is good for us, so answers our prayers 
that we are never sent away empty; not always, in- 
deed, receiving what we ask. but that which in the 
very disappointment we are constrained thankfully 
to confess is better than our wish. So in his humble 
sphere should the Christian giver act. To give every 
thing to every one, would be to act as the enemy of 
others and ourselves. Ours should be a wider and 
deeper charity, flowing from those inner springs of 
love which are the sources of outward actions some 
times widely divergent, whence may arise the timely 
concession, and the timely refusal." 

Verse 43. Thou shalt love thy neighbor and 
hate thine enemy. The first clause of this precept 
is found Lev. xix, 18; the second is found no where 
in the Old Testament Scriptures ; the false interpret- 
ations of the Pharisees culminates here in an arbi- 
trary addition to the law, which mutilates it and com- 
pletely destroys its meaning. The first step taken 
in this misinterpretation and perversion was to re- 
strict the precepts of love to the Israelites and the 
stranger sojourning with them exclusively, (Lev. xix, 
33, 34;) the second was to make "not to love" 
equal to hating. When Moses uses neighbor and 
fellow-Israelite as apparently synonymous terms, he 
does so because the Jew, shut up from intercourse 
with the surrounding Gentiles in so many ways, could 
ordinarily practice the commandment of love only 
on his fellow-Jew; but that the two terms are not 
synonymous, that the law of love includes the Gen- 
tile also, is proved by the Decalogue. For who can 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



259 



believe for a moment that the Jew would be guiltless 
in bearing false witness against the Gentile, or in 
coveting his wife, etc. ? Moreover, the term neighbor 
is used with reference to the Gentiles before the law 
was given. (Ex. xi, 2; Gen. xxxviii, 20.) 

Verse 44. Here our Lord seems to go beyond the 
requirements of the old dispensation ; it is true the 
law commanded to bring both the stray ox or ass of 
an enemy to his owner, or when lying under his 
burden to help to raise him, (Ex. xxiii, 4, 5,) forbids 
to rejoice at an enemy's fall, (Prov. xxiv, 17,) yea, 
commands to give him to eat and to drink when hun- 
gry and thirsty, (Prov. xxv, 21, 22;) but what is all 
this compared with Christ's command: "Love your 
enemies — bless them that curse you — do good to 
them that hate you — pray for them which despite- 
fully use you and persecute yon ?" The scale of love 
given to us by our Lord, is beautifully described by 
Chrysostom: "Hast thou seen how many steps He 
has gone up? Look back and count: the first step 
is, to do no wrong to others ; the second, not to re- 
turn evil for evil to him that has wronged you; the 
third, to return no revilings, but to be still; the 
fourth, to offer yourself to suffer wrong; the fifth, to 
offer more than the adversary demands; the sixth, 
not to hate him who has wronged you; the seventh, 
even to love him ; the eighth, even to do good unto 
him ; the ninth, even to pray for him. Doest thou 
now see the loftiness of Christian virtue?" The ob- 
jection, that the command to love one's enemies in- 
volves an impossibility, inasmuch as love is an affec- 
tion that is not under the control of the will, is of 
no weight, for love implies more than a mere emo- 
tion. It implies just as much a conduct, arising 
from certain principles, and is, therefore, as proper 
an object of command as any other duty. The 
modern languages have but one word for these two 
kinds of love, but not so the Greek language; the 
first kind of love is expressed by fi/.elv, the second 
by aya-xhv, and it is scarcely necessary to add, that 
our Savior uses the second term. The love of our 
enemies enjoined by our Savior, does, consequently, 
not mean a sentimental love, a being delighted with 
an enemy, but the love of benevolence, which seeks 
to promote the enemy's best interests as well as our 
own. To bless with a heart devoid of love would be 
an empty, hypocritical phrase; to do good without 
love — ostentation; and to pray for an enemy without 
love — an impossibility. A beautiful example of the 
love enjoined here is related by Cyprian. While 
during the rage of a pestilence at Carthage the 
heathens neglected their sick and suffered their dead 
to lie unburied in the streets, Cyprian exhorted the 
Christians to take care not only of their own sick, 
but also of those of the heathen. The Christians 
did so, and thus saved the city from total ruin. 

Verse 45. The mild rays of the sun, which fall 
upon all alike that do not go out of his reach, the 
fertilizing shower, that extending over large tracts 
descends upon barren as well as fruitful fields — what 



beautiful emblems of God's unmerited love! — God's 
enemies are the wicked. It is God who makes his 
sun to rise and who sends rain. God hates and 
commands us to hate what is evil, but blesses him 
that does evil — this is the standard which the chil- 
dren of God are to imitate. The Spirit of God 
teaches them to distinguish between the man and the 
evil in him, and while they hate this, to love the man. 
This love, which is divine, is not within the reach of 
man's own efforts, not the product of his own reso- 
lutions; it is the free gift of God, which we can 
obtain only by being made partakers of the spirit of 
Christ. Thus we are referred back to verses 9 and 
16. He that makes so high demands of us is also 
willing to fill us with Divine love, if we hunger and 
thirst after it. This, however, does not preclude the 
effort to practice it before we have it; for it is only 
by these very efforts that we become fully conscious 
how entirely destitute we are of it by nature. 

Verses 46, 47. The hollowness of the pharisaical 
pretensions, their entire destitution of love is here 
still more exposed. "You exclude from your love 
not only your enemy, but even him who does not 
love you." No human being is so abandoned to all 
wickedness, no sinner so demon-like, that he has not 
some of whom he can say, "I love them because 
they love me." With the Pharisees, who, as their 
very name implied, pretended to be better than 
others and claimed extraordinary sanctity, the Lord 
confronts here a class of people, who were judged 
by them to stand on the very lowest scale, namely, 
the publican and heathen. He speaks of reward, 
because the reward was the principal motive in all 
the actions of the Pharisee. Alas that even in our 
day many professing Christians need a warning 
against pharisaism! "Add to brotherly kindness 
charity" toward all men. (2 Pet. i, 7.) 

Verse 48. Be ye therefore. Our Lord, revert- 
ing to the Divine example set forth in verse 45, 
teaches his followers not to copy the imperfect mod- 
els, furnished by even the best of men, much less 
those furnished by reputed sinners, but the perfect 
model set before them by their Heavenly Father. 
Stier refers these words to the whole preceding dis- 
course. " In order to reach the standard which 
Christ placed before his disciples, they must become 
holy, as was required even by the law. "Ye shall 
be holy, for I am holy." (Lev. xi, 45; xix, 2; xx, 
7-26.) God is holy in his condescending mercy. It 
is said of him, he is love, not he is Omnipotence, 
Justice, etc. Love is in him also the bond of per- 
fection, the substance of all his other attributes. 
Our perfection is to become merciful like him — this 
is the term used by Luke. — It is true, children are 
only perfect as children. The mark of our heavenly 
calling is: ye shall be holy. If even this Old Testa- 
ment command to be holy, contains a promise that 
the Holy One purposes fo make us holy, we have 
now in the Son thrown open to us the fullness of the 
Godhead, the riches of Divine love. If we believe 



260 



MATTHEW VI, 1-18. 



in his name this faith is counted unto us for right- 
eousness and we are complete (perfect) in him. 
(Col. ii, 10.) If we earnestly follow after holiness, 
seeking to apprehend that for which we are appre- 
hended of Christ Jesus, we are perfect in the center 
or purpose of the heart, (Phil, iii, 15,) although still 
imperfect in actual performance, (Phil, iii, 12,) and 
the Word of the Lord is our warrant that we shall 
reach this perfection also, if we remain and grow in 
love. The God of peace will sanctify us wholly, 
(1 Thess. v, 23,) till through the perfect work of pa- 
tience we have become perfect and entire, wanting 
nothing. (James i, 4.)" Olshausen comments on 
this passage as follows : "All attempts to substitute 
an artificial for the literal meaning of the word 'per- 
fect' are nugatory, on account of the addition 'even 
as your Father is perfect,' and the meaning of the 
command can, therefore, be no other than that the 
image of God is to be restored in man. According 
to the principle, that every speaker is the interpreter 
of his own words, we must attach this meaning to 
these words, even if we dissented from it." — This 
may be the right place to say a few words on the 
doctrine of Christian perfection. A thing is perfect 
if it contains every thing that by its nature and de- 
sign it ought to contain. Fallen man can in this 
life never become perfect, as the angels are perfect, 
or as Adam was before the fall. For by the fall the 
original faculties of man both of body and soul have 
sustained an injury, that will not be fully repaired 
before the resurrection. Christian perfection, or the 
perfection of a Christian, consists in this, that he is 
what he ought to be, that for which Christ has re- 
deemed him, and which the Gospel promises to ac- 
complish in him through the power of the Holy 
Ghost. Whatever God does is perfect; in applying 
the term "perfect" to the work of grace in the soul, 



we must, however, make a distinction in its meaning. 
A thing is perfect which has all the parts that essen- 
tially belong to it; at the same time, it may be im- 
perfect in degree — that is, every one of its parts may 
admit of a growth and development, and thus be- 
come more perfect in itself. Justification is a full 
pardon of all sins, both original and actual; this 
work is perfect both in its nature and degree — it can 
not become more perfect. Regeneration is also a 
perfect work, but only in its nature, not in degree. 
Just as a newly-born, healthful child can be called a 
perfect man, (homo,) having all the essential parts 
of the humaii organism, although the individual 
members are still imperfect, in so far as they must 
grow and be developed — so the new birth out of God 
is also a perfect work, though only in its nature, not 
in degree. Whoever is born of God, has all the 
fruits of the Spirit, faith, love, humility, meekness, 
resignation to the will of God ; not, however, in that 
perfect degree in which they are possessed by the 
man of God that has come unto the measure of the 
stature of the fullness of Christ, when every thing 
that resists the gracious operations of the Holy 
Ghost is removed out of the heart. Whether, and 
how, this state of grace is attainable in this life, we 
shall consider in connection with other passages of 
Scripture. We will here make only the additional 
remark, that Christian perfection includes neither a 
legal perfection — that is, a coming up to the demands 
of God's law upon an unfallen nature — nor does it 
exclude in the case of him that possesses it all 
further growth in grace. Even when the believer is 
perfectly redeemed by grace through faith from the 
guilt, power, and pollution of sin, it is his privilege 
and duty to increase in the new life of holiness more 
and more. — Even as. ' This particle does not imply 
equality in degree, but approximative likeness. ! 



THE TRUE MOTIVE IN GOOD WORKS — A LIVELY SENSE OP GOD'S OMNIPRESENCE 
AND OMNISCIENCE, (Chap, vi, 1-18:) 



Illustrated by warnings, 1. Against a hypocritical practice op benevolence to obtain the applause op men, 
(vs. 2-4;) 2. Against hypocrisy in prayer and the perversion op its true nature, (vs. 6-15;) 3. Against 
hypocritical pasting, (vs. 16-18.) 

Chapter VI, 1—18. 

(1) Take heed that you do not your alms : before men, to be seen of them : 
otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. (2) Therefore 
when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypo- 
crites 2 do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. 
Yerily I say unto you, They have their reward. (3) But when thou doest alms, 



1 According to the best authenticated reading : right- 
eousness. " Alma" came, in all probability, into the 
text as an explaining gloss, the Jews understanding by 
"righteousness" mainly alms giving. The correct trans- 
lation, accordingly, is : " Take heed that ye do not prac- 
tice your righteousness." 2 The Greek verb, iiroxpiVeo-flai, 



from which the noun hypocrite is derived, means origin- 
ally to appear on the stage in an assumed character, then 
more generally to appear and act any where in an as- 
sumed character, and hence to wish to appear what one 
is not. In the New Testament hypocrisy means through- 
out an ostentatious display of the form of godlineeg 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



261 



let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth : (4) that thine alms may be 
in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly. 
(5) And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love 
to pray standing 3 in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they 
may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. (6) But 
thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, 4 and when thou hast shut thy door, 
pray to thy Father which is in secret ; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall 
reward thee openly. (7) But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the hea- 
thens do: 5 for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. (8) Be 
not ye therefore like unto them : for your Father knoweth what things ye have 
need of, before ye ask him. (9) After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father 
which art in heaven, 6 Hallowed be thy name. (10) Thy kingdom come. Thy will 
be done in earth, as it is in heaven. (11) Give us this day our daily bread. 7 (12) And 
forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. (13) And lead us not into tempta- 
tion, but deliver us fromjfcevil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and 
the glory, for ever. AimSr. (14) For if you forgive men their trespasses, your 
Heavenly Father will also forgive you: (15) but if ye forgive not men their 
trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (16) Moreover when 
ye fast, 8 be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance : for they disfigure 9 
their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They 
have their reward. (17) But thou, when thou fastest, anoint 10 thine head, and 
wash thy face; (18) that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father 
which is in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. 



Verse 1. The first verse, if we adopt the read- 
ing given in footnote 1, forms the introduction to 
verses 2-18, and contains the generic, which is sub- 
divided into three parts. Lange shows best its con- 
nection with what goes before: "After exposing the 
misinterpretations of the law, (chap, v, 21-32,) and 
the positive corruptions of doctrine (chap, v, 33-47) 
on the part of the scribes and Pharisees, the Lord 
censures the corresponding corruptions of their re- 
ligious life in three instances. Alms-giving, prayer, 
and fasting were the three main exponents of practical 



piety, in which especially the Pharisees used to dis- 
play their pretended sanctity, and which the Church of 
Rome also understands principally by good works." — 
"Before men" is not forbidden in itself, (Comp. 
chap, v, 16,) but the ostentatious display before 
men, which is very forcibly expressed by the Greek 
irpog to deadyvai, for the purpose of being gazed 
at as a show. A respect to the recompense of 
reward from our Heavenly Father, vitiates by no 
means our righteousness, provided it is not the sole 
or even principal motive of our actions. Our good 



without its possession. 3 The Jews used to pray, for the 
most part, standing, with their faces turned toward the 
Temple or the Holy of Holies. (1 Sam. i, 26 ; 1 Kings viii, 
22.) Sometimes, however, they prayed kneeling or lying 
prostrate on the earth. The term standing — ia-raiTes — 
in itself does not imply ostentation, but this idea is ex- 
pressed in, they love — ifnAoOo-ii/. i There was in every 
Jewish family a place set apart for devotional exercises. 
The roofs of the houses are flat and were used, especially 
in the evening, for this purpose. They were surrounded 
with balustrades, three or four feet high, so that a per- 
son there had a fair view of the surrounding country 
without being seen himself. There was often a private 
apartment there, called Alijah, used exclusively for 
prayer; to this our Lord most probably refers. 5 The 
nations out of Israel, which do not know the true and 



living Ood. 6 Greek : in the heavens. 7 The Greek term 
for " daily bread " is found in no Greek author before 
the Gospels were written, and has given a good deal 
of trouble to commentators ; various significations have 
been assigned to it, the most probable of which is : food 
sufficient for subsistence, food convenient for man, as 
Solomon says. (Prov. xxx, 8.) 8 The voluntary private 
fasts are here meant, (Luke xviii, 12,) not the usual pub- 
lic fast. (Lev. xvi, 29.) 9 Literally : they hide from 
sight, that is, they darken their countenances by dust 
and ashes (Isa. lxi, 3) for the purpose of attracting the 
more attention. In the case before us they probably 
sought to accomplish this by a mournful look and a total 
neglect of their outward appearance. I0 Anointing was 
the expression of cheerfulness and mirth ; people anoint- 
ed themselves where they went to entertainments. 



262 



MATTHEW VI, 1-18. 



works must spring from a sense of duty, from a feel- 
ing of gratitude for the work of redemption, and must 
be done for His honor and glory, and with all this, 
respect to the recompense of reward is perfectly con- 
sistent, (Heb. xi, 26,) though God rewards only the 
good intention of the heart; the brightest deeds, if 
they do not come from this source, are an abomina- 
tion before God. 

Vekse 2. The therefore (oJv) deduces, as we 
have remarked above, the special precept from the 
generic given in v. 1. By the " sounding a trumpet" 
we understand, perhaps, best the noisy, ostentatious 
way in which these hypocrites bestowed their alms. 
Similar sayings are met with in almost all languages. 
Some commentators, however, take the words liter- 
ally and understand by them the calling together of 
the poor by blowing a trumpet — but of this prac- 
tice no examples can be found. — They have their 
reward — that is, they have it in full, exhaust 
it. The ambitious can look for no other reward 
than the praise of the world, and having received 
this he has his reward in full ; nor did he desire any 
other; for God's sake he has done nothing, and has, 
therefore, to look for no reward to him. 

Verses 3, 4. Let not thy left hand know, etc. 
This phrase seems likewise to be proverbial. Pri- 
vacy in the bestowal of alms is here not absolutely 
commanded, only the ambitious seeking of notoriety 
is forbidden. There are occasions where it may be 
the duty of the Christian to provoke others to good 
works by his public example, and thus to com- 
mend the religion which he professes. If Christians 
would do all their good works only in secret, the lib- 
erality of the non-professors would be extolled by the 
enemies of Christ, and the professor charged with 
niggardliness. Yea, there are cases when it would 
be absolutely sinful for the Christian to conceal his 
good works. Supposing a child of God is stripped 
of his property by unfair means, is it then not the 
Christian's solemn duty to show to the world that he 
truly sympathizes with his brother? — Since both the 
left and the right hand are the givers, the warning is 
a personal one. He must not behold himself com- 
placently in his gift, since from this very source 
arises the desire to be applauded by others. While 
thy right hand giveth, be far from holding a trumpet 
in the left, or from stretching it out for reward or ap- 
plause. The best comment we find in chap, xxv, 37. 
Be not at all apprehensive that your deeds may be 
done so secretly that God himself will take no notice 
of them and withhold your reward. God forgets no 
work of love. (Heb. vi, 10.) Alms given in the 
right manner will receive their reward, possibly in 
part in this life already, but certainly in the life to 
come. (Luke xiv, 14; 1 Tim. v, 25.) 

Verse 5. The Jews attached to prayer a still 
greater importance than even to fasting and alms- 
giving, but had reduced it to a mere mechanical per- 
formance. They prayed three times a day, at nine 
o'clock, A.M., at twelve o'clock, and at three o'clock, 



P. M., and resorted to the synagogue for prayer on 
the Sabbath, on Monday, and Thursday. Many a 
zealous Jew spent nine hours a day in prayer. Nor 
did they go for public prayer only to the synagogue, 
but, like the Roman Catholics, also for private prayer, 
because greater efficacy was ascribed to prayer in 
the synagogue. The Pharisees managed it so — this 
is implied in "they love" — that they were overtaken 
by the hour of prayer while on their way to the syn- 
agogue, that the people might see them pray and 
praise their piety. It is evident from the context 
that these remarks of our Lord are not directed 
against common or public prayer — a duty resting on 
express Divine command — but against performing 
private prayer in public places. 

Verse 6. But thou, when thou prayest, enter 
into thy closet. Prayer in public can never take 
the place of prayer in the closet — without the latter 
the prayer in public is mere hypocrisy. Select, 
therefore, a spo^^o which thou retirest at certain 
hours, ni orde^^fcpour out thy heart before thy 
Maker. We re^P^B^Savior that he was in the 
habit of withdrawing tosolitary places in order to pray 
there. (Matt, xiv, 23; Mark i, 35; Luke v, 16.) 
What a solemn call for Christians daily to attend to 
this duty! The exhortation "enter into thy closet," 
may, however, also be applied to public and family 
prayer, inasmuch as prayer, no matter where made, 
requires a withdrawal of the heart from all external 
and foreign objects, a calling in of all wandering 
thoughts, so that nothing may intervene between the 
soul and her God to disturb their intercourse. 

Verse 7. Use not vain repetitions. The Greek 
verb flaTToloyeiv, translated to make vain repetitions, 
is a word not found in the classical Greek writers. 
Some trace its origin to a stammering King Battus, 
others to a poet Battus, whose hymns were full of 
unmeaning repetitions. It is most probably an imi- 
tation of the sounds uttered by stammerers. — It 
means to say the same thing repeatedly and imper- 
fectly, to say things irrelevant and senseless, to mul- 
tiply words, to babble, to be loquacious. The heathen, 
not knowing the true God, fancied to compel their 
gods by much speaking to listen to them. (1 Kings 
xviii, 27.) This heathenish error, however, is so 
deeply seated in the human heart that it can affect 
even the prayer in the closet. Our Lord forbids 
such vain repetitions, because they indicate a want 
of faith in the true God, just as if God did measure 
prayers by their length and was most pleased with 
those that contain the most words, as the rabbins 
said: "Only he that makes long prayers can calcu- 
late upon being heard, and a long prayer shall not 
come back empty." Is it not strange that this very 
abuse of prayer which Christ has here principally in 
view, has received the full sanction of the Roman 
Catholic Church, and that the very form of prayer 
which he opposes to the "vain repetitions" in prayer, 
is most flagrantly abused by being fifteen times re- 
peated by the rosary ? While, however, long prayers 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



263 



contain too often useless repetitions and unmeaning 
words, the Lord does, nevertheless, not forbid to 
pray long or to continue in praying and wrestling 
with God. That he did not include in his censure 
every repetition in prayer that is founded in a deep 
sense of our wants, we learn from his own example 
and that of his apostles. (Matt, xxvi, 44; 2 Cor. 
xii, 8.) 

Verse 8. For tour Father knoweth. This is 
another reason why true worshipers of God should 
not be guilty of vain repetitions as the heathens are, 
for they in their ignorance of the true God imagine 
that the Deity must be reminded of our petitions by 
frequent repetitions. These words of our Savior 
meet at the same time the objection of skepticism, 
that to suppose that God answers prayers would im- 
ply a constant change of his plans in governing the 
world. God has known from all eternity all the wants 
of each of his creatures, has foreseen all the turns of 
human liberty, and has made i^ois plan of govern- 
ment ample provisions to -,^Bi wants and to 
hear and answer every prJ|^^^Uperstition ascribes 
the efficacy of prayer to the ivords of the prayer — 
unbelief, into which superstition is too apt to turn, 
rejects prayer, as availing nothing at all. Both 
know nothing of the living God, to whom true faith 
ascribes both the knowledge of our wants and a 
willingness to satisfy them, and which, therefore, 
alone enables men to pray to God as a child asks his 
father. But though God knows what we have need 
of and is willing to give us what we need before we 
ask him, the propriety and obligation of prayer are 
self-evident. They are founded in our dependence 
upon God. In prayer the Christian exercises his 
faith, gets a deeper insight into his helplessness, and 
is prepared to make a better use of God's blessings. 

Verse 9. After this manner therefore fray 
ye. After having told his hearers what they should 
avoid in prayer, our Lord adds a brief, simple, com- 
prehensive prayer, which contains all that we stand 
in need of and are authorized to pray for. Accord- 
ing to Olshausen the one leading idea is, the ardent 
longing after the kingdom of God, which constitutes 
the burden of all the prayers of God's children. But 
this one idea is presented from two points of view; 
1. With reference to God's glory and fullness ex- 
pressed in the first three petitions. 2. With refer- 
ence to our indigence, expressed in the last four. 
The sententious doxology expresses the full assur- 
ance that our prayer will be answered, having the 
pledge of all the Divine attributes. Lange says: 
"The Lord's prayer expresses all possible wants of 
man, a whole world of holy desires in language the 
most concise, simple, and chaste. It is the quint- 
essence of all Divine promises, all human wants, 
and all Christian duties." — With regard to the use 
to be made of this prayer, it is evident that our Lord 
intended it more for a model, by which to judge of 
what constitutes the spirit and proper objects of true 
prayer, than for a formulary of prayer, invariably to | 



be adhered to. Yet, though no man in his sound 
mind will seriously maintain that we ought to make 
use of no other words in prayer than those given us 
by the Lord in the text, still it is evident, that as 
this prayer is suitable for all times and under all cir- 
cumstances, it was given by our Lord for permanent 
use by his Church. — That our petitions are to be 
presented to God in the name of Christ, is not men- 
tioned expressly, because our Lord had not yet re- 
vealed himself in his mediatorial character; but 
though the proper time had not come to intro- 
duce the express use of his name in prayer, it is 
essentially implied. — Our Father which art in 
heaven. Although even the heathen may see the 
hand of a kind Father in the temporal blessings be- 
stowed by a bountiful Providence, (Acts xiv, 17,) and 
though the Old Testament speaks in express terms of 
a paternal relation of God to his people, (Deut. xxii, 
6; Isa. i, 2; lxiii, 16; lxiv, 8 ; Jer. iii, 4-19; Mai. i, 9; 
ii, 10;) yet it is only Christ who has taught and en- 
abled us to call God our Father. As the Creator and 
Preserver, he is the Father of mankind, a fact which 
is so beautifully recognized even by Homer and 
nearly all other great heathen writers ; yet it is only 
through Christ that this appellation became a living 
truth, for only through him we can regain our for- 
feited filial relation, and, therefore, only true chil- 
dren of God, genuine Christians, can say this prayer 
in its full import; yet how true is the remark of 
Luther: "God intends to allure us, that we may be- 
lieve that he is our Father and wants us to be his 
children." We may add: "While all are invited to 
come to God, even as children come to a loving 
parent, it is but too certain that none will heed the 
summons and embrace the privilege, except as the 
spirit prompts and enables them. How impressive 
are the descriptions, by those who have experienced 
that change, of the new and strange gladness, the 
spirit of filial trust wrought within them, when they 
obtained the confidence and the affection of chil- 
dren in exchange for the overmastering dread which 
they had once felt, dragging them as in bondage, and 
that a bondage as intolerable as it was indissoluble." 
(William R. Williams' Lecture on the Lord's Prayer.) 
The addition, "which art in heaven," is to remind us 
of the infinite distance between our Heavenly Father 
and earthly parents, "lest we form" as the Heidel- 
berg Catechism says, " earthly ideas of God's heav- 
enly majesty." All nations call the pure, infinite ether, 
figuratively, the throne of God; the Old Testament 
does the same, yet teaches, at the same time, most 
positively God's omnipresence and exaltedness above 
all space. (1 Kings viii, 29.) — The Lord wishing to 
give his disciples a common prayer uses the plural 
"our." This is, at the same time, the mark of a 
true child of God, for every true Christian sincerely 
wishes others to enjoy what he desires for himself. — 
The exordium lays the broad foundation of all prayer, 
containing what we must necessarily know of God, 
in order to pray acceptably at all. Furthermore, it 



264 



MATTHEW VI, 1-18. 



points out the frame of mind in which we must ap- 
pear before God. The very beginning presupposes 
a heart full of reverence and love, regarding God as 
the supreme good — summum bonum — and his glory 
the completion of his kingdom on earth, as the ob- 
ject of solicitude which finds utterance before any 
personal want is even thought of. — Hallowed be 
thy name. "When Isaiah saw in God's own temple 
a vision of the heavenly throne and its ministering 
angels, these attendant spirits responded to each 
other in sacred rapture: ' Holy, holy, holy is the Lord 
of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory.' From 
all pure and sinless worlds comes back a repetition 
of the strain. But from our earth the echo was 
broken off by the fall. We have ' sinned and come 
short of his glory.' We started aside from that 
great end and aim of our being — the divine glory — 
for which we were created. Whatever else of wisdom 
and strength the fall left, yet in some degree adher- 
ing to our nature, holiness was the element of hu- 
man character that was most fatally and entirely 
destroyed. — As the spirit of adoption is needed to 
cry, in the true sense of the word, ' Abba, Father] 
so the spirit of holiness is requisite to make us com- 
petent worshipers of God's holy name." (Williams's 
Lectures.) Thy name. The name of God has refer- 
ence to God, who, being an invisible Spirit and dwell- 
ing in light inaccessible, has revealed himself to and 
entered into covenant relations with man. (Deut. 
xxviii, 58; Isa. xxvi, 4-8; Ex. iii, 13, 14; Ps. xxix, 
2; xxiv, 3; lxi, 5.) — To hallow — when applied to 
something unholy — means to make holy, or to set 
apart for holy, that is, religious use; when applied 
to something that is holy, it means to treat as holy, 
to keep holy. (Num. xx, 16; Ex. xx, 8.) The lat- 
ter is the meaning of the term here, and consists of 
two parts; namely, first, to recognize God in his true 
character, to have proper views of God ; secondly, to 
be governed by God's Spirit in our walk and conver- 
sation. (Deut. x, 3; Isa. xxix, 23; 1 Pet. iii, 13.) 
Stier says beautifully: " The petition refers primarily 
to the children of God by whom alone his name can 
be hallowed, but expands so as to embrace the whole 
world, as if to say : reveal thy name to those that 
are in darkness, that they may know thee; enlighten 
those that do not call upon thy name aright, that they 
may worship thee in truth ; convict and convert those 
that profess thy name with their lips but deny thee 
by their works." Williams, p. 30, remarks: "Christ 
was the distinct, full and loud utterance of the name 
of God, articulate, legible, and tangible — complete 
and enduring. And all the institutions which Christ 
himself established, or which his apostles after him 
ordained by his authority, since those institutions 
bear his name, or illustrate his character, are to be 
regarded as coming within the scope of the text. 
The Sabbath, the Bible, the sanctuary, or place of 
worship, the ministry and each Christian convert are 
found, then, to be embraced within the range and 
dread shadow of this great and dreadful name." 



Verse 10. Thy kingdom come. On this petition 
Williams (p. 69) says: "To pray for Christ's king- 
dom, is to pray for the conversion of sinners, and 
the edification and sanctification of disciples. It is 
to ask the evangelization of the Gentiles and the 
restoration of the Jews. It is to implore that anti- 
christ may fall, and the idols perish from under the 
whole heaven. It is to profess sympathy with all 
that relieves and elevates and enfranchises man ; 
and to implore the removal of all that corrupts and 
debases him, and that sells him, soul and body, to 
the service of the evil one: It is the bannered motto, 
the rallying word, the battle-cry of all who love Jesus. 
The souls of the martyrs under God's altar cry it, 
when they say, how long, 0, Lord God! The brute 
creation, as it groans under the bondage of vanity, 
lifts to heaven a mutely-eloquent look, as it sighs to 
be delivered by its true king, the paramount Lord, 
ever kind and ever just. . . . Happy they whose 
lips, and hearts, and lives maintain in sweet accord, 
this as their conti^md petition, 'Thy kingdom come,' 
and who take up,"VJfh""the full consent of their souls, 
the closing promise of the Bible and the prayer which 
attends it: Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even 
so, come! Lord Jesus." — On the connection of this 
second petition with the first and the third, Tholuck 
remarks: "The work of grace begins by imparting 
to us the true knowledge of God, so that his name 
may be hallowed by us ; the means by which this is 
accomplished is the kingdom of God, that was typi- 
fied in Israel, substantially appeared in Christ, and 
is, in the course of time, brought by him to its final 
completion. Thus the second petition is naturally 
succeeded by the third, pointing to the end to be ac- 
complished, the removal of all discord by bringing 
about a perfect harmony between the creature and 
the will of the Creator. Thus these three petitions 
sustain to each other the relation of beginning, 
means, and end." — When we first met the term 
kingdom of God, or of heaven, (Matt, iii, 2,) we gave 
all those significations of the term that can not be 
called in question. Here may be the most proper 
place — though it may be too long and inconvenient 
a digression for the reader — to state also the view of 
those who contend that the term in its proper Scrip- 
tural sense is not to be applied to the Church of 
God before the second visible coming of Christ. 
This view, which is held by many Evangelical divines 
of Germany at the present time, and has gained of 
late also the assent of some of the most learned 
theologians of England and America, is best pre- 
sented by Dr. C. A. Auberlen, in a treatise entitled: 
,,S3iulifd;e Setjre Dum 9teid;e ©ottee." We are, by 
no means, ready to adopt this view, and shall state 
our objections to it in our comment on Matt. xxiv. 
Yet the pre-Millenarian theory has not yet been fully 
met, and is certainly entitled to far more attention 
and examination than it generally receives. The 
following are the leading thoughts in Dr. Auberlen's 
treatise: "Jehovah had established his kingdom in 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



265 



Israel; on Sinai he had given the law for his king- 
dom and added afterward, through David, the splen- 
dor of human royalty. But the Old Testament 
theocracy was only a dim shadow of that kingdom 
of God foretold by all the prophets, (Dan. ix, 24; 
Isa. ix, 6, 7; xl, 9-11; Jer. xxxi, 31, etc.; Ez. xxvi, 
26, etc.; Joel iii, 1, 2; Mich, v, 1, etc.; Hos. ii, 18, 
etc.,) which the Messiah was to establish on the basis 
of an all-sufficient sacrifice for sin and everlasting 
righteousness, and in which sin is to be abolished, 
the Spirit of God to be poured upon all flesh, and the 
Divine law written upon the tables of the human 
heart. This kingdom of God has its root in the 
incarnation of the Logos, in the Son of God becom- 
ing the Son of man. A new germ of life is im- 
planted from above into the carnal race of Adam, 
destined to leaven humanity and to fill the whole 
world with the glory of God. But in order to accom- 
plish this end, sin must first be expiated. The in- 
carnate Son of God must first taste death for every 
man before he can impart his Divine life to fallen 
humanity. 'Except a corn of wheat fall into the 
ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it 
bringeth forth much fruit' (John xii, 24.) 'Being 
found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and 
became obedient unto death, even the death of the 
cross, wherefore God also has highly exalted him and 
given him a name which is above every name, that 
at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things 
in heaven, and things on earth, and things under tho 
earth; and that every tongue should confess that 
Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.' 
(Phil, ii, 8-11.) When he ascended to heaven, he 
said: " All power is given unto me in heaven and on 
earth." But he travels into a far country to receive 
for himself a kingdom, and then to come again as 
king. (Matt, xxviii, 18; Luke xix, 11, 12.) Jesus, 
therefore, is king. Since his ascension his kingdom 
has been a finished, present fact. Yet as king he is 
far away and invisible in heaven, like God himself, 
upon whose throne he has seated himself; his king- 
dom is not yet revealed, but will be so at his second 
coming. Thus the first period of the kingdom of 
God, during which it does not yet appear in its pe- 
culiar glory, differs from the time of its full mani- 
festation at Christ's second coming. (Col. iii, 3, 4; 
Phil, iii, 20, 21.) To this difference refers a number 
of parables, in which the Lord speaks of the king- 
dom of God. The two periods sustain to each other 
the same relation as seeding and harvest, labor and 
wages, invitation and marriage-feast, expectation and 
possession, serving and reigning, suffering and glory. 
They answer, according to several passages of the 
New Testament, (Matt, x, 24, seq. ; xx, 21-28 ; John 
xv, 18, seq. ; 1 John iv, 17; 2 Tim. ii, 11, seq. ; Rom. 
viii, 17; 1 Pet. iv, 13,) to the two states of Christ, 
his humiliation and his exaltation, his suffering and 
his glory. The first period may also be designated 
as the time of the Church, the second as that of the 
kingdom in its full manifestation. — The first period, 



then, of the kingdom of God is the Church, which, 
placed between Christ's first and second coming, is 
in the world as he was in the world. As Christ was 
the only one that was spiritually alive in the midst 
of dead humanity, so his Church is the center of 
spiritual life in the midst of a carnal race. There- 
fore Pentecost is the birthday of the Church. And 
for this very reason the weapons of her warfare are 
not carnal, but spiritual, and only in so far as they 
are so, they are mighty through God to the pulling 
down of strongholds. (2 Cor. x, 3, 4.) The sword 
of the Spirit is the word of God. As Christ himself 
preached the Gospel of the kingdom, (Matt, iv, 23 ; 
Mark iv, 14,) so he has enjoined it upon his disci- 
ples as their main duty to preach, in his name, re- 
pentance and forgiveness of sins unto all nations. 
(Acts i, 8; Luke xxiv, 46-49; Matt, xxviii, 18-20; 
Mark xvi, 15, 16; John xv, 26, 27.) Whosoever with 
penitence toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus 
Christ turns away from the world, is added to the 
Church of the Lord. The Church of Christ is his 
bride that goes to meet her bridegroom. (2 Cor. xi, 
2; Matt, xxv, 1, etc.; Rev. xix, 7-9; xxii, 17.) 
As long as the bridegroom is absent the bride waits 
for him ; for she knows that the full union with him 
takes not place before his coming to the marriage- 
feast. Then He will raise the Church to his own 
royal dignity, and she will reign with him in his then 
visible kingdom. (Rom. v, 17; Col. iii, 3, 4; Rev. 
iii, 21 ; xx, 4—6.) This is the reason why the Church 
even in the lifetime of the apostles waited for the 
coming of the Lord, for the revelation of his coming. 
For the same reason, the contrast between the Church 
militant and triumphant is for the apostles not iden- 
tical with that between the Church below and that in 
heaven, but with that between the present and future 
axon — age. The whole time of the Church, be it 
short or long, appears as the time of inviting and 
gathering for the marriage-feast of the king. (Matt, 
xxii, 1, etc.) This goal the apostolic Church has con- 
stantly before her eyes, considering herself a stran- 
ger and pilgrim, as Peter testifies. (1 Pet. ii, 11; 
2 Pet. iii, 12.) The Jews wished to possess themselves 
of the glory of the kingdom, without qualifying them- 
selves for it by repentance and faith, they wanted to 
reach the goal without running the race; the Chris- 
tians, on the other hand, are on the way to the goal, 
but they have for many centuries, as it were, lost 
sight of the goal itself. The apostles rejoice in what 
they possess already in Jesus Christ ; but they bear 
their cross and do their work, at the same time, with 
their eyes constantly turned to the coming revelation 
of the Lord and his kingdom. Their spiritual vision 
hastening away over the coming times of the Church, 
which can not bring any thing essentially new for the 
kingdom of God, fixes upon the great day of the 
coming of Christ. For the time of the end, in the 
sense of the apostles, has commenced already. — The 
Church has now a history of almost two thousand 
years. She has extended her sway over many nations 



266 



MATTHEW VI, 1-18. 



of the earth, and has become a power of great influ- 
ence in the world. But while she made inroads into 
the world, the world made in turn inroads into the 
Church. Roman Catholicism is the most gigantic 
result of this mixture of the Church with the world, 
of Christianity with heathen and Jewish elements. 
The Reformation came and showed again to millions 
the true way of salvation. But even this greatest 
event in the history of the Church did not succeed in 
reestablishing the original unity and purity of the 
Church. The Church of Jesus Christ is now divided 
into many particular Churches, all of which are, as 
none can deny, in a smaller and greater degree in- 
ferior to the apostolic Church in fullness of the 
Spirit; so that notwithstanding the great amount of 
gratitude and fealty which we owe to the Church of 
the Reformation, the state of Protestantism gives to 
us, nevertheless, no ground for exultation. The true 
Church of Christ, as the little flock, is scattered among 
these particular Churches all over the earth, and shall 
be gathered at the coming of the Lord from the four 
winds, from one end of heaven to the other, (Matt, 
xxiv, 31,) or, as the Lord says elsewhere, be gathered 
as the good fishes from out of the net of the kingdom 
cast into the whole ocean of nations. (Matt, xiii, 
47, 48.) In the mean time the Church has been ex- 
erting an ennobling influence on the world at large, 
and by her heavenly powers has imprinted upon the 
professedly Christian nations of the earth a character 
that, though it can not be called Christian, in the full 
sense of the term — that is, anointed with the Spirit — ■ 
yet differs so widely from the condition of heathen 
nations that it may justly be called Christian in a 
secondary sense. The history of the world has proven, 
on a grand scale, that godliness is profitable unto all 
things, and has the promise not only of the life to 
come, but also of that which now is. (1 Tim. iv, 8.) 
Some find the realization of the kingdom of God in 
the results of Christian civilization, but it consti- 
tutes only a dim type of the kingdom of God within 
the sphere of nature. Though Christian civilization 
may, in some respects, be compared to the Old Test- 
ament theocracy, we must not overlook that, far 
from being a Divinely-ordained state of things, it 
has resulted to a greater or less degree from human 
frailty, worldly-mindedness of the Church, and a mere 
outward conversion of the world to Christianity. 
Nevertheless, the word of the Lord is fully applicable 
to it : ' destroy it not, for there is a blessing in it' 
(Isa. lxv, 8.) Yea, the results of modern civiliza- 
tion are means of increased usefulness to the Church, 
which needs at this period of the world also the cre- 
ative genius of the arts and sciences in order to 
fulfill her mission in the world. Yet this whole 
sphere of means and effects is of a secondary, tran- 
sient nature, and is, therefore, scarcely ever men- 
tioned in the Scripture, which looks only to the sub- 
stance; it is the outward dress, without which the 
Church can not appear and labor in the world, but 
which she lays aside when she shall appear in her 



own peculiar attire as the glorified body of Christ. 
The difference between the Church and the world, 
between the spiritual and the worldly, continues till 
the coming of Christ. The kingdoms of this world, 
with all that belongs to them, have not yet ceased to 
exist. On the contrary, they will once more rouse all 
their strength against the Church. A mortal wound 
has, indeed, been inflicted on the beast, so that it ap- 
peared slain, and in this respect like the Lamb; but 
this wound has healed again, the antichristian power 
of the world is quickened again, and finds its final 
completion in antichrist, whom the whole world shall 
admire and follow. (Rev. xiii, 3.) For this is the 
New Testament prophecy, of which we see already 
the incipient fulfillment, that in the last days a fall- 
ing away shall come first from the Gospel, and then 
also from the law. (Matt, xxiv, 10, etc. ; 24, etc. ; 
2 Thess. ii, 3; 1 Tim. iv, 1 ; 2 Tim. iii, 1.) The cul- 
minating point of this falling away will be the man 
of sin, the last world-ruler, under whom all elements 
of ungodliness, both on the sphere of politics and 
religion, shall rise in Satanic power against God and 
his Church. (1 Thess. ii, 3, etc. ; Dan. vii, 8, 20, etc. ; 
Rev. xiii, 3, etc.; xi, etc.; xvii, 11, etc.; Matt, xxiv, 
9-21.) When the antichristian state and anti- 
christian civilization shall be arrayed against the 
Church, she will be assailed even more fiercely than 
in the first centuries, where she was an object of rid- 
icule for Grecian philosophy and of bloody persecu- 
tion for the world-power of Rome. The end returns 
to its beginning. And this is, in all probability, the 
real cause why the vision of the apostles hastened 
away over the intervening periods; why they saw in 
the first persecutions and deceptions the premoni- 
tory symptoms of the last. The beginning and the 
end — and they alone are noticed in the Scripture — arc 
essentially the same. In those last times of distress 
and persecution all false, apostatized Churches are 
condemned. The Church of the Lord must come 
down from every human hight, and give up all reli- 
ance upon an arm of flesh. But when she shall 
be thoroughly cleansed and humbled, when she has 
learned, under a realizing sense of her own impo- 
tence, to confide solely in her Heavenly Master, and 
to cry, from the very depths of her soul, Come, Lord 
Jesus! then she is prepared for meeting her bride- 
groom, as the world is ready for the judgment. 
Then appears the Lord to establish, in the sole 
power of his own might, his kingdom of glory upon 
earth, that no flesh may glory. Antichrist with his 
power is destroyed, the Church of the Lord glorified. 
She resembles her Lord in this also, that her last 
time on earth is a passion time, which is followed by 
an exceedingly-glorious resurrection morning, when 
she will be seated upon the throne of majesty and 
power. — Up to the time of the second coming of 
the Lord the elect have been called from out of all 
nations and inwardly prepared for the kingdom of 
God. They have esteemed the reproach of Christ 
greater riches than the treasures in Egypt, (Heb. 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



267 



xi, 26.) Manfully suffering and battling, they have 
labored faithfully for their Master's cause, and traded 
with the talents committed to their charge. (Matt. 
xxv, 14, etc.) Now commences their day of glory, 
the marriage of the Lamb. (Rev. xix, 7.) The dead 
in Christ and those then living, the former by the 
first resurrection, the second by a transformation, 
will be glorified and made like unto Christ. (1 Cor. 
xv, 51, etc.) The Church reigns as queen, with her 
royal Lord, over the earth. The antichristian pow- 
ers are destroyed; Satan is chained in the bottom- 
less pit. The vail is taken away (Isaiah xxv, 7) 
from Israel, and the Gentiles and all the nations of 
the earth, headed again by their first-born brother, 
(Ex. iv, 22,) serve the living God in spirit and in 
truth. Then the kingdoms of this world are become 
the kingdom of our Lord and his Christ. (Rev. 
ii, 15.) The difference between the kingdom of God 
and the kingdom of this world no longer exists. 
The world is now Christianized in the full sense of 
the term. This is the great palingenesia or univer- 
sal regeneration, (Matt, xix, 23,) when there is no 
longer a small number of believers scattered here 
and there, as the stars in the night, but when the 
sun has risen to shine upon the whole, earth, when 
the day of the Lord has come, and all the nations 
of the earth are born of light. (1 Thess. v, 2, 4, etc. : 
Rom. xiii, 11, etc.) It is the great world-sabbath, 
(Heb. iii, 11; iv, 1, etc.; ix,) when our race shall be 
freed from the oppression which it has endured from 
the day of the fall, and shall enjoy its existence in fes- 
tive joy. These are the times of refreshing from the 
presence of the Lord, (Acts iii, 19-21,) the better 
state of things ardently, though for the most part 
unconsciously, longed for by man since centuries. 
Every legitimate ideal of the universal sway of 
Christianity and virtue, ,of harmonious development, 
and the sanctification of all spheres of life, of indi- 
vidual and national prosperity, and universal peace 
shall then meet their fullest realization, aimed at in 
vain before. This is the kingdom of heaven in its 
full revelation, the second great stadium in the de- 
velopment of the New Testament kingdom of God, 
the millennium, as the seer John calls it. (Rev. xx, 
1-6.) — -On this revelation of Jesus Christ and his 
kingdom the eyes of the first Christians were im- 
movably fixed. The same is spoken of not only in 
the Apocalypse, but also in the Gospels and Epistles. 
This revelation Jesus means when he speaks of his 
coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and 
great glory, to be followed by the end of the present 
aion, or world-period. (Matt, xxiv, 30, 31; xiii, 40, 
41; xxv, 6, 10, 19.) This revelation James, and 
Peter, and Paul have in view when they speak of 
Christ's coming as being near at hand, and promise 
to his Church, immediately after the sufferings of 
this life, glory and dominion. (James v, 7, 8 ; 1 Pet. 
i, 5, etc.; iv, 13; v, 4; 1 Thess. i, 10; ii, 19; iii, 13; 
iv, 13, etc.; v, 1, etc.; 20; 2 Thess. i, 7-10; ii, 1, 
etc.; 1 Cor. i, 7, 8; xv, 23; 2 Cor. iv, 17; Rom. viii, 



17; Col. iii, 3, 4; Phil, iii, 20, 21; 2 Tim. ii, 11, 12; 
Tit. ii, 13; Heb. ix, 28.) It is very natural that, of 
things future, those only engage our attention that 
are nearer in point of time and immediately concern 
us, and not those that are more distant. It is for 
this reason that the New Testament shows unto us 
but rarely, and in the fai--distant future, the Lord's 
last appearing for the final judgment of the uni- 
verse, (Matt, xxv, 31, etc.; Rom. ii, 5, etc.; Rev. 
xx, 11, etc.; com p. 1 Pet. iv, 5; 2 Pet. iii, 10,) 
which, however, we confound generally so com- 
pletely with his coming in order to establish his 
kingdom, that we often lose sight of the latter alto- 
gether. With the final judgment all mundane af- 
fairs are wound up. and the end, in the fullest sense 
of the word, has come. (1 Cor. xv, 24-28.) Then 
all men and spirits that oppose God are thrown into 
hell ; whatever could be saved is saved, and heaven 
and earth renewed. (Rev. xxi.) This third ever- 
lasting period of the kingdom of God bears the 
same relation to the preceding one as Christ's state 
of exaltation after his ascension bore to the forty 
days after his resurrection. The glorified Church 
reigns no more, as during the millennium, over a 
world not yet glorified, but every thing, nature itself, 
is renewed. The earth also becomes — if we con- 
tinue the simile introduced above — a shining sun, 
the whole universe becomes spirit, life, glory: God 
is all and in alL Then the Son shall deliver up the 
kingdom to the Father, because he has fulfilled his 
mission and brought back the world unto God. He 
is now no longer king, because royalty still presup- 
poses at least the possibility of opposing powers that 
may have to be put down. He is the head, in whom 
all things are gathered together, and from whom life 
gushes forth, in undisturbed fullness and majesty, 
into the vast organism of the universe." — Thy will 
be doxe ix earth as it is in heavex. This is the 
necessary consequence of the coming of the king- 
dom of God; for where the will of the king is done 
there is a kingdom. The kingdom of God is actu- 
alized when his holy will is done. The petition re- 
fers not to resignation in suffering, which is out of 
question in heaven, but to an active keeping of his 
commandments. "We must distinguish between 
God's controlling will, that is, his pledged and un- 
alterable purpose to overrule all events and all 
agencies to the final establishment of his own de- 
crees, and the universal extension of his own domin- 
ion ; and between God's will of command, that is, 
what he requires of us and what he disapproves in 
us. His will of command he makes known by the 
voice of reason and conscience in part, but more 
perfectly by his written Word and by the influences 
of his Spirit. But God's controlling will is among 
those secret things which belong only to the Lord. 
It is said of the same event, the death of our Lord, 
that it was by the determinate counsel and fore- 
knowledge of God, and yet that the Jews did it by 
wicked hand. In God's will of command it was a 



268 



MATTHEW VI, 1-18. 



crime forbidden solemnly and plainly, and the Jews 
doing it against conscience and Scripture and the 
strivings of the Spirit, did it by wicked hands; and 
it was the very sum and concentration of all wicked- 
ness, the world's greatest crime. In God's wonder- 
working wisdom and kindness, however, his will of 
control brought good out of the unexampled evil, and 
the same event which on the one side was the world's 
greatest crime, became on the other side, and in 
God's sovereign use of it, the world's greatest boon. 
With regard to God's command of will it is our duty 
earnestly and honestly to inquire for it in all the 
channels through which it is to come to us, for be- 
fore we can do the will of God we must become 
acquainted with it, and then we must ask God to 
give us the grace of obedience in action. With re- 
gard to God's controlling will the petition is a request 
that, in the fullness of God's own time, all the visions 
of prophecy may find their accomplishment, and all 
the long and dark mysteries of Providence their so- 
lution and triumphant consummation." (Condensed 
from Williams's lecture on the third petition of our 
Lord's prayer.) — Wesley says on this passage in his 
sermons: "When we pray that the will of God may 
be done in earth as it is in heaven, ... we pray 
that we and all mankind may do the whole will of 
God in all things and nothing else; not the least 
thing but what is the holy and acceptable will of 
God. We pray that we may do the whole will of 
God as he willeth, in a manner that pleases him; 
and lastly, that we may do it because it is his will; 
that, this may be the sole reason and ground, the 
whole and only motive of whatsoever we think, or 
whatsoever we speak or do." The entire fulfillment 
of this petition is, therefore, not to be expected be- 
fore the final completion of the kingdom of God, as 
predicted in both the Old and New Testament (Isa. 
iv, 3; xi, 6; Ix, 19-24; lxi, 10, 11; lxv, 24, 25; 1 
Cor. xv, 28; Rev. xxi, 3, 22, 23; xxii, 3-5.) 

Verse 11. Give us this day our daily bread. 
" Thus far," says Tholuck, " was the petitioner ab- 
sorbed in the contemplation of God; now he becomes 
conscious of his own indigence, and his first petition 
looks to his temporal wants as the basis of his spirit- 
ual life." Some of the earlier Fathers and some mod- 
ern commentators understand by daily bread spiritual 
food, but Bengel is right when he says: "We must 
not wish to be more spiritual than the Spirit intends 
us to be, but understand God in that language in 
which he speaks with us and so speak again with our 
fellow-men." Luther says : " God gives us our daily 
bread even without ever asking him for it, but we 
ask him for it in this petition that he may teach us 
to look upon it as his gift and receive it with devout 
thankfulness." — "This day" reminds us of the un- 
certainty of human life, that with every " to-day" we 
maybe at the end of our journey and have no other 
to-morrow, so that the rich and the poor become 
perfectly alike, both suppliants at the throne of God, 
and the cares of the poor and the security of the rich 



lead daily to new asking and receiving. — "Our" 
involves two important thoughts; namely, on the one 
hand that of our obligation to work and eat our own 
bread, (2 Thess. hi, 12; 1 Thess. iv, 11,) on the other 
hand that of the duty to look upon what we have, 
not as our exclusive property, but as given to us in 
answer to our prayer both for us and our fellow-men, 
and of course for the purpose that we should cheer- 
fully share it with our needy brother, instead of grasp- 
ing it greedily for our own self. — We have already 
taken some gems from Mr. Williams's unsurpassed 
lectures on the Lord's Prayer, and would like to 
quote largely on this petition. But the lecture on 
the fourth petition must be read as a whole. We 
will, therefore, simply indicate its train of thoughts 
by giving an introductory remark and its parts: 
"How majestic is the imagery of Scripture when it 
presents to us our Maker and God, as feeding all 
the orders of his animate creation and ministering 
continually what they constantly need, for the sus- 
tentation of the life which he has bestowed upon 
them ! ' The eyes of all wait upon thee, and thou 
givest them their meat in due season : Thou openest 
thine hand and satisfiest the desire of every liv- 
ing thing.' (Ps. cxlv, 15, 16.) 'He giveth to the 
beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry.' 
(Ps. cxlvii, 9.) . . . To God, in this aspect of his 
government, the prayer now brings us. All the pe- 
titions which precede and which compose the ear- 
lier half of the Lord's Prayer, respect the end for 
which man lives — the glory, dominion, and service 
of his Creator. The later petitions, of which that 
before us is the opening one, have reference to the 
means by which we live; the body by means of 
God's supplies of food; the soul by means of the 
pardon for sin, by the victory over temptation, and 
by the escape from evil in all its forms and all its 
degrees, which we implore and which God bestows. 
. . . In the fourth petition we 1. Confess our depend- 
ence. 2. We pledge our sympathy. 3. We promise 
by implication moderation and contentment." 

Verse 12. And foruive us our debts. The con- 
nection of this with the preceding petition lies in the 
consciousness of the petitioner, that he has no claims 
on what he asks for himself, but receives it of free 
grace, and that the daily bread for his body is of no 
avail for him, except his soul also is daily fed and 
refreshed by the assurance that he has obtained the 
forgiveness of all his sins and is reconciled to God. 
"We need of heaven that it both give and forgive. 
For if it but feed without pardoning and renewing 
us, then our daily bread is but fattening us for the 
slaughter, and like the stalled ox we go but to meet 
the descending ax ; and our abundance is cursed 
like the bursting barns of the rich man whom God 
described as the fool." (Williams.) — As we for- 
give our debtors. The "as" does here not imply 
an equal measure of forgiveness, for if God would 
forgive no man to a greater extent than he himself 
forgives others, no man would probably be saved. 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



269 



The whole second clause must rather be taken as a 
proof that we have already found peace with God. 
For the disposition to forgive is a proof of a state 
of grace. This is the teaching of the Heidelberg 
Catechism, which paraphrases the petition thus: "Do 
not impute unto us sinners our manifold sins, as we 
have also the testimony of thy grace within us, that 
it is our sincere desire to forgive our fellow-men 
from our hearts." Luther also says in his larger 
catechism that this addition is made, "That we may 
have a criterion by which we can know whether we 
are true children of God." At the same time it 
must not be overlooked, that, as the Lord himself ex- 
pressly declares in v. 14, our readiness to forgive is 
the indispensable condition of the pardon of sins, 
committed after justification. A man unwilling to 
forgive would say in this petition as much as: "0 
God, I am thy debtor, so I also have a debtor; now I 
am unwilling to forgive him, do thou, therefore, not 
forgive me." That the petitioner is supposed to be 
a child of God, not an implacable and unforgiven 
sinner, Stier sets forth very clearly in the following 
remarks: "The childlike confidence, arising from the 
assurance of pardon obtained, is presupposed in the 
address and in the first three petitions. In the 
mouth of one who, while uttering the fifth petition, 
becomes for the first time conscious of his sins and 
guilt before God, having never sought pardon in a 
previous act of faith and repentance, the preceding 
petitions and address would have been a solemn 
mockery, and it would certainly be more fit for such 
a one to commence, like the publican, with, ' God be 
merciful to me a sinner!' in order to become first one 
of those who can truthfully say, ' Our Father.' " The 
first pardon, the remission of his sins, each must 
seek by himself, having no warrant to expect it from 
simply including himself in the prayer of the chil- 
dren of God for that pardon, which even they daily 
need. The Lord does not say, as in v. 14, 'our tres- 
passes or crimes,' but uses the much milder term, 
' our debts,' meaning even the very least shortcom- 
ings of God's children in the discharge of their duties 
and in the use of the means of grace, as well as those 
imperfections which adhere even to their very best 
works." The objection against the doctrine of the 
attainability of Christian perfection, on the ground 
that this petition would be needless for perfect Chris- 
tians, Fletcher answers in his "Checks to Anti- 
nomianism," (vol. 2, p. 502,) as follows: 1. "Though 
a perfect Christian does not trespass voluntarily and 
break the law of love, yet he daily breaks the law of 
Adamic perfection through the imperfection of his 
bodily and mental powers ; and he has frequently a 
deeper sense of these involuntary trespasses than 
many weak believers have of their voluntary breaches 
of the moral law. 2. Although a perfect Christian 
has a witness that his sins are now forgiven in the 
court of his conscience, yet he knows the terrors of 
the Lord; he hastens to meet the awful day of God; 
he waits for the Judge; he keeps an eye to the awful 



tribunal, before which he must soon be justified or 
condemned by his words ; he is conscious that his 
final justification is not yet come; and, therefore, he 
would think himself a monster of stupidity and pride, 
if with an eye to his absolution in the great day he 
scrupled saying to the end of his life: Forgive us 
our trespasses. 3. He is surrounded with sinners, 
who daily trespass against him, and whom he is daily 
bound to forgive ; and his praying that he may be 
forgiven now and in the great day ' as he forgives 
others,' reminds him that he may forfeit his pardon, 
and binds him more and more to the performance 
of the important duty of forgiving his enemies. 
And 4, his charity is so ardent that it melts him, as 
it were, into the common mass of mankind. Bowing 
himself, therefore, under all the enormous load of all 
the willful trespasses which his fellow-mortals, and 
particularly his relatives and his brethren, daily com- 
mit against God, he says with a fervor that imperfect 
Christians seldom feel: Forgive us our trespasses. 
Nor do we doubt but, when the spirit of mourning 
leads a numerous assembly of supplicants into the 
vale of humiliation, the person who puts the shoulder 
of faith most readily to the common burden of sin, 
and heaves most powerfully, in order to roll the 
enormous load into the Redeemer's grave, is the 
most perfect penitent, the most exact observer of 
the apostolical precept: Bear ye one another's bur- 
dens, and so fulfill the law of Christ; and of conse- 
quence, we do not scruple to say, that such person is 
the most perfect Christian in the whole assembly." 
Verse 13. The prayer for forgiveness is naturally 
followed by the petition to be preserved from new 
sins. The desire to avoid the seeming discrepancy 
between this petition and James i, 13, has given rise 
to various modifying paraphrases, such as, "Do not 
permit that we should fall into temptation," or, " Do 
not lead us into such temptations as we are not able 
to bear." It is, however, unnecessary to depart in 
the least from the natural meaning of the words of 
the petition. God really leads into temptation, in 
so far as the tempting conditions and circumstances 
are ordained of God. He has, moreover, the right 
to send us trials from which human nature shudders, 
as was, e. g., the temptation of Abraham. But this 
is by no means at variance with James i, 13, where 
the apostle speaks of temptation from within, whose 
originating cause is not God, but man's own lust. 
This very lust makes the temptations from without — 
that is, the tempting conditions and circumstances — 
so very dangerous, and the Christian has, therefore, a 
perfect right, under a keen sense of his own weak- 
ness, to pray to God that he may preserve him from 
new sins and guilt, although he humbly believes that 
God has a right to try him, and confidently trusts 
that he will not tempt him above that he is able to 
bear. As to the seeming discrepancy between the 
sixth petition and James i, 13, we may state still 
further, that when God tempts a man, his object is to 
try him — that is, to give him an opportunity to prove 



270 



MATTHEW VI, 1-18. 



his integrity, while the apostle speaks of a tempta- 
tion whose sole and direct purpose is to lead to the 
commission of sin. — This prayer cheeks, on the one 
hand, that overweening self-reliance which says with 
Peter: "Though I should die with thee, yet will I 
not deny thee;'' on the other hand, that timorousness 
which hinders us from applying to ourselves the 
promise, " That the Lord knoweth how to deliver the 
godly out of temptation." (2 Pet. ii, 9.) He who 
prays in this spirit does not court temptation, and 
meets it when it comes with the weapons God sup- 
plies; yea, if God sees fit to send him temptations 
contrary to his prayer, he looks upon them as God- 
ordained means to try his faith, and they become to 
him objects of joy in the certainty of his moral im- 
provement, (James i, 2 ; Rom. v, 3; 2 Cor. iv, 16; vi, 
10,) and in the brighter prospects of the recompense 
of reward. (Matt, v, 12; Rom. viii, 18.) — But de- 
liver us from evil. Our anxious desire to be kept 
out of temptation rises to a yearning for the perfect 
deliverance from the sin of the world with all its 
effects and in all its bearings. Some have translated 
rov Trov7/pov, from "the evil one," taking it in the 
masculine gender, which is grammatically admissible, 
but we can not believe that this is its import here. 
Stier remarks very justly: "The petition 'deliver us' 
passes over at once into the heavenly doxology : thine 
is the kingdom ! And in this place should Christ do 
his conquered enemy the honor to mention him as 
an object of dread, and should he have enjoined it on 
the redeemed children of the Father to mention him 
at the close of such a prayer? Believe this who 
may, to us it appears unbecoming." Luther quotes 
from Cyprian: "The seven petitions are expressions 
of our wretchedness and indigence, and teach man 
what a miserable and dangerous life he lives here 
upon earth. For a life without God is nothing else 
than blasphemy against God, an exclusion from his 
kingdom, disobedience to the Divine law, a hungry 
land without bread, a career of sin, a dangerous 
journey full of evil." — For thine is. etc. The 
genuineness of the doxology that has been ques- 
tioned by some critics, is vindicated by no writer 
so conclusively as by Mr. Williams, who says: 
"We know that some versions of the New Testa- 
ment, and some manuscripts of the original, omit 
entirely the doxology. But against this omission 
and in favor of retaining the words as a genuine 
portion of the Lord's Prayer, some stress should 
surely be laid on the argument in its favor, from the 
similar burden so often found appended to other 
prayers of Holy Writ. Add to this its natural and 
close cohesion with the whole precedent portion of 
the Lord's Prayer, with which, as Calvin has re- 
marked, it so aptly fits. Remember, again, that the 
Syriac, the oldest of all the versions of the New Test- 
ament, has preserved the clause. And lastly, ob- 
serve that if the hand of forgery had been busy in 
this matter with the New Testament, and had here 
made an addition to Matthew, it seems unaccountable 



why the same temerity should have hesitated to make 
the change uniform, by appending it also to the form 
in Luke. On the other hand, the interpolations 
which have been made in some early transcripts of 
the New Testament have often so evidently proceeded 
on the principle of making the phrases and incidents 
of one Gospel repeat exactly those of another, that 
we can very easily conceive why an early transcriber, 
not finding our closing paragraph in Luke, would be, 
in this spirit of rash and conjectural tampering to 
make symmetrical what God had left various, in- 
duced to omit it here, although the Evangelist, 
Matthew himself, the original writer, had inserted it 
in his Gospel. But if it be asked why should Christ, 
on the one occasion, use this unabridged form, and, 
on the other, described by Luke, repeat the prayer 
with such an omission, it seems a sufficient reply 
that Christ did often reiterate, in substance, at a new 
scene and to another auditory, maxims and parables, 
and lessons, which he had elsewhere, at greater or at 
less length, given to another assemblage of hearers. 
The form of the Prayer in Matthew, was evidently 
presented to the indiscriminate mass of his hearers; 
for their use he gave the form, closing with that 
general appeal to the character and rule and rights 
of God, which they were already prepared to receive, 
from similar language in the Old Testament. The 
other form in Luke was given to his disciples, and 
wanting this final argument with God, would leave, 
apparently, in their minds the impression of a vacu- 
ity — a significant and emphatic break in the current 
of prayer — which the instruction elsewhere given to 
them, to ask all of the Father in his name, would 
enable them to fill up in the appropriate manner. 
For that instruction explicitly to be given even to his 
disciples, it was not yet the fitting time, till the won- 
ders of his crucifixion and resurrection should have 
fully expounded, and finally and unequivocally sealed 
his claims as the Christ of God, and as the way 
through whom only any can come to the Father. 
Yet another reason might be suggested for the vari- 
ance and diminution of the form, as the Evangelist 
Luke has presented it. Foreseeing how easily, how 
early, and how universally his own Churches would 
yield to the tendency to employ the Lord's Prayer in 
that very formalism which he had reprehended — He, 
the head of the Church, might in the fragmentary 
shape and by the minor variations which he, on the 
last occasion, gave to the formulary, have meant to 
record, as by implication and emphatic intimation, 
his anticipatory protest against such idolatry of the 
form. He might thus choose to show that the words 
were not given as the rigid mold of all prayer, but 
as sentences to be inlaid in the ever new and varying 
utterances of the one free and unerring Spirit, who 
maketh intercession for the saints, and in them, ac- 
cording to the mind of God." — The kingdom, the 
supreme control of all created things belong to thee ; 
and the power, (6vva[w; ,) the executive power, by 
which the universe is governed, is in thy hands; and 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



271 



the glory. Some commentators refer the first and 
fourth petitions mainly to the Father, the second and 
fifth to the Son, and the third and sixth to the Holy 
Ghost, and they similarly find in the doxology the 
kingdom — taken here in a wider sense than in the 
second petition, and meaning God's sovereignty, as 
in 1 Chron. xxix, 11 — ascribed to the Father, the 
power to the Son, (Matt, xxviii, 18; 2 Cor. xii, 9; 
Phil, iii, 10; 1 Tim. vi, 14-16; Rev. xii, 10,) and the 
honor or glory to the Holy Ghost. The duty of all 
creatures is to praise God for his power and mighty 
kingdom and all his wondrous works. — Amen, a 
Hebrew word, that, when used at the end of a prayer 
or doxology, means truly, certainly, so let it be. It 
implies a secure repose of the soul in God, springing 
from the full assurance that all these petitions will 
be granted unto every one that offers them up to 
God in the manner prescribed by our Lord. 

Verses 14, 15. What was presupposed in the fifth 
petition is here stated in the form of a condition, 
because not every one that offers the petition is in 
the state of mind presupposed. What importance 
Christ attaches to it that we should exercise com- 
passion toward our fellow-men, as God exercises it 
toward us, we learn also from chapters v, 24; xviii, 
35. An unforgiving heart must never look to God 
for forgiveness. 0, that each and every one would 
often say to himself: how often and for how much 
do I need the forgiveness of God, and I should be 
unwilling to forgive my fellow-men ! It matters not 
whether we have given our neighbor any cause for 



his conduct toward us or not, our duty is to forgive 
him if we expect God to forgive us. Yet we must 
not look upon our readiness to forgive as the only 
condition of receiving the remission of our sins. Re- 
pentance and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ are ab- 
solutely necessary to find acceptance with God. De 
Wette sees in the absence of any reference to Christ's 
mediatorial office in this prayer one of the strongest 
evidences of its being authentic. The fact is, that in 
the nature of the case such a reference was at that time 
impossible, and for this reason a forgiving disposition 
toward our fellow-men is made here the prominent 
condition of our finding acceptance with God. 

Verses 16-18. Jesus now passes on to correct 
the errors of doctrine and practice in vogue among 
the Jews concerning fasting. The obligation to fast 
at stated times is presupposed by our Lord, and, 
therefore, not inculcated; his object is to teach his 
disciples how this duty is to be practiced, and warn 
them against the spirit displaj-ed by the Pharisees in 
their fasts. The term fasting means a total absti- 
nence from all kinds of food for a certain length of 
time, and this is its Scriptural usage throughout. 
(e. g., Is. lviii, 3.) The Bible knows of no partial fast- 
ing. It is the expression of grief and sorrow, and 
has for its object to humble us, to qualify us better 
for meditation, to call our thoughts and senses away 
from the things of this life, and to fix them on the 
realities of the life to come. When it is a merely- 
outward performance, not the truthful expression of 
the inner man, it is worthless. 



E. THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD— THE SUPREME GOOD AND THE 
HIGHEST OBJECT OF LIFE, TO WHICH EVERY THING MUST BE SUBORDINATE. 

Verses 19—34. 

(19) Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth 
corrupt, 1 and where thieves hreak through and steal : 2 (20) hut lay up for your- 
selves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where 
thieves do not hreak through nor steal : (21) for where your treasure is, there will 
your heart be also. (22) The light 3 of the body is the eye : if therefore thine eye 
he single, 4 thy whole body shall be full of light. (23) But if thiue eye be evil, thy 
whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be dark- 
ness, how great is that darkness ! (24) No man can serve two masters : for either he 
will hate the one, and love the other ; or else he will hold to the one, and despise 
the other. Ye can not serve God and mammon. 5 (25) Therefore I say unto you, 
Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink ; nor yet 



1 In Oriental countries, where fashion is not so change- 
able as with us, the treasures of the rich consisted not 
only in gold and silver, but also in costly garments, 
finely-wrought copper, tin, and brass vessels, that could 
easily be destroyed in the manner here indicated. The 
word translated by rust (0pu><ris) means rust that destroys 
copper and other vessels, smut in grains, decay of eata- 
bles, etc. 2 The houses in these countries, especially 



those of the poorer classes, were built of clay, (Job iv, 19.) 
dried by fire in the sun, or of loose stones, so that thieves 
could easily dig through the walls, and get into the inte- 
rior. 3 In Greek, a portable light, such as a lamp, lan- 
tern. * In Greek, also, unclouded, clear, sound, opposed 
to the abnormal, double-seeing eye. 5 Mammon was, 
according to some, a Syrian idol, the god of riches. 
This supposition, however, rests on very slender ground. 



272 



MATTHEW VI, 19-34 



for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the 
body than raiment? (26) Behold the fowls of the air; for they sow not, neither 
do they reap, nor gather into barns ; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them. Are 
ye not much better than they ? (27) Which of you by taking thought can add 
one cubit unto his stature ? 6 (28) And why take ye thought for raiment ? Consider 
the lilies 7 of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin : (29) and 
yet I say unto you, That even Solomon 8 in all his glory was not arrayed like one 
of these. (30) Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, 9 which to-day 
is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, 10 shall he not much more clothe you, ye of 
little faith ? (31) Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat ? or, What 
shall we drink ? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (32) (For after all these things 
do the Gentiles seek :) for your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all 
these things. (33) But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness ; 
and all these things shall be added unto you. (34) Take therefore no thought for 
the morrow : for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient 
unto the day is the evil thereof. 



Preliminary Remarks. The connection with the 
preceding verses is not certain, as appears from the 
conflicting views of commentators. Stier thinks that 
our Lord warns his disciples, from chapter v, 21 to 
chapter vi, 18, against pharisaism, from verses 19-24 
against the undisguised worldly-mindedness of hea- 
thenism, and contrasts in chapter vii, 19, the true with 
the nominal disciple. Lange infers from verses 22- 
24, that the Lord does not speak of heathenism 
proper, but of hypocritical worldliness in general, 
passing from the laying up of treasures by the Phari- 
sees in a figurative sense — that is, their pretended 
works of piety — to their amassing wealth in reality. 
He thinks that the history of the middle ages, of 
monachism and of the hierarchy, plainly teaches 
how close a connection there exists between a false 
spirituality and worldly-mindedness, between fasting 
and the pampering of the belly, between long prayers 



and covetousness, between avarice and alms-giving. 
Tholuck holds the simpler view, wherein the English 
commentators agree with him, that the idea expressed 
in the exhortation to do good works only for God's 
sake, involves and naturally leads to the other, that 
we ought to make the invisible world the end and 
object of all our pursuits. From those works which 
par excellence are called religious works, and which 
really are legitimate fruits of true religion, provided 
they proceed from pure motives, the Lord passes on 
to the ordinary transactions of common life, and 
shows that they require the same purity and sim- 
plicity of heart as the religious works of alms-giving, 
fasting, and prayer. 

Verse 19. To lay up treasures means to desire, 
and labor for, a larger amount of wealth than we 
need to supply our personal wants, to support our 
families, and to carry on our business. Not the pos- 



it is rather the personification of riches, similar to the 
Greek Plutus. Here we have, at all events, to under- 
stand by it riches, gold, silver, and every thing that can 
be procured for money, as honor, pleasure, influence, 
power, ease, etc. 8 The word rendered stature must, by 
all means, be translated age — time of life. The original 
ijAiKi'a means both age and stature. The cubit (jttjxw) was 
originally a measure of length of one-and-a-half feet, but 
is metaphorically also a measure of time, as we speak of 
an inch of time, the hand's-breadth of our life, etc.; for 
it is the object of food and clothing to preserve and prolong 
life, not to add to the hight of the body ; moreover, to add 
one-and-a-half feet to one's length, would be something 
great, while the object here under consideration, even if 
accomplished, is represented as something small and 
unimportant. 7 The white lily, because the official robes 
of Oriental kings were generally white ; or, as this kind 
does not grow wild in Palestine, some, with more reason, 
think that the beautiful, purple, royal, or imperial lily 



is meant here. Its stem is about three feet high, dark 
red, and the flowers form a kind of crown, overtopped 
by a cluster of leaves. (Cant, iv, 5; vi, 2; 1 Kings 
vii, 19.) 8 Comp. 1 Kings x, 23. 9 " The grass of the 
field " is the general expression for herbs and flowers. 
The Hebrews divided the vegetable kingdom into two 
classes, that of trees and shrubs, and that of herbs and 
grasses. When the hot east wind coming from the 
desert blows in Palestine even for two days, every thing 
that has no deep root dries up, and is used for fuel. 
10 The oven in the Orient is nothing but a large, round, 
earthen pot, conical in shape, from two to three feet 
high, that is placed on any frame, e. g., an iron plate. 
If it is thoroughly heated, it is covered up, and the 
dough put on in thin cakes. When there is no oven 
at hand, a hole is dug in the ground, and laid over with 
stones, on which a fire is kindled. As soon as the 
stones are heated the fire is taken away, and the dough 
put on the stones in the form of thin cakes. 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



278 



session of temporal goods, if obtained by fair means, 
or bestowed upon us by a kind Providence, is for- 
bidden, but that greedy disposition that makes the 
accumulation of wealth the principal, if not the only 
object of life. This is the great sin, the curse of the 
Church, which has thus far prevented the couvei - sion 
of the world to God. Against the rich of this de- 
scription, or such as desire to become so, many woes 
are pronounced in the Word of God. (See Mark x, 
23, 24; Luke xviii, 24; James v, 1-5; comp. Amos 
ii, 6, 7.) 

Verse 20. For yourselves. These words are 
worthy of our serious consideration. No one can lay 
up treasures in heaven for others; every one must do 
that for himself. Nor is there any thing selfish in a 
sincere desire of a personal enjoyment of God's favor; 
on the contrary, this very desire is the only means to 
banish selfishness from the heart. He that really 
desires to obtain heavenly treasures, is necessarily 
solicitous that others may share them with him. 

Verse 21. Where your treasure is there will 
your heart be also. From our treasure, the reali- 
zation of our aims and the object of our affections, 
our heart can not possibly be severed. If this treas- 
ure, therefore, is of a worldly nature, the heart will 
cleave to it and be worldly; but if it is spiritual and 
heavenly, the heart is likewise spiritual and heavenly- 
minded. 

Verses 22, 23. The eye is called the light, the 
lantern of the body, not as having light in itself, but 
as the organ of light, and as such it is the guide of 
the body. But in order to receive light and be a 
sure guide for the body, the eye must be healthful 
and clear, not abnormal, double-seeing. The appli- 
cation of this figure is expressed in the words : if the 
light— that is, the organ of light — that is in thee, is 
darkness — that is, gives no light, because it is evil — 
that is, because it receives no light in consequence 
of its being abnormal, how great will be the darkness 
that shrouds your whole body? The question now 
arises, what is that which the Lord compares to the 
natural eye? The answers to this question differ 
widely. Stier and others understand by it the intent 
of the heart. Then the evil eye would be the divided 
heart, which desires to serve God and Mammon at 
the same time, while the single eye would mean that 
state of the heart that sees only one object of love — 
God. But this view is open to the objection that the 
evil eye could not be called " the light that is in thee." 
In order to obviate this difficulty Lange understands 
by "the light that is in thee," the knowledge of God, 
which the scribes and Pharisees had from the Old 
Testament Scriptures, but which in them became 
illusory through the perverted state of their mind, 
and the occasion of leading them astray, even more 
than the utmost darkness. Our objection to this 
interpretation is, that it does not suit the context. 
Tholuck and others understand by this "light" the 
faculty which man has still left after the fall, to 
hear the voice of God, to apprehend the truth 



18 



in other words, the principle which Paul calls the 
inward man, (Rom. vii, 22,) and to which Christ re- 
fers when he says, (John xviii, 37,) "Every one that 
is of the truth heareth my voice." Going a step 
further and completing this view, we understand by 
the inward light, conscience. As the eye can see 
clearly and be a sure guide only when it is healthful 
and has the proper amount of light, so conscience 
can then only be a safe guide when the understand- 
ing is enlightened and the heart upright. There are 
three ideas contained in this simile; namely, 1. Man 
has an organ or faculty to apprehend moral truth. 
This organ is conscience. Without this organ man 
could no more have an idea of God or moral truth 
than a man that is born blind can have an idea of 
color. 2. As the natural eye can become so diseased 
that it can endure light no longer and misleads man, 
so man's moral organ of sight, conscience, can be- 
come so perverted as to be unable to apprehend truth 
any more. How terrible is this state ! The brightest 
light shines in vain when there is no organ to receive 
it. "How great is that darkness!" 3. Nothing has 
so strong a tendency to corrupt the moral organ, 
conscience, as a selfish, avaricious disposition. This 
declaration of our Lord ought to make us shudder, 
and we ought to examine ourselves whether our 
hearts are supremely fixed on God and the riches of 
his grace. 

Verse 24. Here the connection is clear. The 
healthfulness of the inner eye consists in recognizing 
the true, supreme good, as the only one; to this 
must, therefore, every thing else be subordinate. If 
this is not the case, our will necessarily comes into 
conflict with the will of God; our service is claimed 
by two masters, who are so opposed to each other in 
their demands, that it is impossible to serve them 
both at the same time without neglecting the one or 
the other. One of these two diametrically-opposed 
services necessarily becomes an eye-service, or what 
is still worse, a service that involves hatred or con- 
tempt of one of the two masters. The servant (man) 
will either hate the one — God, because he can not 
shake off his allegiance — and love the other, (Mam- 
mon,) or he will hold to the one (God) and despise 
the other — Mammon, since his power over him is a 
usurpation, which he has the ability and will to shake 
off. Man can have only one Master, only one supreme 
good, only one ruling principle of life. If man 
makes the love of the world the ruling principle of 
his heart, and attempts at the same time to worship 
and serve the true God, he must learn to understand 
that he can not possibly serve these two masters, 
without proving false to either of them, and that he 
is in this double service a traitor and hypocrite. — 
This whole argument is based upon the presupposed 
and undeniable truth, that man is under the con- 
trolling influence of a higher power, good or evil. 

Verse 25. The warning against laying up treas- 
ures on earth (v. 19) is naturally followed by the 
general exhortation, (v. 24,) to subordinate every 



274 



MATTHEW VI, 19-34. 



thing to the highest, the true object of life, from 
which the cares of the necessaries of life — the com- 
mon plea for worldly-mindedness — makes no ex- 
ception. Nevertheless, by the care forbidden, we 
have not to understand a proper carefulness, but that 
restless solicitude, that anxiety of mind about the 
present and the future that virtually denies the exist- 
ence of God, at least his providence. From verses 
25-34 the different reasons are stated, why these 
anxious thoughts ought to be banished; they are, 1. 
He that has given the greater, body and soul, should 
he withhold the less, the necessary means of support? 
Is not life more than meat and raiment? Now, when 
man is ordinarily not agitated by the fear of losing 
to-morrow his life or a member of his body, how 
foolish is it to be so greatly troubled about much 
smaller things ! Of what service would food and rai- 
ment be to you without life? (v. 25.) 2. Does God 
not take care of those creatures that are not as good 
as you and more helpless? (vs. 26, 28, 30.) 3. Hu- 
man cares without God avail nothing, (v. 27.) 4. God 
knows of what things ye have need, (v. 32.) 5. 
The future is not under our control, and for the law- 
ful care is the evil of to-day sufficient. — It needs no 
argument to prove that it is not our Lord's intention 
to advocate idleness and careless indifference about 
our temporal affairs ; such practice is contrary to the 
whole tenor and spirit of the religion of Jesus Christ. 

Verse 27. By all our anxious thoughts we can 
accomplish nothing ; we only forfeit whatever claims 
we might have on the Divine goodness. We can 
not add even a handbreadth to our lives by all our 
efforts. 

Verse 28. All that we are and that we have does 
not depend upon our anxious cares, but comes from 
God, from his love, goodness, and providence; and 
should we become as helpless as the flowers in the 
field, God is still able to take care of us. All our 
cares Spring from lack of faith. 

Verse 29. Stier comments on this verse : "Lilies 
have so fine leaves and tunics that man can not re- 
produce them, and yet they have not spun them after 
the fashion of men. This ought to put to shame 
the pride of man, who makes of dress — the humbling 
cover of his nakedness — an object of display and 
ostentation. Solomon's glory is generally taken for 
the ideal of gorgeous apparel. But why does it not 
equal the beauty of the lily? Flowers have their 
natural covering that grows with them, not an arti- 
ficial one that is hung around them by the hands of 
man; and herein consists the beauty of nature and 
innocence. The lily's place is the paradise of God, 



that of Solomon's glory the hotbed of art. that 
men might be wise and learn what this means!" 

Verses 31, 32. It is the principle of heathenism 
to seek only after those things that satisfy man's 
natural wants and sensual desires, and this very 
worldliness of theirs is the cause of their alienation 
from God and of the perversion of their innate God- 
consciousness into polytheism and idolatry. Shall 
the Jew, who has the knowledge of the true God, 
shall the Christian, with the Bible in his hand, not 
rise above them? 

Verse 33. Seek te first. Seek it before ye seek 
any thing else. If you do so no other seeking will 
be necessary, because all these things which we need 
shall be added unto us, and because by seeking the 
kingdom of God we become inwardly free from the 
service of Mammon. — The kingdom of God and 
his righteousness. The kingdom of heaven is here 
called the kingdom of God, because God is repre- 
sented as man's supreme good. To seek the king- 
dom of God is to seek its blessings as they are 
expressed in the Lord's Prayer; its corresponding 
righteousness is delineated in this very Sermon on 
the Mount. — All these things. Godliness is profit- 
able unto all things, having the promise of the life 
that now is, and of that which is to come. (1 Tim. 
iv, 8.) 

Verse 34. The care forbidden here by the Lord 
poisons every blessing by the fear of what may come 
to-morrow, and thus prevents the thankful enjoyment 
of present blessings— this is applicable to the spirit- 
ual as well as the natural life. God gives to each 
and every portion of life its proper share of suffer- 
ings and trouble — how foolish is it to increase that 
measure by unfounded apprehensions about the fu- 
ture ! It is significantly said that the morrow shall 
take thought for the things of itself; this means, 
that for each new day new resources will be discov- 
ered ; this we see beautifully illustrated in the lives 
of Franke, Stilling, and others; in fact, it is daily 
confirmed by the experience of every true child of 
God. As God's promises are given unto us for every 
to-day, we must meet every to-morrow with firm con- 
fidence in God. — The future is in God's hands. It 
ought to be our only concern to perform conscien- 
tiously the duties which to-day imposes upon us. 
Every day has its duties, whose performance requires 
labor and effort, sufficiently taxing our strength with- 
out the additional weight of trouble about the future. 
To neglect present duties in order to attend better to 
what the future may bring is a still greater violation 
of God's appointed order. 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



275 



F. A WARNING, ADDRESSED TO THE DISCIPLES OF CHRIST ESPECIALLY, AGAINST 
CENSORIOUS JUDGING AND INDISCRIMINATING CHARITY. 

Chapter VII, 1—6. 

(1) Judge not, that ye be not judged. (2) For with what judgment ye judge, 
ye shall be judged : and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you 
again. (3) And why beholdest thou the mote 1 that is in thy brother's eye, but 
considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye ? (4) Or how 2 wilt thou say to 
thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye ; and, behold, a beam is in 
thine own eye? (5)- Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye ; 
arid then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. 
(6) Give not that which is holy 3 unto the dogs, 4 neither cast ye your pearls 5 be- 
fore swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. 



Preliminary Remarks. — On the connection of 
this section with the preceding Stier remarks: "It is 
not improbable that the Evangelists in their records 
of the longer discourses of our Savior, omitted some 
of his remarks that formed the connecting link. 
Yet it must not be overlooked that the Oriental dis- 
course lacks that close connection of its parts which 
characterizes ours. The teacher utters his thoughts 
as they present themselves from his overflowing 
heart, without taking great pains to connect them 
logically with each other, and such delivery requires 
a higher degree of attention on the part of the hear- 
ers. In the preceding section the Lord had told his 
disciples they should not be like the Pharisees or the 
heathen. Now he warns them against censorious 
judgment and improper efforts to convert others, 
after they themselves have commenced to seek first 
the kingdom of God and his righteousness." 

Verses 1, 2. Not every kind of judging others is 
forbidden here. Thus the Lord does not forbid, 1. 
That magistrates should judge criminals and con- 
demn them on conviction; for "by me (wisdom) 
kings reign and princes decree justice." (Prov. viii, 
15.) 2. Nor that the Church or society should judge 
and expel from out of its midst such offenders as 
prove a stumbling-block for others, for the Lord him- 
self has commanded this (Matt, xviii, 17) with regard 
to those who neglect to hear the Church. 3. Nor 
that a believer may pass a judgment on the open 
and well-known conduct of his brethren, for this is 
commanded. (Lev. xix, 17; Rom. xvi, 17; 1 Cor. 
v, 11, etc.) But he forbids here all officious, rash 
judging, all condemning without respect to the par- 
doning mercy of God, in short, such judging of 
others as violates the law of love. This injunction 



of our Lord is violated in various ways: 1. By sus- 
pecting our neighbor to be guilty of a crime or mis- 
deed, of which he is innocent. 2. By suspecting him 
to be more guilty than is really the case, to which 
human nature is very prone. 3. By pronouncing 
without sufficient evidence, even in our own minds, a 
judgment of condemnation. Whether our suspicions 
are well founded or not does not alter the case, for it 
is absolutely wrong to condemn on mere suspicion. 
If we violate the law of love in judging the conduct 
of others, we can not expect a better treatment at 
their hands, yea, we provoke them to pass equally- 
unwarrantable judgments on us, to become our slan- 
derers. At all events, we expose ourselves to the 
rigid judgment of God. 

Verses 3-5. And why beholdest thou the mote ? 
etc. Wesley refers the practice forbidden in these 
verses exclusively to the treatment of the children 
of God by the world, and understands by the beam 
the impenitence, selfishness, pride, worldliness, and 
indifference of the man of the world; by the mote, 
the infirmities and errors of the children of God. 
But, however true it is that the infirmities of Chris- 
ians are, really, only motes when compared with the 
beams of a censorious world, yet we must say that 
this idea is not contained in the text. All expositors 
agree that while verses 1 and 2 forbid all kinds of 
officious, rash judging, verses 3 and 4 condemn the 
spirit of fault-finding among brethren, and daily ex- 
perience but too much justifies this view. This per- 
nicious, contemptible spirit of fault-finding among 
brethren, the practice of examining the brother's eye 
in order to find some defect there, while one's own 
faults are readily overlooked and ignored, is too com- 
mon. A truly single eye has neither mote nor beam 



? A mote — any small, dry particle, as of chaff, wood, or 
the like, that may get into the eye, where it causes pain 
or obstructs the vision. 2 How— that is, what entitles 
you to it? s That which is holy, an allusion to what 
is destined for the service of God — the meat offered in 



sacrifice. (Lev. xxii, 2-7.) * Dogs were ceremonially 
unclean animals, whose price was forbidden to be 
brought into the house of the Lord by any vow. (Deut. 
xxiii, 18.) 5 Pearls resembled in appearance peas or 
acorns, the usual and favorite feed of swine. 



276 



MATTHEW VII, 7-29. 



ia itself, nor suspects them in others. It is this 
searching for faults in others which is here so strongly 
condemned by our Savior. Thou oughtest to have 
examined thyself first, for in thine own eye there is a 
beam. This beam is thy officious, rash, and harsh 
judging of others. Ob — that is, if it was not so, 
how couldst thou say so dictatorially to thy brother, 
"Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye," as 
if thou couldst say: "I am better than you, and, 
therefore, I have taken it in hand to set you right!" — 
Thou hypocrite. This term is deservedly applied 
by our Savior to those that are so ready to discover 
and to reprove the faults of others. The disciple of 
Christ, in so far as he has become imbued with this 
spirit, ought, first of all, to humble himself before 
his Maker, and with a contrite spirit pray for for- 
giveness, that he himself may stand justified before 
God. But how is a man to "take out the beam out 
of his own eye?" Can any man do this of himself? 
The natural man, of course, can not, but Christ 
addresses here not this class of men, but his own 
disciples, who as such possess and know the necessary 
grace, though they may have neglected to seek or to 
use it. Not before we are repossessed of this spirit 
of love are we able to examine with an unbiased eye 
our brother's case, and to pronounce an impartial 
judgment, not based upon mere appearances. 

Verse 6. The precept which enjoins leniency in 
judging others is very appropriately followed by the 
warning not to carry it to the other extreme of exer- 
cising no judgment at all on the character of those 
before whom holy things are brought. He that for- 
bids judging commands the exercise of judgment. 
(1 Thess. v, 21.) The child of God must necessarily 
use his judgment in order to distinguish between 
what is true and what is false. From the treatment 
of brethren, which is the more effectual the more it 
breathes the spirit of kindness, the Lord passes on to 
the treatment of such as he calls dogs and swine. 



The term "dog" is applied in the New Testament to 
those that are hardened in heart and positively hate 
the Gospel. (Phil, iii, 2; 2 Pet. ii, 22; Rev. xxii, 
15.) In the same way the epithet "swine" or"sow" 
is applied to the callous sensualist, who makes of 
what is holy no other use than to defile it. The 
meaning of our Savior's warning is, accordingly, 
this: as soon as it is fully demonstrated that men 
deserve these names, that they are determined ene- 
mies of God and the Gospel, that they are blas- 
phemers and workers of all kinds of uncleanness and 
iniquity, we must not dispute with them nor bring 
before them religious truths for which they have no 
organs of apprehension, neither eyes to see nor ears 
to hear, and which, therefore, they can not under- 
stand in their hearts. As pearls are not thrown be- 
fore swine to be trampled under their feet, so we 
must not bring holy things before those that would 
merely profane and abuse them. Such characters 
must be made to tremble, and if an impression can 
be made upon them at all, the law alone with its 
peremptory commands and threatening penalties will 
do it. By the "giving of loliat is holy to the dogs" 
Stier understands an indiscriminate sentimental offer 
of the promises of the Gospel and admission to the 
sacraments of the Church, and by the " casting of 
pearls before swine" holding up before the world the 
mysterious operations of Divine grace on the heart 
without regard to place and time. The warning 
refers not so much to the testimony of the truth 
itself, which we owe to all men, as to the time, man- 
ner, etc., of giving it; an indiscriminate giving, a 
casting, as it were, before men's feet is forbidden, 
because both the reception of the truth is thereby 
hindered, and the well-meaning but imprudent giver 
exposes himself unnecessarily to ridicule and perse- 
cution. Wherever we discover, however, any sus- 
ceptibility, it is our duty to deliver our message of 
peace. (Matt, x; Luke x.) 



G. VARIOUS CONCLUDING REMARKS ; 
Namely, 1. An exhortation to prayer, supported by glorious promises, (vs. 7-11;) 2. The universal and 

INFALLIBLE RULE OF CONDUCT TOWARD OUR NEIGHBOR, (v. 12 ;) 3. An EXHORTATION NOT TO SHUN THE ONLY WAY 
TO LIFE, HOWEVER DIFFICULT IT IS; 4. A WARNING AGAINST DECEPTION BY OTHERS AND BY ONE'S SELF, (VS. 15-23;) 
5. AN EXHORTATION TO CARRY THE TRUTHS LISTENED TO INTO PRACTICE, (VS. 24-27.) 

Verses Y — SO. 



(7) Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall 
be opened unto you: (8) for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh 
findeth ; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. (9) Or what man is there 
of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone ? (10) Or if he ask a 
fish, will -he give him a serpent? (11) If ye then, being evil, know how to give 
good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in 
heaven give good things to them that ask him? (12) Therefore all things whatso- 
ever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them : for this is the 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



277 



law and the prophets. (13) Enter ye in at the strait gate: l for wide is the gate, 
and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in 
thereat : (14) because 2 strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto 
life, and few there be that find it. (15) Beware of false prophets, which come to 
you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. (16) Ye shall 
know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, 3 or figs of thistles ? i 
(17) Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bring- 
eth forth evil fruit. (18) A good tree can not bring forth evil fruit, neither can a 
corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. (19) Every tree that bringeth not forth good 
fruit, is hewn down, and cast into the fire. (20) Wherefore by their fruits ye shall 
know them. (21) !N"ot every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into 
the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in 
heaven. (22) Many will say to me in that day, 5 Lord, Lord, have we not prophe- 
sied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? 6 and in thy name done 
many wonderful works? (23) And then will I profess unto them, I never knew 
you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. (24) Therefore whosoever heareth 
these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which 
built his house upon a rock : (25) and the rain descended, and the floods came, and 
the winds blew, 7 and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded 
upon a rock. (26) And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth 
them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the 
sand : (27) and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and 
beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it. (28) And it came 
to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his 
doctrine : (29) for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. 



Preliminary Remarks. — Those expositors, in 
whose opinion the peroration of the Sermon of the 
Mount commences with verse 13 or 21 of chapter vii, 
connect this with the preceding section by taking 
what our Lord says in verses 7-11 as a further in- 
struction on the proper exercise of judgment; namely, 
by what means his disciples might succeed in keep- 
ing the proper mean between judging rashly and 
acting without any judgment. But we are rather 
inclined to connect this exhortation to prayer with 
the whole righteousness demanded in the preceding 
part of the discourse, and we see no reason why the 
peroration could not commence as well with verse 7 
as either of the subsequent verses. 

Verses 7, 8. To whom and for what we ought to 
pray is self-evident, The three different expressions 



constitute a beautiful gradation in enforcing intense, 
continual prayer. The exhortation to seek refers to 
that old promise recorded (Deut. iv, 29) that God 
shall be found by all that seek with their whole heart 
and their whole soul. To him that asks, the object 
of his desire appears as something that he is desti- 
tute of; to him that seeks, as something that he has 
lost; to him that knocks, as something that is locked 
up. Verse 8 greatly confirms the promises of verse 7. 
The words "Every one that asketh," etc., are in- 
tended as a reproof and remedy for that lack of 
faith, or little faith, which scarcely dares to claim 
any promise for its own prayer. At the same time 
they also intimate that he who does not ask, seek, or 
knock, will receive nothing from the Lord. Ask, 
become a beggar at the gate of grace, and ask with 



1 Cities were in ancient times surrounded with walls, 
furnished with wide or strait and narrow gates, (by- 
doors.) The wide gates were at the principal streets, 
and intended for public use, while the by-doors were in 
retired spots, intended only for private use, and had, 
therefore, " only here and there a traveler." 2 For Jn 
(because) another reading is tL (how,) which is received 
by most modern critics. 3 The buckthorn is probably 



meant, which bears useless, black berries, closely re- 
sembling grapes. * Thistles have a crown of flowers 
not unlike figs. Thistles and thorns bear beautiful 
flowers, but no fruit. 5 That is, on the day of judg- 
ment. 6 In Greek, demons. The term "devil" is used 
in the Greek text only of the chief of evil spirits. 
7 The rain, the 'floods, the winds — frequent and well- 
known phenomena, testing the stability of buildings. 



278 



MATTHEW VII, 7-29. 



humble confidence. Seek: thou hast lost thy God, 
thy soul, thy paradise; seek, therefore, carefully and 
at the right place. Knock: be in earnest, knock 
hard, and again and again. 

Verses 9, 10. Verse 9 ought to be translated, 
'Which of you is a man? he (that is) will certainly 
not give a stone if his son asks him for bread," etc., 
our Lord declaring thereby, that he that does is no 
longer a man, a human being. What man will be so 
unfeeling and cruel against his entreating child to 
give it for a cake of bread a hard stone, or for a 
fish a noxious serpent, or, as Luke adds, a venomous 
scorpion for an egg? Ye, then, know how to give 
good gifts to your children ; ye do so from that impulse 
of nature which God has implanted in you. How 
much more your Father in heaven ! It is worthy of 
note that the Lord substitutes for the mere refusal — 
the offering of a stone or of a serpent. Stier sees in 
this a new idea. Parents know how to distinguish 
between what is good and evil for their children, giv- 
ing them only what is good for them, and withhold- 
ing whatever might be hurtful; how much more will 
God act thus! What is hurtful to us, or what is not- 
conducive to our real welfare, he will withhold from 
us, even if we should most urgently ask him for it. 
To us, in our short-sightedness, it may seem as neces- 
sary as a piece of bread to a hungry child; but God 
in his infinite wisdom sees, that if he should give it 
to us it would prove as useless as a stone to a child, 
or as dangerous as a serpent, and for this reason he 
withholds it. 

Verse 11. If ye then being evil. According to 
Stier these words contain one of the strongest proofs 
that all men are naturally depraved, and that our 
Lord is more than a mere man, inasmuch as he 
exempts himself in this declaration from all other 
men. — The argument is: If in men who, without 
exception, are depraved and evil, and who lack true, 
unchanging love, nevertheless paternal affection is 
so strong that they give good gifts to their children, 
how much more will our Heavenly Father, whose 
love is infinitely stronger, whose very nature is to 
give, grant good gifts (Luke xi, 13, says 'the Holy 
Ghost') unto them that ask him! 

Verse 12. In this so-called golden rule the Lord 
comprehends the whole law, as far as it has a bearing 
on our conduct toward our fellow-men. This rule is 
easy to be understood, universally acknowledged to 
be reasonable and just, and most salutary in its 
effects, and would, if it were universally observed, 
remove most of the sufferings of mankind. The 
consecutive particle, "therefore," refers not to what 
immediately precedes, but to all the precepts laid 
down by our Savior throughout his whole sermon. 
It is worthy of note, that both the rabbins and heathen 
philosophers had this rule in a negative form, and so 
it is still proverbially used, "do not do unto others 
what you do not wish them to do unto you." But 
the Lord bringing it nearer the conscience, says: 
"All things whatsoever ye would that men should do 



to you, do ye even so to them." He that does to 
his neighbor every thing that he may in justice and 
mercy demand of him, has fulfilled the law. The 
commandment enjoins love from a pure heart; but 
this purity of heart is found only where sin is par- 
doned through faith, by the grace of him who has 
come to fulfill the law and the prophets, (chap, v, 17,) 
and in this sense the Lord says: "This ia the law 
and the prophets." 

Verses 13, 14 In these verses the Lord calls the 
attention of his hearers directly to the world to come. 
Corresponding to the awful contrast of heaven and 
hell, the final abodes of men, is the contrast between 
the strait and the wide gate, between the many that 
go in at the broad way and the few that find the nar- 
row way. But what have we to understand by the 
two gates? By the strait gate conviction and con- 
version, the beginning of the new life, is generally 
understood, and by the wide gate natural depravity. 
But Stier, Tholuck, and Olshausen understand by 
the narrow way, the way to heaven, as described in 
the whole discourse, and by the strait gate the" en- 
trance into the kingdom of glory, as is the case in 
Matt, xix, 24; Luke xiii, 24, 25. Stier remarks 
further : " With the words ' enter in at the strait gate,' 
the Lord has, indeed, represented the gate as close 
by, as if it were just before us, but this is the case 
only in the same sense in which the kingdom of 
glory is also represented as near. In the exhorta- 
tion, the gate and the way are combined into one, 
because the way is at the same time the gate, in so 
far as he who walks in the way can not miss the 
gate. AVhile exhorting us to choose the right way, 
he takes his language from the decisive goal, the 
entrance into heaven. The wide gate is the wide 
open mouth of hell, (Isa. v, 14; Heb. ii, 5; Prov. 
xxx, 15, 16,) into which men rush headlong by 
crowds ; no one need seek the broad way that leads 
to the wide gate — it is as broad as the world, every 
one that is unregenerate stands and walks in it and 
can not possibly miss its terminus, if he but follows 
the impulses of his nature, since all roads, with the 
only exception of the strait one, form but one broad 
road leading to the gate of hell. But the narrow 
way is rocky and little beaten, by-roads continually 
branch off from it to the right and the left up to its 
termination, so thai many leave it even when they 
are almost there, (Luke xiii, 24;) it must, therefore, 
be sought not only at the outset, but be traveled with 
carefulness and great circumspection, till its end is 
actually reached." Although there are grand truths 
in the extract from Stier, which ought to be pondered 
well by every serious mind, yet his exposition is open 
to the following objections. What is enjoined in 
"enter in at the strait gate," is an act that is neither 
often to be repeated nor to be continued through 
life, but to be done at once and forever; the impera- 
tive aorist (hacWcTe) necessarily conveying this idea. 
That the sacred writer observed this idiom of the 
Greek language, appears plainly from verse 15, where 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



279 



by irpooexETe, something is commanded that forms a 
duty for life. The "entering in at the strait gate" 
means, therefore, in the case of those whom Jesus 
addressed, their becoming his open, professed follow- 
ers, their tearing themselves loose from their carnal 
Messianic prejudices, from friends and kindred, who 
opposed their step, etc. ; in the case of every human 
being the efforts necessary on his part for an en- 
trance into the new Divine life — that is, repentance 
and conversion. Again, Stier paints the pilgrim's 
progress too cheerless and gloomy; though the Chris- 
tian at every stage of his journey is beset by enemies 
and dangers, and though the abstract possibility of 
total apostasy at any moment is not denied, we must, 
nevertheless, maintain, that the child of God receives 
continually such unmistakable tokens of his Father's 
love, that he is perfectly happy, and every doubt as to 
his acceptance and whether his way is the narrow one 
disappears. — Dr. A. Clarke remarks on this passage: 
" The way to the kingdom of God is sufficiently mani- 
fest — the completest assistance is promised in the 
way, and the greatest encouragement to persevere to 
the end is held out in the everlasting Gospel. But 
men are so wedded to their own passions, and so de- 
termined to follow the inclinations of their own 
hearts, that there are few who find the way to 
heaven ; fewer yet who abide any time in it ; fewer 
still who walk in it; and fewest of all who persevere 
unto the end. Nothing renders this way either nar- 
row or difficult to any person, but sin. Let all the 
world leave their sins, and all the world may walk 
abreast in this good way." 

Verse 15. The difficulty connected with the find- 
ing of the narrow way naturally suggests the idea of 
guides who point it out; but there being too many 
among the professional guides who know nothing of 
the way themselves, and whose sole object is to mis- 
lead those that may confide themselves to them, the 
Lord warns against false prophets. A prophet is 
he who speaks in the name of God and claims to be 
a messenger of God. During the whole of the 
Sermon of the Mount the Lord had proven himself 
as the true prophet that was to come, (John vi, 14;) 
hence the exhortation : Retain firmly what I have 
told you; after me others will speak to you — beware 
of them ! We find here the same idea that is ex- 
pressed in John x, 8: "All that ever came before me 
are thieves and robbers — that is, all that passing by 
me as the door do not really come in my name, all 
that will teach differently from me are thieves and 
robbers, to whom the sheep must not listen!" In 
. the case of the disciples and the listening multitude 
the false prophets were the scribes; all subsequent 
followers of Christ are warned against the false 
teachers of every description to the end of the world, 
of whom Christ speaks in Matt. xxiv. By sheep's 
clothing some understand the official garb of proph- 
ets, who wore sheep or goat-skins; others the outward 
appearance of a true member of Christ's flock. Stier 
thinks that both are meant. With special reference 



to the frequent Old Testament warnings against false 
prophets the Savior means to say, " They — the false 
prophets — pass themselves for guides and shepherds, 
going before the flock, of which they must, of course, 
be true members before they can assume the office 
of guides; but they deceive you, they wear merely 
the dress of sheep, without belonging in reality to 
the flock." At the same time the expression has 
also reference to the official garment of the prophets. 
(Zech. xiii, 4.) The Lord combines here the Old 
Testament phraseology with a form of expression 
common among other nations, so that in the simile 
before us /Esop's wolf in sheep's clothing, and the 
Jewish deceiver in the prophet's garment, fully coin- 
cide. That these disguised wolves are called "raven- 
ing," exhibits the picture in a still bolder relief, 
pointing out the great danger to which the poor de- 
luded sheep are subject. (John x, 10-12; Acts xx, 
29.) But what is in the application the real import 
of the sheep's clothing? "All good outward appear- 
ance, in so far as it forms a contrast to an inward 
reality; consequently, on the one hand, the enticing 
words of a hypocritical orthodoxy, (Col. ii, 4; Eph. 
v, 6; Rom. xvi, 8,) on the other hand, the form of 
godliness without its power; in short, whatever would 
fain pass for pure, genuine truth, but is in reality 
intermixed with error, whatever has the appearance 
of righteousness and purity without being a genuine 
fruit of the Spirit." Dr. Clarke understands by the 
false prophets, simple hirelings, whose walk is the 
opposite of their profession and teaching. But how 
could, then, their character and conduct be called 
sheep's clothing? 

Verses 16, 17. These false prophets shall be 
known by their fruits. Now, what are these fruits ? 
Some understand by them the doctrine, others the 
conduct of the prophets, and others again the results 
of their labors ; but neither of these constitutes for 
itself a safe criterion. True doctrine is in itself no 
sufficient criterion, since it may be merely the letter, 
committed to memory; nor the outward conduct by 
itself, since even false teachers may lead an unex- 
ceptional life, as, e. g., Pelagius, and man can not 
look into another's heart. Even the results of a 
man's labors alone do not justify a conclusion as to 
his real character, because the absence of good re- 
sults is not always the teacher's fault. We must, 
therefore, take all these things together and under- 
stand by the fruits all the fruit which every good tree 
bringeth forth, (v. 17,) the fruits of the Spirit, which 
are found in all true disciples, and possessed of 
which they can distinguish between true and false 
prophets. The Lord compares the false prophets to 
thistles and thorns, the true ones to vines and fig- 
trees. Beautifully says Bengel: "The fruit is that 
which a man puts forth like a tree from the good or 
evil disposition pervading all his inward powers. A 
doctrine learned from others and readily delivered is 
not fruit, but all that a teacher puts forth from his 
heart, in walk and conversation, as something flowing 



280 



MATTHEW VII, 7-29. 



from his own inner being, like milk from the mother. 
Not his speech alone makes a prophet true or false, 
but the whole tenor of his life, by which he leads 
himself and others to life or destruction." 

Verses 18-20. From verses 17 and 18 it follows, 
that if the tree bring forth no good fruit it certainly 
brings forth evil fruit. In both verse 1 9 and chapter 
xxv, 42-45, the absence of good fruit alone is men- 
tioned as the cause of damnation; this deserves the 
special attention of those who in their blindness are 
ready to ask, " What evil have I done to merit dam- 
nation?" Verse 19 shows clearly that by the fruits, 
by which we are to distinguish the true from the 
false prophet, we have to understand the manifesta- 
tions of that change of heart which Christ had clearly 
unfolded throughout his whole discourse, the doing 
of the will of God, the fruits of the Spirit. Gerlach 
says: "In Christianity doctrine and conduct are so 
intimately connected, that every one who leads an 
ungodly life is at the same time a false prophet, a 
false teacher, who has not the true doctrine; since 
by preaching the true doctrine he would condemn 
himself." This is very true; yet it also occurs that 
unconverted men may enter the lists of orthodoxy 
from selfish motives. Again many hold great errors 
along with some fundamental truths, and sometimes 
it is not easy to detect these errors. For this very 
reason the Lord warns his disciples not to follow the 
voice of strangers, (John x, 5,) and enjoins upon 
them such an acquaintance with the sacred Scrip- 
tures as to enable them to distinguish truth from 
error. (Acts vii, 11.) Dr. Clarke says: "Let us 
remember that as a good tree means a good heart, 
and the good fruit a holy life, and that every heart is 
naturally vicious, so there is none but God who can 
pluck up the vicious tree, and create a good heart. 
Love to God and man is the root of the good tree, 
and from this principle all its fruit is found. . . . 
To teach, as some have done, that a state of salvation 
may be consistent with the greatest crimes, or that 
the righteous necessarily sin in all their best works, 
is really to make the good tree bring forth bad fruit 
and to give the lie to the Author of eternal truth." 

Verse 21. Having pronounced the doom of false 
prophets, he now sits in judgment on all who at the 
great day shall be found wanting. A practical, full 
obedience to all his commandments, not a mere pro- 
fession of his name, is the indispensable condition 
of entering into his kingdom. Rationalists have 
perverted this passage, as if all public profession of 
Christ was denounced, as if the Lord had said: " Not 
those who say Lord, Lord;" while he in reality says, 
"Not every one that says unto me." To confess him 
openly is expressly enjoined as a duty, (Matt, x, 32, 
33; Luke xii, 8, 9;) but this outward confession 
alone is not sufficient. — He that does the will of 
my Father. Inasmuch as the will of the Father is 
fully revealed by the Son, whom he commands us to 
hear, all his commandments may be comprehended 
in that, to believe in his Son. (1 John iii, 23.) 



Verses 22, 23. In the preceding verses Christ 
had warned his disciples against deception by others — ■ 
in these he warns them against deceiving themselves. 
The worst kind of self-deception is that delusion 
which makes the sinner confident of his final ac- 
ceptance with God to the very day of judgment. 
This self-conceit, not an actual talking or conver- 
sation, is evidently meant here. How this false 
notion can last through hades to the day. of judg- 
ment, the Bible does not disclose. It is, moreover, 
worthy of note, that the individuals that are here 
introduced as speaking, do not base their expectation 
of heaven on Christ, in whom alone there is salva- 
tion, but on their own works, upon what they have 
done. They say not a word about what Christ has 
done for them, but declaim what they themselves have 
done. — Prophesying means in the Scriptures not 
only to foretell future events, but also to speak from 
higher inspiration unto others to edification, exhorta- 
tion, and comfort. (Rom. xii, 6; 1 Cor. xiii, 2, 9; 
xiv, 3, 4.) Its object in the latter case is not to re- 
veal new truths, but powerfully to affect the heart by 
interpreting and applying the revealed truths. In a 
still more extensive sense every lofty, affecting, and 
impressive discourse may be called prophesying, and 
in this sense the wicked also may prophesy. Truth 
may powerfully affect a man's emotional nature, his 
imagination, and intellect, while heart and will are 
but little impressed. 0, how many a powerful preacher 
of the Gospel comes under the condemnation, to 
preach the saving truths unto others, and to be or 
become himself a castaway! Dr. A. Clarke remarks 
that God may for his own sake, and in order to save 
immortal souls, bless the labors of such men, and ex- 
claims: "Alas! alas! how many preachers are there 
who appear prophets in their pulpits; how many 
writers and other Evangelical workmen, the miracles 
of whose labors, learning, and doctrine we admire, 
who are nothing and worse than nothing before God, 
because they do not perform his will, but their own ! 
What an awful condition, that a man of eminent 
gifts, whose talents are a source of public utility, 
should be only as a way-mark or finger-post in the 
way to eternal bliss, pointing out the road to others, 
without walking in it himself!" — And in thy name 

HAVE CAST OUT DEVILS? AND IN THY NAME HAVE 

done many wonderful works? The Greek word, 
dwdfieic, translated wonderful works, means supernat- 
ural works, miracles. The question, therefore, arises 
whether the assertion of these men to have per- 
formed supernatural works may be believed, or 
whether they merely pretend to have done what they 
were unable to do? We take the ground, that super- 
natural or superhuman works may be performed by 
false prophets. It is true, miracles were intended for 
a criterion to judge Divine messengers by (see Matt. 
xvi, 17, 18, and passim.) Other and even more im- 
portant criteria, however, were the nature of the 
doctrines preached and the effects of a sincere obe- 
dience to those doctrines, as well as the lives of the 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



281 



messengers themselves. The reality of the miracle — 
diivaficc — is expressly declared by Moses, (Deut. xiii, 
1, 2,) for and by itself not to be sufficient evidence 
of the prophet's claims, but the miracle is to be esti- 
mated by the doctrine which he preached. (Ibid.) 
That through the two dispensations there are running 
along with Divine miracles satanic signs and won- 
ders, is taught in so many plain passages, that he who 
denies the existence of the latter can, certainly, not 
appeal to the Bible. (See, e. g., Matt, xxiv, 24; 
2 Thess. ii, 9, etc.) On this point Dr. Bushnell re- 
marks in his "Nature and the Supernatural:" "Any 
invisible spirit who can do what is superhuman, can 
do a miracle. That there are invisible spirits we 
have no doubt, and what kind of access they may 
have to nature, in what manner qualified or re- 
strained, we do not know. But it will never be diffi- 
cult to distinguish their prodigies from any Divine 
operation. Their character will be evident in their 
works, and no one that loves the Divine truth will 
ever be taken by their impostures. We express no 
opinion of the utterances and other demonstrations 
which many are accepting in our times, as the effu- 
sions of spirits — they are beyond our range of ac- 
quaintance. But if these things are really done, or 
communicated by spirits, then they are miracles, bad 
miracles, of course ; and thus we have it established 
as a curious phenomenon, that the men who are 
boasting their rejection of all Divine miracles, are 
themselves deepest in the faith of those which are 
wrought by demons. Nor is it impossible that God 
has suffered this late irruption of lying spirits to be 
at once the punishment and the rectification of that 
shallow unbelief which distinguishes our age — thus 
to shame the absurd folly of what is called science, 
and bring us back to a true faith in the spiritual 
realities and powers of a supernatural kingdom." 
Compare also General Introduction, sec. 22. Why 
God permits these satanic wonders is expressly 
stated by Moses in the passage already quoted: "For 
the Lord your God proveth you to know whether ye 
love the Lord your God with all your heart and all 
your soul;" and the child of God has abundant means 
to protect himself against their pernicious influences. 
The Divine miracle has the honor and glory of God 
and the real amelioration of the condition of man 
for its object, which, of course, is not the case with 
the satanic wonder, as Satan should thereby cease 
being Satan. (Matt, xii, 25, 26.) The object for 
which a miracle is wrought, constitutes thus one of 
the safest criteria of genuine, Divinely-wrought mir- 
acles in distinction from satanic wonders; there are, 
however, still other criteria. A real miracle, involv- 
ing a suspension of the God-ordained laws of nature, 
we consider as possible with God alone; but there 
are intermediate links or steps between the deeds of 
men with their legitimate effects, and Divine opera- 
tions which transcend human powers and human 
knowledge. Whoever believes in the existence of a 
personal Satan, a being of angelic powers and knowl- 



edge of the highest order, can scarcely find any real 
difficulty in giving assent to the position that he may 
be able to do what transcends human power and 
knowledge. In addition to this, it must be observed 
that even such supernatural works as must be ascribed 
to Divine power may be wrought by persons not en- 
joying the Divine favor. Of this kind are the "won- 
derful works" of our text, the wonders performed 
by Judas, possibly also those of some other disciples, 
that were sent out by the Lord at different times; for 
he expressly teaches this possibility, where he tells 
the returning and rejoicing disciples (Luke x, 20) 
that they should not rejoice because the spirits were 
subject unto them, but because their names were 
written in heaven. A remarkable instance of the 
kind was also Balaam, " upon whom the Spirit of the 
Lord came," (Num. xxiv, 2,) though he always was 
and remained a castaway. (2 Pet. ii, 15.) For wise 
and good purposes God may bestow upon some cer- 
tain extraordinary powers, or miraculous gifts, which 
they rashly take for a proof of their Divine accept- 
ance, till the day of judgment dissipates their awful 
delusion. Jugglers and willful deceivers are evi- 
dently not spoken of in this verse, but such as really 
believed on the strength of their miraculous powers 
to belong to God's elect. Let us, therefore, examine 
ourselves with regard to any extraordinary gift which 
we may have received from God, whether we really 
love God and our neighbor, whether we are united 
with Christ by a living faith — without this the highest 
gifts will prove a snare, and finally an everlasting 
curse. — I never knew you— that is, as truly and 
really mine, for although you have " named my name, 
you have not departed from iniquity." (2 Tim. ii, 
19.) — Depart from me, (chap, xxv, 41,) the same 
Jesus whom ye have confessed and preached.- — Ye 
that work iniquity; their hearts had never been 
purified by regeneration, (Tit. iii, 5,) all their works 
had partaken of the nature of their hearts; more- 
over, they had done works positively forbidden by 
God, and they were, in this twofold sense, workers of 
iniquity. 

Verses 24—27. From the scenes of the final judg- 
ment the Lord returns to his whole discourse to en- 
force it by a new simile, taken from circumstances 
and phenomena familiar to his hearers. It was often 
the case in these countries, that houses were built at 
the base of hills, on the banks of rivulets or brooks. 
But these often rose during the rainy season so sud- 
denly and so high, that the houses on their sandy 
banks were swept away. Instead, however, of profit- 
ing by experience, so as to build the new houses at a 
greater distance from the water-beds on solid rocks, 
many were thoughtless enough to build again on the 
old spot, because it required less labor and expense 
than to build on a safe, distant rock. The house, 
says Stier, which a man builds for a safe home, for 
his protection against wind and storm, is the fit em- 
blem of the salvation of the soul built upon an im- 
movable rock. A parallel passage we find in Prov. 



282 



MATTHEW VIII, 1-4. 



xii, 7: "The wicked are overthrown and are not; 
but the house of the righteous shall stand." Those 
who do not think of making any preparation for their 
final abode are not included in our Savior's words; 
he speaks of those alone who fancy they will be saved 
by hearing without doing. Since man's final fate will 
be decided not by his profession, but by the determ- 
ination and decision of his will, we have to under- 
stand by the rocky foundation the carrying into 
practice of Christ's whole doctrine, of which (prac- 
ticing) the hearing is the first indispensable condi- 
tion, since believing, praying, receiving, obeying, 
and doing come from hearing the word of grace and 
truth. Dr. Clarke says: "Talking of Christ, his 
righteousness, merits, and atonement, while the per- 
son is not conformed to his word and spirit, is no 
other than solemn self-deception. It is not the man 
who hears , and believes these sayings of Christ, 
whose building shall stand when the earth and its 
works shall be burned up, but the man who does 
them. Many suppose that the law of Moses is abol- 
ished, merely because it is too strict, and impossible 
to be observed, and that the Gospel was brought in 
to liberate us from its obligations; but let all such 
know that in the whole of the old covenant nothing 
can be found so exceedingly strict and holy as this 
sermon, which Christ lays down as the rule by which 
we are to work. ' Then the fulfilling of these pre- 
cepts is the purchase of glory?' No, it is the way 
only to that glory which has already been purchased 
by the blood of the Lamb ; to him that believes, all 
things are possible." Gerlach also says : "He only 
in whom belief and purpose produce the deed has 
built the house of his salvation upon the rock; a 
mere assent of the understanding, or mere emotions, 
are illusory." The rain descends from above, the 
floods beat against the sides and undermine the base, 
the winds blow violently upon the whole frame — 
against such attacks a rocky foundation alone can 
hold out. The different elements of the trial which 



the building has to stand are mainly intended to set 
forth the extent and violence of the trial. Consid- 
ered by themselves they have been differently inter- 
preted. Dr. Clarke understands by the rain, temporal 
afflictions, coming in the course of Divine Provi- 
dence; by the floods, those trials which come from 
the passions of men; by the winds, the attacks of 
Satan. — Unto a wise man. When there is a dis- 
tinction drawn between wisdom and prudence, we 
understand by prudence more the choosing of the 
proper means, while wisdom is used with reference 
to the choice of the end. The two words, however, 
are often used promiscuously. 

Vekses 28, 29. When Jesus had ended these 
sayings, etc. Learn from these words, 1. That Jesus 
delivered this sermon as one connected whole, that it 
is, therefore, no collection of his sayings at different 
times. 2. What a deep impression did this matchless 
sermon produce on the people that listened to it 
with the utmost attention! They were struck with 
astonishment and awe. 3. The cause of this deep 
impression is stated. Jesus spoke with Divine au- 
thority, and his hearers recognized in him the prom- 
ised prophet. (Deut. xviii, 15.) His words affected 
the hearts by their inward Divine power; he spoke 
as the fountain of wisdom; he spoke with authority. 
The teachings of the scribes were inventions of 
human ingenuity; their hearers could anticipate 
them and go beyond them; but here was a speaker 
who entered into the recesses of their hearts as only 
the Searcher of hearts could do. Heubner says: 
"The sermon of the Lord had a fourfold power, as 
(1) he preached in the full consciousness of his Divine 
commission; (2) with the full power of his own full 
conviction; (3) he was himself what he preached; 
(4) love was the only motive of his preaching. He 
that wishes to preach with power, must have these 
four conditions fulfilled in his person; where this 
is not the case the preaching is insipid and inef- 
fectual." 



CHAPTER VIII. 
10. JESUS HEALS A LEPER. 



Having portrayed Jesus as the great prophet, in the record of his Sermon on the 
Mount, the Evangelist gives us now a series of miracles wrought by the Lord. " This 
remarkable succession of miraculous performances, uninterrupted by discourse or teach- 
ing, is sufficient of itself," as Dr. Alexander remarks, "to create a presumption that the 
incidents here given are not arranged in reference to the time of their occurrence, but to 
some other purpose in the mind of the historian; and this presumption is strengthened 
by the fact that several of these miracles are given in the other Gospels in a different 
chronological connection." For the chronological place, which appears to us the most 
probable to be assigned to them, we refer the reader to the Synoptical Table and to our 
notes on the passages which contain the reason for that chronological arrangement. 



JESUS HEALS A LEPER. 28! 



As we meet here for the first time the record of a miracle wrought by Jesus, we con- 
sider this the proper place to make some general remarks, to which the reader can, in 
future, conveniently refer. How absurd it is to say, " Miracles are impossible" we have 
shown in § 22 of our General Introduction. The verity of the Gospel miracles has been 
proved by the credibility of the Evangelists and the Divine seal stamped upon the Gos- 
pel history by its subject. (§§ 24, 25, 26, 30.) How we can distinguish true, Divine 
miracles from the lying wonders of evil spirits, we have discussed in our remarks on 
chapter via-, 22. We will now add a few remarks on the peculiar natm'e, significance, im- 
portance, and design of the miracles performed by Christ. There are three names for 
miracles in the New Testament; namely, ripara, (wonders,) objects of astonishment; 
crj/iala, (signs,) signifying the relation of what is visible, to its spiritual purpose and 
significance; and dova/j.ets, literally, powers — translated mighty works. 

One of the many features of the picture of the Messiah, drawn in the Old Testament 
Scriptures, is that of the gift of miracles. (See Isaiah xxxv, 4—6.) If Christ had not 
performed miracles, Israel would deservedly have questioned his Messianic dignity. For 
inasmuch as Moses had described the Messiah as a prophet like himself, (Deut. xviii, 
15, 18,) the Jews felt authorized to look for miracles in the Messiah. (John vii, 31; 
comp., also, John ix, 30, 31, 33; iii, 2 ; v, 31-33, 36 ; x, 37, 38.) 

"An objection has been made," says Dr. Bushnell — "Nature and the Supernatural," 
p. 363 — " that, miracles being only demonstrative of force, and having, therefore, in 
themselves no moral quality, there is no rational, or valuable, or even proper place for 
them in a Gospel considered as a new-creating grace for the world. To this we answer 
that it is a thing of no secondary importance for a sinner, down under sin, and held fast 
in its bitter terms of bondage, to see that God has entered into his case with a force that 
is adequate. These mighty works of Jesus, which have been done and duly certified, are 
fit expressions to us of the fact that he can do for us all that we want. Doubtless it is a 
great and difficult thing to regenerate a fallen nature. No person, really awake to his 
miserable and dreadful bondage, ever thought otherwise. But He that touched the blind 
eyes and commanded the leprosy away, He that trod the sea, and raised the dead, and 
burst the bars of death himself, can tame the passions, sweeten the bitter affections, re- 
generate the inbred diseases, and roll back all the storms of the mind. Assured in this 
manner by his miracles, they become arguments of trust, a storehouse of powerful im- 
ages, that invigorate courage and stimulate hope. Broken as we are by our sorrow, cast 
down as we are by our guiltiness, ashamed, and weak, and ready to despair, we can yet 
venture a hope that our great soul-miracle may be done, that, if we can but touch the 
hem of Christ's garment, a virtue will go out of him to heal us. In all dark days and 
darker struggles of the mind, in all outward disasters, and amid all storms upon the sea 
of life, we can yet descry him treading the billows and hear him saying : ' It is I, be not 
afraid !' And lest we should believe the miracles faintly — for there is a busy infidel lurk- 
ing always in our hearts to cheat us of our faith, when he can not reason it away — the 
character of Jesus is ever shining with and through them, in clear, self-evidence, leaving 
them never to stand as raw wonders only of might, but covering them with glory, as 
tokens of a heavenly love, and acts that only suit the proportions of his personal great- 
ness and majesty." 

The reader will thank us for adding to the above extract the following beautiful de- 
scription of the nature, significance, and importance of the Gospel miracles by Westcott 
in his " Introduction to the Study of the Gospels :" 

" The miracles of the Gospel are not isolated facts ; they are not vain repetitions. In 
meaning as well as in time, they lie between the incarnation and ascension. They 
look back to the one event and forward to the other, now bringing God to man and now 
raising man to God, as signs of the full accomplishment of Christ's earthly work. In 
this sense they are all one, and yet they are all different. Each has its proper lesson ; 



284 MATTHEW VIII, 1-4. 



each has its peculiar place. They speak to us in the various crises of life ; they speak to 
us in the very presence of death; they speak to us in joy and sorrow, in the course of 
common duties, in the cares of home, in the house of God. And thus it is that they prop- 
erly belong to the believer, and not to the doubter. They are a treasure rather than a 
bulwark. They are in their inmost sense instruction, and not evidence. And yet as the 
Christian rises to a clearer perception of their distinctness and harmony, as he traces 
their simplicity and depth, as he sees their comprehensive variety and infinite signifi- 
cance, they do become an evidence of his faith — -an evidence of power and wisdom which 
issues not in the silence of repressed doubt, but in the thanksgiving of grateful praise. 

"The miracles were wrought for MS; the record was written for us — for us, and yet 
we live on from day to day, as if we were not heirs of blessings already realized, as if 
we were not cheered by the assurance of yet greater works. I do not stop to inquire 
how far the form of miracles may change, as the world itself changes, but as far as mira- 
cles are flashes of a heavenly life and power bursting through the thin vail of natural 
life, as far as they are revelations of the invisible, epiphanies of the Divine, they belong to 
all time. We may not, we dare not abjure the heritage of the Holy Spirit; and if we 
put it away it will be to our confusion. It is faithlessness alone, our faithlessness, which 
closes the period of miracles. . . . Heaven lies about us still, though we will not 
look beyond the clouds which hide it. Christ is still the same, the word, the light, the 
life to each one of us, and to the masses of which we commonly think only with cold 
hopelessness. The thought is one which we need to cherish for the fulfillment of our 
outer and our inner work. The same powers which conquered sicknesses and death are 
now not less mighty to overcome their spiritual antitypes, the blindness of sensuality and 
the leprosy of caste, the fever of restlessness, the palsy of indolence, the death of sin. 

"The miracles are the sacraments of heavenly realities ; and may God grant to us to 
carry the lessons of the miracles, the lessons of creation and Providence, the lessons of 
mercy and judgment, the lessons of a soul all pre vailing by union with its Savior to our 
common duties ! May he grant to us to use the power which he gives to his service, and 
to enjoy the future which he offers to his praise !" 

As regards the different modes of miraculous power manifested by Christ, his mira- 
cles may be divided into four classes; namely, 1. Those manifesting his power over out- 
ward inanimate nature. 2. Over the world of spirits. 3. Over his own bodily organism 
and that of others. 4. Those manifesting his knowledge of what was absent in regard 
to time and space. "Westcott has the following interesting classification : 

I. The miracles on Nature : 

1. Miracles of creative power. (1.) The water made wine. (John ii, 1-12.) (2.) The 
bread multiplied. (Matt, xiv, 15-21; xv, 32-39; Mark vi, 35-44; viii, 1-10; Luke ix, 
12-17; John vi, 5-14.) (3.) The walking on the water. (Matt, xiv, 22-36; Mark vi, 48, 
49; John vi, 16-21.) 

2. Miracles of Providence. (1.) The first miraculous draught of fishes. (Luke v, 
1-11.) (2.) The storm stilled. (Matt, iii, 23-27; Mark iv, 35-41; Luke viii, 22-25.) 
(3.) The stater in the fish's mouth. (Matt, xvii, 24-27.) (4.) The second miraculous 
draught of fishes. (John xxi, 1-23.) (5.) The fig-tree cursed. (Matt, xxi, 19, sq. • 
Mark xi, 20, sq.) 

II. The miracles on man. 

1. Miracles in consequence of personal faith. (1.) The two blind men in the house. 
(Matt, ix, 29-31.) (2.) Bartimseus. (Matt, xx, 29-34 ; Mark x, 46-52; Luke xviii, 35-43.) 
(3.) The one leper. (Matt, viii, 1-4; Mark i, 40-45; Luke v, 12-16.) (4.) The ten lepers. 
(Luke xvii, 11-19.) (5.) The woman with the issue. (Matt, ix, 20-22; Mark v, 25-34: 
Luke viii, 43-48.) 

2. Miracles in consequence of intercession. (1.) The blind. (Mark viii, 22-26.) 
(2.) The dumb and deaf. (Mark vii, 31-37.) (3.) The nobleman's son healed. (John 



JESUS HEALS A LEPER. 



285 



iv, 46, 54.) (4.) The centurion's servant healed. (Matt, viii, 5-13; Luke vii, 1-10.) 
(5.) The paralytic healed. (Matt, ix, 1-8; Mark ii, 1-12; Luke v, 17-26.) 

3. Unsolicited miracles of mercy. (1.) The blind. (John ix.) (2.) The fever healed. 
(Matt, viii, 14, 15; Mark i, 29-34; Luke iv, 38-41.) (3.) The dropsy healed. (Luke xiv, 
1-6.) (4.) The withered hand restored (Matt, xii, 9-13; Mark iii, 1-5; Luke vi, 6-11.) 
(5.) The impotent man restored. (John v, 1-17.) (6.) Eestorations to life, in the death- 
chamber of a girl, (Matt, ix, 18, sq. , Mark v, 22, sq.; Luke viii, 41, sq. ;) on the bier of 
the young man, (Luke vii, 11-18;) at the tomb of Lazarus. (John xi.) 

III. Miracles on the spirit-world. 

1. Miracles of intercession. (1.) A dumb man possessed by a devil. (Matt, ix, 32-34.) 
(2.) A blind and dumb man possessed by a devil. (Matt, xii, 22, sq. ; Luke xi, 14, sq.) 
(3.) The Syrophenician's daughter. (Matt, xv, 21-28; Mark vii, 24-30.) (4.) The boy 
whom the disciples could not heal. (Matt, xvii, 14, sq. ; Mark ix, 14, sq. ; Luke ix, 37, sq.) 

2. Miracles of antagonism. (1.) The unclean spirit cast out in the synagogue. (Mark 
i, 21-28; Luke iv, 31-37.) (2.) The legion cast out. (Matt, viii, 28-34; Mark v, 1-17; 
Luke viii, 26-37. 

"Verses 1—4. (Compare Mark i, 40-45; Luke v, 12-15.) 

(1) When lie was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed 
him. (2) And, behold, there came a leper ! and worshiped him, saying, Lord, if 
thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. (3) And Jesus put forth his hand, and 
touched him, saying, I will; he thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was 
cleansed. (4) And Jesus saith unto him, See thou tell no man ; but go thy way, 
shew thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, 2 for a testi- 
mony unto them. 



Verse 2. There came a leper. The Old Testa- 
ment contained special provisions with regard to 
leprosy ; whoever was infected with it was banished 
from among his brethren, and even he who touched 
an infected person had for some time to avoid the 
society of men. Leprosy, as one of the worst dis- 
eases, was a peculiar symbol of sin and its conse- 
quences. The priests had in a special manner to 
watch over it — but as the law could not remove sin, 
so were the priests unable to cure a leper; they were 
the judges as to the presence of the malady, pro- 
nounced the leper unclean and banished from, out 
of the congregation; but they could not heal him. 



Christ, in establishing the new covenant, was to oc- 
cupy a different relation. He cleanses the impure 
by merely touching him. This touch, though against 
the letter of the law, was nevertheless in keeping 
with its spirit, having like the law for its object the 
establishment of a pure and spotless congregation. 
The general incurableness of the disease, the peculiar 
provisions of the law concerning it, and its striking 
spiritual analogies may have induced Matthew to 
relate the healing of a leper before all the other 
miracles of the Savior. — Though our Lord touched 
the leper, we may assume that the leper, when he 
called on the Lord for help, kept himself still at the 



1 Leprosy is a disease peculiar to Egypt and the south- 
ern regions of anterior Asia, very destructive and one 
of the greatest plagues of the Jews also, who wished it 
only to their mortal enemies. (2 Sam. iii, 29.) It ap- 
pears first on the epidermis, attacks then the cellular 
texture, the bones, the marrow, and joints, and is trans- 
mitted from the father not only to his children, but to 
his posterity in the third and fourth generations. Its 
development is favored by impure, marshy air, unclean- 
liness, etc. Its premonitory symptoms are small spots 
of the size of the puncture of a needle, which gradually 
enlarge into tubercles covered with a scab, and spread 
till they cover the whole body. This disease is divided 
into three kinds; namely, 1. White leprosy or carrars, 
also called the leprosy of the Hebrews. (Exod. iv, 6; 



2 Kings v, 27.) 2. The tubereulated leprosy, or ele- 
phantiasis. (Deut. xxviii, 27.) 3. The black leprosy 
with which Job was afflicted. Very different views are 
held as to the cause and nature of this dreadful disease, 
which is still the scourge of the Orient; thus far it has 
defied all remedial agents, and it happens but rarely 
that a thorough cure is effected and the purity of the 
skin restored. 2 The gift to be offered as soon as the 
priest had pronounced the leprosy gone, consisted in two 
live birds, some cedar wood, and scarlet, and hyssop. 
(Lev. xiv, 4.) On the eighth day the individual healed 
had to offer two he-lambs, without blemish, and three- 
tenth deals of fine flour for a meat offering mingled with 
oil, and one log of oil, about three-quarters of a pint. 
(Lev. xiv, 10.) 



286 



MATTHEW VIII, 5-13. 



distance required by the law. — And worshiped him. 
As has been remarked before, it was the custom in 
the Orient and among the Jews to express the rever- 
ence due to kings and prophets, by bowing the knee 
or falling prostrate on the face. — Saying Lokd, if 
thou wilt. This is expressive of the strongest con- 
fidence in the ability of Jesus to heal him. The 
condition he adds to it springs from humility, and 
expresses a reasonable doubt whether Jesus should 
see fit to heal a leper as well as to heal other diseases. 
Verse 3. The prayer was no sooner uttered than 
it was answered. The word and the deed are almost 
simultaneous. The answer is in the same words as 
the petition, but is in the Greek more emphatic. 
Stier says: "He does not say, 'I will do it,' in this 
special case, but 'I will,' including in this indi- 
vidual case the condition of humanity. His ma- 
jestic ' I will,' is the response to the prayer of the 
whole unclean race. With this ' I will' he entered 
and left the world again." (John xvii, 24) — 
Be thou clean; more correctly translated, be thou 
cleansed. In this manner no prophet before him had 
healed. As the Lord not only declares the leper 
clean, but makes him clean, so his power cures the 
leprosy of the soul. — And immediately his leprosy 
was cleansed. Mark and Luke say: "And the 
leprosy departed from him,'' thus describing the proc- 
ess of the cure. What the sign of convalescence 
was, see Levit. xiii, 13. — -See thou tell no man. 
The reason of this injunction is easily seen. The. 
Lord recognizes the Levitical order (Lev. xiv) in its 
full force. This order was not yet abolished and the 
Lord wished, therefore, not to interfere in any wise 
with it, but exhorted him to a faithful discharge of 
his duties, by telling him to say nothing of his cure 
before he had shown himself unto the priest. This 
course of our Savior may, moreover, have been 
prompted by a desire on his part to procure an im- 
partial judgment from the priest, who might easily 
have been influenced by hatred to deny the reality 
of the cure, if the import of it had reached him be- 
fore the leper himself. — For a testimony unto them; 
in Greek, for them. By "them" the priests are gen- 
erally understood, who were thereby to bear witness 
against themselves ; namely, the witness that Jesus 
actually possessed the power to cure leprosy. Yet it 
would seem to be grammatically more correct to un- 



derstand by " them" the people. The priest's decla- 
ration that the leper was really cured, given after a 
thorough examination of his body, was for the 
people the highest possible proof according to the 
law, that the leper had really been cured by Jesus ; 
and for this reason also he was told to tell nobody of 
it before the cure was properly established. 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 
I. The leper is a faithful picture of the sinner. 
Leprosy is one of the most formidable diseases to 
which mankind is liable, and yet in its worst features 
it is but a faint picture of the true nature of sin, the 
leprosy of man's moral nature. 

1. Leprosy has its seat in the corruption and im- 
purity of the blood. Thus sin has its roots in the 
moral depravity of our nature from the first trans- 
gression. 

2. Leprosy is, to a certain extent, contagious. Sin 
is invariably so. 

3. Leprosy is a progressive evil; so is sin, defiling 
the whole man, poisoning spirit, soul, and body, and 
leaving no power or faculty unaffected. 

4. Leprosy is exceedingly painful and loathsome. 
So is sin; its fruits are infamy, sorrow, wretchedness. 

5. Leprosy is incurable by human skill. So is sin. 
God alone can pardon sin, renew and sanctify the 
heart. 

6. The leper was banished from the society of the 
pure and healthy. Sin excludes from the kingdom 
of God and the communion of his saints. 

7. Leprosy, if not healed, ends in death. Thus 
" sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." 

II. Christ cures the moral disease of the soul as 
well as the leprosy of the body. 

III. In order to be healed it is absolutely neces- 
sary that we should come to Christ with humble but 
fervent prayer, and exercise faith in his ability to 
save. Such prayer of faith meets with no refusal. 

IV. As the cured leper is told to show himself 
to the priest, (v. 4,) and to express publicly his grat- 
itude to God for his miraculous cure, so the par- 
doned sinner should likewise join the congregation 
of God's people, and proclaim what the Lord has 
done for his soul. 



§11. JESUS HEALS THE CENTURION'S SERVANT. 

"Verses S— 13. (Compare Luke vii, 1-10.) 

(5) And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a cen- 
turion, beseeching him, (6) and saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of 
the palsy, grievously tormented. (7) And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and 
heal him. (8) The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou 



'&. 



JESUS HEALS THE CENTURION'S SERVANT. 



287 



shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, 1 and my servant shall be 
healed. (9) For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me : 2 and I 
say to this man, Go, and he goeth ; and to another, Come, and he cometh ; and to 
my servant, Do this, and he doeth it. (10) When Jesus heard it, he marveled, and 
said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, 
no, not in Israel. (11) And I say unto you, That many 3 shall come from the east 
and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the king- 
dom of heaven : (12) but the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer 
darkness : there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (13) And Jesus said 
unto the centurion, Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. 
And his servant was healed in the self-same hour. 



Verse 5. And when Jesus was entered into 
Capernaum. Although Luke assigns to the perform- 
ance of this miracle as well as to the Sermon on the 
Mount a later period, Matthew, who here groups a 
series of miracles without reference to chronology, 
fully agrees with Luke in stating that it took place 
some time when our Lord entered Capernaum. The 
reason why Matthew made this miracle the second in 
his series, may have been the remarkable circum- 
stance, that it was performed at the request of a 
Roman officer and without personal contact. — 
Whether this centurion was directly in the service of 
the Roman Government, or in that of Herod Anti- 
pater, is not told us. But from what Luke reports 
that he built a synagogue for the Jews, it is probable, 
that though a heathen by birth, he had been led to 
believe in the God of Israel, both on account of the 
decay of the religions of heathendom, which were 
do more able to satisfy the religious wants of the 
people, and through the positive influence of true 
religion as manifested by Judaism. But whether he 
became a proselyte to the Jewish religion is uncer- 
tain. Dr. Alexander thinks that the contrast with 
Israel (v. 10) implies rather the contrary. — From 
the details, which Luke supplies, it appears that the 
centurion did at first not venture to come himself to 
Jesus, but applied to him through a number of influ- 
ential Jews, and after these had set out on their 
errand he sent a second message to Jesus that he 
might not come to his house in person — he deeming 
himself altogether unworthy of this honor — but to 
heal his servant at a distance. It is likely that he 
had heard of the cure of the nobleman's son, effected 
at a distance. (John iv, 46-54.) According to 
Matthew the words which the centurion addressed 
through others to Jesus, were spoken by himself. 
This is perfectly consistent with truth and amply 
justified by the language of the Old Testament, 
in which the words spoken by an individual through 
others are often represented as having been spoken 
by that individual himself. (Compare also Mark 



x, 35, with Matt, xx, 20.) This is, indeed, the gen- 
eral usage where a speaker or writer wishes simply 
to state a fact without its attending circumstances. 
Bengel says on this passage: "The Divine historiog- 
raphy has higher laws than the human. In spirit 
Jesus and the centurion actually held converse to- 
gether. That the centurion was not present we can 
infer also from the high praise which Jesus bestows 
upon him. It is not probable that Jesus would have 
praised him in this language to his face." Out of 
the many praiseworthy traits of the centurion — his 
anxious solicitude for his sick servant, his humility, 
a trait of character but rarely met with among 
Romans, the position he occupies toward the despised 
Jews — the Lord instances only his faith in his per- 
son, his implicit confidence in his Divine power, 
which in verse 11 is made the indispensable condi- 
tion of entering into the kingdom of God. 

Verse 7. I will come and heal him. " Literally, 
I coming (or having come) will heal Mm — that is, I 
am ready or about to do so, unless hindered, as he 
knew that he would be; so that the future does not 
express actual intention, but mere willingness." (Al- 
exander.) 

Verses 8, 9. The centurion expresses, by a bold 
figure, his unbounded confidence in Jesus being 
able to remove a disease by a word. As my subordi- 
nate soldiers obey me by simply speaking the word, 
so shall my servant be healed, if thou speak only 
the word. 

Verse 10. He marveled. The expression of 
surprise or wonder is only twice ascribed to Jesus, in 
the instance before us, and in Mark vi, 6. In the 
one case the occasion was the strong faith of a hea- 
then, to believe he could heal even at a distance, an 
instance of which had never occurred; in the other 
case the Savior's surprise was called forth by entire 
want of faith, where there ought to have been the 
strongest faith. 

Verses 11, 12. The faith of the centurion causes 
our Savior to declare that according to the gracious 



1 Literally, command only. 2 Centurion was a Roman | over one hundred men. 3 That is, heathens, as appears 
military officer, having, as the name implies, command from the antithesis. 



288 



MATTHEW VIII, 14-17. 



purposes of God, the believing heathen would be 
admitted on terms of equality to the kingdom of 
God, promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, while 
the proud, unbelieving Jews, who as the children of 
the promise, had the first claim, should be debarred 
from it. Dr. Alexander remarks very justly: "The 
image here presented is commonly supposed to be 
that of a sumptuous banquet, representing the en- 
joyments of Messiah's kingdom. But although that 
mode of description occurs elsewhere, (e. g., Isaiah 
xxv, 6,) the essential idea here would seem to be 
simply that of near, domestic intercourse, admission 
to the family and all its intimate relations, as denoted 
by participation in its usual repasts, or as we say, 
sitting at the same table, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, 
the three original patriarchs, being represented as 
presiding over the great family descended from them. 
As this family for ages was the chosen people or 
visible Church, the admission here predicted is not 
merely to national or civil rights, but chiefly to re- 
ligious and spiritual advantages. This is, therefore, 
a distinct premonition of the great revolutionary 
change to be wrought in the condition of the Gen- 



tiles by the advent of Messiah. . . . The antithesis 
is not so much with the brilliant lights of an extra- 
ordinary feast, as with the ordinary necessary light 
of any comfortable home, the loss of which suggests 
that of all other comforts, to which our Lord adds 
the prediction of more positive suffering, denoted by 
weeping and gnashing of teeth, as natural expres- 
sions of despairing grief for what has thus been lost 
or forfeited. The primary conception is that of 
children violently torn from the table and ejected 
from the house of their father, and heard giving vent 
to their grief and rage in the outside darkness." 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 
It is a high privilege to be born in the Christian 
Church, but how many born of Christian parents are 
put to shame by heathens! Faith and Christian 
character are often found where one does not look 
for them, and are missing where they ought to be 
most expected. Every man has the ability to ex- 
ercise faith. The unbeliever shall be cast out into 
outer darkness. 



§12. JESUS HEALS PETER'S MOTHER-IN-LAW, AND CURES MANY THAT 
ARE SICK AND POSSESSED OF DEVILS. 

Verses 14— V7. (Compare Mark i, 29-34; Luke it, 38-41.) 

(14) And when Jesus was come into Peter's house, he saw his wife's mother 
laid, and sick of a fever. (15) And he touched her hand, and the fever left her : 
and she arose, and ministered unto them. (16) When the even was come, they 
brought unto him many that were possessed with devils : and he cast out the spir- 
its with his word, and healed all that were sick: (17) that it might he fulfilled 
which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and 
bare our sicknesses. 



Verse 14. In John i, 44, Bethsaida is called the 
city of Peter, Andrew, and Philip — that is, their 
native place; there resided their father, and we find 
that Peter was there following his trade when he was 
called by Christ. But after he had left his trade and 
become with his brother a constant follower of Jesus, 
it is natural to suppose that he lived no longer in 
Bethsaida, but made his home with his brother An- 
drew in his Master's residence, Capernaum. Peter 
was a married man when he was called to the apos- 
tleship, and we learn from 1 Cor. ix, 5, that, his wife 
accompanied him in his travels. How can, then, the 
Church of Rome, which makes Peter her head, dare 
to forbid matrimony to her priests! 

Verse 16. From the statement of Mark it seems 
that it was a Sabbath on which Jesus healed Peter's 
mother-in-law. This accounts for the fact that the 
sick were brought to Jesus not, before evening — that 



is, the setting of the sun, when the Sabbath was over. 
Surrounded by numbers of afflicted persons, who 
were weighed down by bodily sufferings, the Savior 
exhibits, by curing their infirmities, a picture of his 
spiritual activity, which he exercises constantly in 
the hearts of men through the Holy Ghost, the fruit 
of his work of redemption. 

Verse 17. In the passage quoted from Isaiah liii, 
4, and applied by the Evangelist to our Savior's 
healing of diseases, the prophet speaks of the vica- 
rious sufferings of the Messiah. (Compare 1 Peter 
ii, 24.) The ground and propriety of the Evangel- 
ist's application is clearly set forth by Mr. Watson in 
the following remarks: "Through the atonement all 
our blessings come; and as all our sufferings are 
the consequences of sin, none of them could have 
been removed had no propitiation been made for sin, 
and the right to deliver us from all its consequences 



JESUS INSTRUCTS TWO MEN— CALMS A STORM. 



289 



been acquired by our Redeemer. Whatever bless- 
ings, therefore, our Lord bestowed during his minis- 
try on earth, were given with reference to that ' bear- 
ing' of the penalty of sin which he was ultimately 
to sustain, and by virtue of which he was to take it 
away in all its consequences, as to all those who 
should come to him in faith. And as by virtue of 
that anticipated atonement he, while on earth, 'for- 
gave sins,' so by virtue of the same anticipated 
atonement he healed the diseases of the body, all 
which are the fruits of sin. Whenever, therefore, he 
did either of these, removing either sin itself from 
the consciences of men, or any of its consequences 
from their persons, in virtue of his being the ap- 
pointed sin-offering, those words of the prophet, 
' Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sor- 
rows,' were directly fulfilled; since these were the 
proofs and effects of his substitution in our place as 
the accepted sacrifice ; they were all, in a word, 
demonstrations of the efficacy of his atonement. 
Nor are we to suppose, as the criticism here objected 
to does, that Christ bore our griefs and carried our 
sorrows by actual vicarious suffering only when upon 
the cross. He bore them, as the penalty of sin, in 
his agony as well as his crucifixion; and often pre- 
viously, whenever he groaned in spirit and was 



'troubled.' All his humiliations, and all his mental 
distresses in coming into a world so full of sin and 
misery, formed a part of the grand sum of vicarious 
suffering, by which ' the sin of the world ' was to be 
taken away; and upon his spirit the sight of that 
accumulated misery, so often presented by the multi- 
tudes, produced a sorrowful effect. We see this often 
exemplified: we see it at the tomb of Lazarus, al- 
though he was about to raise him to life. His sor- 
row then was not common sorrow; his groaning in 
spirit can not be thus explained ; and the compassion 
of Christ on other occasions to the miserable was 
not the common compassion of men, but a distinct 
and deeper feeling, a part of the load and pressure 
of trouble laid upon his infinite -tender spirit which 
he was to sustain. Hence after his miracles of heal- 
ing we have no expressions of exultation arising 
from the triumphs of his benevolence; no indica- 
tions of that joyous feeling which relieves the pain- 
ful sympathy of merely humane persons when they 
have succeeded in conveying relief. The whole mass 
of the world's woe lay on his spirit from the begin- 
ning to the end, for as his office was to take away 
the ' sin of the world,' he must first bear its weight. 
It was in this sense that Matthew says, ' he took our 
infirmities and bore our sicknesses.' " 



H. JESUS INSTRUCTS 



TWO MEN 
CALMS 



THAT DESIRE 
A STORM. 



TO FOLLOW HIM, AND 



"Verses 18— sr. (Vs. 18-22, coup. Luke ix, 57-60 ; vs. 23-27, comp. Mark iv, 35-41, Luke tiii, 22-25.) 

(18) 'Now when Jesus saw great multitudes about him, he gave commandment 
to depart unto the other side. : (19) And a certain scribe came, and said unto him, 
Master, 2 I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. (20) And Jesus saith unto 
him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests ; but the Son of man 
hath not where to lay his head. (21) And another of his disciples said unto him, 
Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. (22) But Jesus said unto him, 
Follow me ; and let the dead 3 bury their dead. i (23) And when he was entered 
into a ship, 5 his disciples followed him. (24) And, behold, there arose a great 
tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves : but he 
was asleep. (25) And his disciples came to him, and awoke him, saying, Lord, 
save us : we perish. (26) And he saith unto them, Why are ye fearful, ye of 
little faith? Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a 
great calm. (27) But the men marveled, saying, What manner of man is this, 
that even the winds and the sea obey him ! 



1 That is, the other side of the Sea of Galilee, mean- 
ing the eastern side. 2 Teacher — a title which Jesus ac- 
cepted as belonging to himself, but gave to nobody. 
3 The spiritually dead, not grave-diggers, as some vainly 



19 



suppose. * To be understood literally, their dead friends 
and relatives. 5 In Greek, the ship, or rather boat, 
meaning either one habitually used by our Lord, or 
one which statedly transported passengers. 



290 



MATTHEW VIII, 18-27. 



Verse 18. That the crossing of the lake and the 
calming of the storm took place at a later time, on 
the evening of the day when our Lord had delivered 
a series of parables, is explicitly declared by Mark. 
Matthew relates it in connection with other miracles, 
but gives no definite date. " But if it is the object 
of Matthew to give us a series of miracles as sam- 
ples of Christ's wonder-working ministry," it is ob- 
jected, "why is the dialogue with the scribe and the 
other man inserted in this catalogue of miracles?" 
To this question Dr. Alexander gives several reasons, 
the best of which seems to be this: "Having in strict 
accordance with his customary method, cited a pas- 
sage of Isaiah, representing the Messiah as a sufferer, 
and sharing in the sufferings of others, he shows us 
how far this view of his mission was from being en- 
tertained even by some who sought or offered to be 
his disciples." We may add, there is also a sig- 
nificant antithesis between the answer which our 
Lord gives to the scribe and the miracles follow- 
ing. He who says that he has not where to lay his 
head soon afterward proves himself Lord of the ele- 
ments. 

Vekse 19. The scribe who here expresses a desire 
to follow Jesus, seems to be in full earnest. But 
there is reason to believe that his resolution had its 
foundation more in a momentary excitement than in 
a solid conviction of duty; that he had not taken 
into proper consideration the amount of self-denial 
and hardship which the discipleship would entail 
upon him. Dr. Lange is of opinion that the indi- 
vidual in question had been for some time an irregu- 
lar follower of Jesus, but wished now to enter the 
class of the intimate followers, the apostles. 

Verse 20. The Son of man. Under this name 
Daniel (vii, 13) describes the Messiah, as is acknowl- 
edged by the Jews, and in that prophecy both his 
humanity and his Divine royalty are portrayed. By 
applying this appellation habitually to himself, our 
Lord declared himself in the most humble manner 
to be the predicted Messiah. The peculiar epithet — 
applied to Christ in the New Testament by no one 
else besides himself, except by the martyr Stephen, 
when he beheld his glorified humanity — indicates 
that he was very man, and yet not a man like other 
men, a mere man, but the incarnated Son of God. 
(Compare Gen. Introduction, p. 119.) — Where to 
lay his head. In these words the Lord describes 
himself not as suffering from poverty, of which there 
is no record in the Gospels, but as being without a 
settled home or property which he could call his own. 
Discouraging as this reply was, it was, notwithstand- 
ing, not intended to drive the scribe away from him; 
the object was rather to heal him from his erroneous 
preconceived notions, and it includes, evidently, the 
question: Art thou still willing to follow me? Hast 
thou looked upon the matter in this light and counted 
the cost? 

Verses 21, 22. As the scribe just mentioned had 
offered himself to Jesus as one of his followers, so 



the Lord himself now called upon one of his disci- 
ples to follow him. It is generally assumed that he 
was one of the occasional followers of Jesus, and 
while with him learned the death of his father. The 
reply of our Lord to the young man's request sounds 
harsh, but he must have had special reasons for 
answering thus, and the peculiar circumstances of 
the case are unknown to us. The words of the 
Savior contain the important truth, that obedience 
to the commands of Christ embraces all our other 
duties, not as if the latter were to be counted of 
small importance and to be neglected, but that every 
act of ours should bear its proper relation to the 
supreme end of life. From this point of view we 
may understand why the Savior may have required 
this young man to leave his last duty to a departed 
father with others; the most favorable moment for 
securing the high destiny of his life had come, and 
nothing whatever must be allowed to interfere with 
that. The lesson to be drawn from this occurrence 
would then be, that not only sins and crimes, but 
sometimes even the performance of legal obligations 
and the most tender earthly relations may prove 
hinderances in our following Christ. Some comment- 
ators, however, contending that the immediate burial 
of a deceased father could not have endangered the 
young man's salvation to such a degree, as to induce 
the Savior to forbid his request, maintain that it is 
not necessary to assume the father's death at the 
time the request was made; what the young man 
desired was permission to attend to his father's 
affairs the short time he would yet live, and to return 
to Jesus as soon as he was dead and buried. But 
the construction, put according to this view upon the 
reply of the disciple, is forced, and it would have 
been both absurd and disrespectful, as Dr. Alexander 
remarks, in reply to an immediate summons to have 
said: "I will follow thee at once, if I may first go 
and wait till my father dies." 

Verse 24. He was asleep. His human nature 
was refreshed by sleep like that of other men. But 
the disciples were in no danger by reason of this 
sleep, because If was perfectly subject to the will of 
the Savior. 

Verses 25, 26. He upbraids his disciples for their 
little faith which they showed in their fear to perish 
with the sleeping Savior, though they were not desti- 
tute of faith, being confident that he was possessed 
of the power to save them. Faith, however weak, is 
still faith, and though the Master's words administer 
a reproof, yet he does not put to shame their faith, 
but grants the request. The storm was not only 
calmed, but the surface became smooth and even 
without showing any more signs of having been 
troubled. 

Verse 27. But the men. According to Mark and 
Luke the disciples themselves are to be understood, 
but it seems to embrace all on board. Such a mani- 
festation of power must have impressed the disciples 
more than the miraculous cures. 



CURE OF THE GERGESENE DEMONIACS. 291 



§14. JESUS HEALS TWO DEMONIACS IN THE LAND OF THE GERGESENES. 

As this case of demoniaeism is recorded by three Evangelists, with all the attending 
minutiae, we deem this the proper place to state briefly what the Word of G-od teaches in 
different passages on this phenomenon, as well as to bring the light of modern science to 
bear upon it. The different passages of the New Testament that speak of this dreadful 
malady, use almost exclusively the term dat,uouc^6p.svo^ — possessed with a spirit, or with 
spirits — and call the cure effected by Jesus a casting out the demon, or demons. In 
Matthew iv, 24, "those which were possessed with devils" are expressly distinguished from 
" the lunatics," positively teaching us that in the opinion of the sacred writers these two 
diseases differed from each other, both in nature and origin. As to the meaning of the 
terms datptov, dwfiovtov, it must be learned from the New Testament itself; with the 
heathen writers a Sdi^wv was a divinity, a tutelary spirit, delighting in assisting or 
tormenting men, without, however, being in any case identical with "the devils" of the 
New Testament, since the notion of such beings is altogether foreign to classic heathen- 
ism. In Acts xvii, 8, the word is used of heathen divinities, but as these are uniformly 
represented in the Word of God, as fallen spirits, it is a confirmation that the sacred 
writers understand by a demon an evil spirit in the service of Satan, the prince of the 
kingdom of darkness. The New Testament teaches that these demons entered into men, 
took possession of different members of the bodily organism, disabling or fettering them, 
so as to cause blindness, dumbness, lameness, epilepsy, etc. The cure effected by our 
Savior is described by such expressions as Ixfidkhetv t& xveo/iara or d~a.ip.6via — to cast out 
the devils — elnelv zo'ix oaipvai undysiv — to command the demons to depart — klyetv, yc/jLcoOyjrc 
y.ai efeA'Je — to say to hold thy peace and come out of him, etc. From the fact that the 
phenomena of some natural diseases, such as lunacy, mania, etc., resemble those of demo- 
niacy, rationalism has drawn the inference that in distinguishing the latter from the 
former, the sacred writers shared the superstitious notions of their countrymen, and that 
even Jesus adapted himself to their erroneous opinion in order to effect a cure; as it was 
a fixed idea which had taken possession of the mind, it could not be expelled by the 
word of command, without being acknowledged on the part of him who spoke the word. 
These views scarcely deserve refutation. "Accommodation in language is admissible, 
when, in things indifferent, language is used which, although scientifically inaccurate, as 
when we say, -the sun rises,' yet conveys a true impression. There is no harm in our 
speaking of certain forms of madness as lunacy, but if we began to describe the cure of 
such as the moon's ceasing to afflict the maniac, or if a physician were solemnly to address 
the moon, bidding it abstain from injuring his patient, there would be that gulf between 
our thoughts and words in which the essence of a lie consists. It is also to be borne in 
mind that our Lord speaks of demons as evil spirits, not only in presence of the multi- 
tude, when he healed the possessed, but in his private conversations with his disciples, 
declaring the means and conditions by which power over them could be exercised. 
(Matt, xvii, 21.) Twice also he distinctly connects demoniacal possession with the power 
of the evil one; once in Luke x, 18, to the seventy disciples, where he speaks of his 
power and theirs over demoniacs as -a fall of Satan,' and again in Matt, xii, 25-30, when 
he was accused of casting out demons through Beelzebub, and, instead of giving any hint 
that the possessed were not really under any direct and personal power of evil, he uses 
an argument as to the division of Satan against himself, which, if possession be unreal, 
would have no point. Lastly, the single fact recorded of the entrance of the demons 
into the herd of swine, and the effect which that entrance caused, is sufficient to over- 
throw the notion that our Lord and the Evangelists do not assert or imply any objective 
reality of possession." (Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.) 



292 MATTHEW VIII, 28-34. 



Because the demoniacs suffered under a derangement of the nervous system and the 
corporeal organs of the soul, rationalism asserts that demoniacism is nothing but a 
disease. We do not deny that it is a disease, but the question arises : by what was this 
peculiar disease caused? Can rationalism give us any reason why it could not be caused 
by evil spirits? That it was, is not only positively asserted by the inspired writers, but 
can be illustrated and confirmed by the results of physiological investigation. What dis- 
tinguishes demoniacism from all other diseases, is the manifestation of an influence foreign 
to the human constitution, dispossessing the soul of its power over the bodily organs, as 
in the raving Gadarene; even the power of speech was under the control of the demons, 
who speak not in his name, but with his organs. All the symptoms described show the 
distinct impression in the people around as well as in the patient, that the malady is 
caused by an alien influence. So great is the control which the demon has upon the soul, 
that he even merges the consciousness of the soul into his own. "Nothing throws so 
much light on demoniacism," says Dr. Delitsch in his Biblical Psychology, "as the rela- 
tion existing between the magnetizer and the individual magnetized. The latter is a 
mere instrument in the hands of the magnetizer; the consciousness of the magnetizer is 
reflected in that of the magnetized, so that the individuality of the former seems to be 
merged in that of the latter. If the patient is pinched he does not feel it; but if the 
magnetizer is pinched the patient will complain of being hurt. Put rhubarb in his mouth 
and he does not taste it; but let the magnetizer taste it and the patient supposes himself 
to have taken it. If the magnetizer wants him to move he obeys at once, while he sits 
still as if chained if called by another to rise. From this dynamic possession of one 
human soul by another, we can form some idea how a spirit can not only dynamically 
control a human soul, but even really or substantially, as a spirit, possess a human soul. 
In each case the feeling, thinking, and volition of man, consequently the spiritual roots 
of his inward life, have become subject to a foreign power and are used as its organs." 
The same view is held by Dr. Ebrard, who in his article on demoniacs in Herzog's 
Encyclopedia says: "If it is possible for men to act upon each other through the medium 
of nervous influences, then the same nervous system may be susceptible of analogous 
influences streaming over into it from a non-human being, from a fallen angel. The 
influences of the latter may be different, more violent and terrible. But it is still, in 
every case, an excitement of the nervous life, and the phenomena will be similar. There 
is, therefore, not a single point in regard to which the teachings of Christ concerning 
demoniacs contradict the results of physiological investigation. Nay, both are in full 
harmony. There is nothing inconceivable even in the fact that a number of demons work 
together upon one human nervous system. Neither can it be doubted that the nervous 
system of animals is susceptible of similar, and even of higher degrees of excitement 
from external causes than that of man." 

We may now consider the more practical and important question, in what respects 
these demoniacal possessions differ from the ordinary influence of Satan upon the moral 
nature of man, or to what degree those possessed of evil spirits were morally guilty? 
There is certainly a just and clear distinction to be made between a demoniac and between 
a Judas, into whom Satan entered, or, as Lange says, between the sphere of demoniacal 
suffering and that of demoniacal acting. The writer of the article Demoniacs in Smith's 
Dictionary of the Bible, illustrates the relation of those extraordinary influences of evil 
spirits upon the souls and bodies of men in our Savior's time to the ordinary influence 
brought upon the human heart by Satan, by the relation which the extraordinary, 
miraculous gifts of the Holy Ghost bear to the ordinary influence of the Holy Spirit. In 
the ordinary influence which either the Holy Spirit or Satan exerts upon the human heart, 
the will itself yields consciously and without losing its freedom of action. It is solicited, 
ui'ged, and persuaded, but not overborne from a power from without. This was evidently 
not the case with the demoniacs; the assault was made upon their nervous system, 



CURE OF THE GERGESENE DEMONIACS. 293 

overpowering their reason and will, sometimes from childhood, though it is more than 
probable that in most cases a predisposition to become subject to demoniacal influences 
had been produced by gross sensual indulgences. Demoniacal possessions, as all suffering, 
were indeed the consequence and punishment of our inherited corruption, yet we are not 
allowed to measure the guilt of an individual by its share in the suffering resulting from 
the fall, and we might apply to the demoniacs, in regard of their moral guilt, what our 
Savior said of those Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 
(Luke xiii, 2.) It is also worthy of note that the state of possession, although so awful 
in its wretched sense of demoniacal tyranny, yet, from the very fact of that consciousness, 
was less hopeless and more capable of instant cure than the deliberate hardness of willful 
sin. Dr. Lange remarks: "The demoniacs are in the Gospels evidently represented and 
treated as diseased persons, and thus plainly distinguished from those who, like Judas 
Iscariot and the Pharisees, had of their own free accord given themselves up to the 
service of the devil. In the same manner the ancient Church distinguished between 
Satanic criminals and demoniacs, by excommunicating the first, but trying to heal the 
second by exorcism. Where moral guilt attached to the demoniac, it consisted in 
this, that he tamely surrendered his own self-consciousness to those wicked influences 
from without. The same may be said of the moral side of mania, and it is much more 
rational to say, that there is a Satanic influence connected with some instances of mania, 
than that the demoniacs mentioned in the Gospels were only maniacs." 

There is one question more that deserves notice. How are-we to account for the fact 
that demoniacism was almost exclusively confined to the Jews in the days of our Savior ? 
This question finds its solution in the fact, that the time of our Savior was the period of 
the sharpest conflict between light and darkness. It is by no means surprising that God 
in his wisdom should see fit to allow Satan in an extraordinary manner to manifest 
the devastating effects of his power, in order to make the more conspicuous the Redeem- 
er's triumph over the kingdom of darkness, and that, for the same reason for which the 
Divine miracles were not continued, those extraordinary manifestations of aatanic power 
should also cease. Nor is it surprising that the latter should take the special form of 
possessions in an age of such universal and gross sensuality, as that which preceded the 
Savior's advent, and which continued till the leaven of Christianity was felt. Accord- 
ingly, "we find early Fathers alluding to demoniacism as a common thing, mentioning 
the attempts of Jewish exorcism in the name of Jehovah as occasionally successful, (see 
Matt, xii, 27; Acts xix, 13,) but especially dwelling on the power of Christian exorcism 
to cast it out from the country as a test of the truth of the Gospel, and as one well-known 
benefit which it already conferred on the empire. By degrees the mention is less and 
less frequent, till the very idea is lost or perverted. That round the Jewish notion of it 
there grew up many foolish and evil practices, and much superstition, as we learn from 
Tob. viii, 1-3 ; Jos., Ant., VIII, chap. 2, § 5, was natural, but it is clear that Scripture does 
not in the least sanction or even condescend to notice such things." (Compare Smith's 
Dictionary of the Bible, and Herzog's Encyclopedia, translated by Dr. Bomberger.) 

"Verses 38-34. (Compare Mark v, 1-20 ; Luke viii, 26-39.) 

(28) And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Grerge- 
senes, there met him two possessed with devils, 1 coming out of the tombs, 2 exceed- 
ing fierce, so that no man might pass by that way. (29) And, behold, they cried 
out, saying, "What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou 
come hither to torment us before the time ? (30) And there was a good way off 

1 Why the plural is used here, appears from Mark v, I or vaults hewn out in rocks on the side of hills, at some 
9, 10. 2 The tombs in the Orient were mostly caverns, I distance from their cities and villages. 



294 



MATTHEW VIII, 28-34. 



from them a herd of many swine feeding. (31) So the devils besought him, say- 
ing, If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine. (32) And he 
said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of 
swine : and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into 
the sea, and perished in the waters. (33) And the}'- that kept them fled, and went 
their ways into the city, and told every thing, and what was befallen to the pos- 
sessed of the devils. (34) And, behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus : 
and when they saw him, they besought him that he would depart out of their coasts. 



Verse 28. Matthew mentions in his record two 
demoniacs, but Mark and Luke speak of only one. 
A similar doubling we find also in chapter xx, 30. In 
either instance this apparent discrepancy disappears 
by supposing that the two other Evangelists mention 
only him whose case was the worse, or who appeared 
as the principal person. Luke has given us in the 
case before us a hint why he mentions only one de- 
moniac. He says (chap, viii, 27) that " a certain man 
from out of the city" met Jesus, whereby we have to 
understand a citizen, inasmuch as it is said, that 
the same man lived out of town, in the tombs, and 
only he offered to follow Jesus. His case, therefore, 
attracted most attention. The details of the trans- 
action must be gathered from the parallel passages. 
The demons, under whose influence these wretched 
persons were, chased them out into solitary places, 
where they took up their abodes in the tombs and 
proved by their dismal appearance the terror of all 
that passed that way. 

Verse 29. Mark and Luke tell us that the de- 
moniac when he saw Jesus fell at his feet and wor- 
shiped him. That in doing so the demoniacs im- 
plored the help of the Lord, having at the moment 
a consciousness of their suffering condition, and that 
the Lord was on the point of helping them, when 
they cried out: What have we to do with thee, Jesus, 
thou Son of God, etc. — Luke indicates by his ex- 
planatory remarks, (viii, 29:) "For he had com- 
manded the unclean spirit to come out of the man." 
As soon as that command was given their condition 
changed. Violent spasms followed, and under the 
influence of the demons they uttered words that 
strangely contrasted with the humble prayer ad- 
dressed to Jesus a moment before. This sudden 
change of their frame of mind is an important feat- 
ure, helping us to understand the nature of demo- 
niacism. These wretched beings had moments of 
light and rest, where they saw their condition and 
sighed for deliverance. Nor was their will entirely 
destroyed, but it was so enslaved that when the 
demons asserted again their control over them, they 
make no resistance, but identify themselves with 
them and speak as their representatives, declaring 
that Jesus' object was to torment them. — In this, 
that the unclean spirits did not come out at the first 
bidding of Jesus, Olshausen sees the Savior's wis- 
dom. The state of the unfortunate men was such 



that a sudden cure would have destroyed their phys- 
ical organization ; for this reason the Lord gradually 
prepared the way for their cure. 

Verses 30-32. According to Mark and Luke 
the words spoken in verse 29 were followed by a 
conversation of Jesus with the demons, wherein they 
implore him to grant them permission to enter into 
a herd of swine. Commentators have assigned va- 
rious reasons why the demons made such a request. 
Some are of opinion that they did so on account of 
the uncleanness of these animals, the impure spirits 
delighting in every thing unclean. Others think 
that they acted so from their hatred against the in- 
habitants of the country, wishing to make their 
property unavailable, since they could no longer do 
mischief by those whom they possessed. Others 
again, that the object of the demons was to set the 
people against Jesus, in which they succeeded ad- 
mirably. We must not overlook what seems to be 
nearest, that they dreaded "being tormented before 
the time," preferring as an alleviation a temporary 
residence in living animals. The objection that the 
dosign was frustrated by the driving the swine into 
the sea, is of no weight, since we have reason to as- 
sume that the strange influence which the demons 
exerted on the swine brought about the result against 
their own expectations. In this mysterious trans- 
action we have to bear in mind that in man the 
demoniacal influences affected the nervous life, the 
animal part, and that the nervous life of brutes is 
as excitable as that of man. — Strauss and others 
charge Jesus with having unwarrantably meddled 
with other people's property, by permitting the de- 
mons to enter into the swine, to which impudent 
charge Dr. Lange pertly replies: "Jesus was neither 
a justice of the peace, nor a police officer, nor swine- 
herd in the country of the Gadarenes. His only 
business was to heal the demoniacs." We add, that 
the secular loss that befell the inhabitants needs no 
more vindication than the permission given in the 
order of Divine Providence to a wicked man to de- 
stroy the property of another man. Christ's suffer- 
ing the demons to enter the swine answered, more- 
over, as Dr. Alexander observes, "the important 
purpose of proving the reality of diabolical posses- 
sions, by exhibiting a ease in which the demons, 
abandoning the human subjects whom they had so 
long tormented, instantaneously betrayed their pres- 



JESUS HEALS A PARALYTIC. 



295 



ence and their power in a multitude of lower ani- 
mals, impelling them against their own instinctive 
dispositions to a sudden simultaneous movement 
ending in their own destruction." 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 
Let us consider, 

I. The emblem of Satan's power in the pos- 
sessed. 

1. They were exceedingly fierce, under the influ- 
ence of violent and terrific mania — not under the 
control of reason, but of raging passion — not under 
the guidance of sound judgment, but under that of 
the excited impulses of a diseased nature. So is rea- 
son dethroned in the sinner, and passion hurries him 
along on the slippery path of vice. — The other 
Evangelists add that no man could bind him, (them,) 
not even with chains, etc. Great efforts have been 
put forth to keep the corrupt nature of man under 
control by laws, by instruction, by arts, sciences, and 
literature; but all these means avail neither to eradi- 
cate the deeply-seated evil from the heart, nor to 
dethrone Satan there. 

2. They were dangerous for other people, (v. 28.) — 
So is the sinner; he jeopardizes the best interests of 
his friends, relatives, and companions. He sullies 
and violates human society. 



3. They had their abode in the tombs, (v. 28.) 
Every unconverted man is spiritually dead, though 
he lives. He walks within the confines of spiritual 
death and goes down to destruction. 

II. The homage which the fallen angels ren- 
der Christ. 

1. They knew the Savior. Therefore they gave 
him his true title, (v. 29.) How true is the apostle's 
saying: "The devils believe and tremble!" 

2. They exhibit their rebellious nature. For this 
reason they exclaim: "What have we to do with 
thee?" We have renounced thy power. We glory 
iu our rebellion. We delight in injustice. Their 
words may, moreover, imply that they have no part 
in his gracious mediation — no interest in his vica- 
rious atonement — no claims on his redemption. 

3. They are afraid of him. "Art thou come to 
torment us before the time?" In this they recognize 
Christ's authority — his judicial power, etc., that he 
had the right to punish them, and that they deserve 
punishment. 

III. The conduct of the Gadarenes. They pre- 
ferred their swine not only to the cure of their fel- 
low-men, but also to Christ's gracious presence; and 
so do men to this day. 

IV. The healed demoniac. He sits clothed and 
in his right mind at the feet of Jesus. He wishes to 
follow Jesus, but he is sent away by him to tell his 
friends how great things God had done for him. 



OHAPTEE IX. 

§15. JESUS HEALS A PARALYTIC. 

Matthew continues in this chapter to narrate the miracles of Christ in the most 
simple manner, without any reflection or exclamation of surprise, from which no unin- 
spired writer would have refrained. In connection with the cure of the palsied man the 
Lord shows his power to forgive sins upon earth, and proves thus his divinity. The 
Pharisees, although they held the erroneous opinions that man might merit the Divine 
favor by acts of the law, but could never be certain of the forgiveness of his sins, had, 
nevertheless, a correct idea of the nature of the forgiveness of sin, when they declared it 
to be an exercise of an exclusively Divine prerogative, that could not be usurped by any 
creature without blasphemy. While the Pharisees reason thus, they think really more 
correctly and logically than our modern rationalists, who make the Son of man the model 
man indeed, but still a mere man, without paying any attention to his claims upon Divine 
powers and attributes. The Lord saw that the thoughts of the scribes were the offspring 
of their wicked hearts. Their wickedness showed itself, 1, in the absence of all sympathy 
with the suffering man, or of any consoling word for him in his distress; 2, in their 
determination to see in Jesus a mere man, a supposition at variance with his holy person 
and doctrine, as well as with his unique power to perform miracles. That they opposed 
these holy impressions determinately, while they felt in their hearts how unjustly they 
applied their reasoning to Jesus Christ, we see plainly from the majestic bearing of Jesus 
toward them, and their inability boldly to speak out their thoughts before him. Yet 



296 



MATTHEW IX, 1-8. 



the Lord does not give them over to their wicked hearts, but places himself upon their 
stand-point in order to convince them of their error. — Worthy of note is the humility 
in which Jesus vails his majesty, if he is compelled to vindicate it. While he claims for 
himself a prerogative of the Deity, he humbly calls himself the "Son of man." He 
refrained from directly asserting his Godhead in order not to provoke unnecessarily the 
blasphemies of those that were determined to reject him. 

Verses 1—8. (Compare Mark ii, 1-12; Luke v, 17-26.) 

(1) And he entered into a ship, 1 and passed over, and came into his own city. 2 
(2) And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed : 3 
and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, be of good cheer; 
thy sins be forgiven thee. (3) And, behold, certain of the scribes said within 
themselves, This man blasphemeth. (4) And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, 
Wherefore think ye evil 4 in your hearts ? (5) For whether is easier, to say, Thy 
sins be forgiven thee ; or to say, Arise, and walk ? (6) But that you may know 
that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick 
of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house. (7) And he arose, 
and departed to his house. (8) But when the multitudes saw it, they marveled, 
and glorified God, which had given such power unto men. 



Verse I. The first verse of the ninth chapter be- 
longs properly to the preceding narrative. The 
following account of the cure of the paralytic took 
place a considerable time before our Lord's excur- 
sion to the east side of the lake, during which he 
stilled the storm and dispossessed the demoniacs of 
Gadara, as described in verses 18-34 of the preced- 
ing chapter. We must bear in mind that the copu- 
lative and, according to the Hebrew idiom, which 
Matthew is accustomed to follow, does not indicate 
an immediate succession of events, but is equivalent 
to our now, by which often a new context is 
opened. That Matthew does not design to relate 
the events recorded in this chapter, in strictly-chro- 
nological order, we have shown before. (See Synop- 
tical Table, No. 52.) 

Verse 2. They brought to him. Mark says he 
was brought by four men. According to Luke, our 
Lord "was teaching, surrounded by Pharisees and 
doctors of the law, which were come out of every 
town of Galilee, and Judea, and Jerusalem." Mat- 
thew's account is more concise than that of Mark 
and Luke. — And Jesus seeing their faith — that is, 
the faith of the sufferer and that of his bearers. 
The other Evangelists tell us how their strong confi- 
dence in Christ's ability and willingness to work the 
cure manifested itself. From the cheering words of 
the Savior, addressed to the sufferer, it appears that 
he was in a penitent state of mind, and, probably, 
more concerned for the forgiveness of his sins, which 



may have brought upon him his disease, than for his 
bodily cure. The Lord mercifully attends first to his 
spiritual need. The shallow assertion of the ra- 
tionalists, that Jesus' cheering words were merely 
an accommodation to the notion of the Jews, that 
every disease was a punishment of sin, needs no 
refutation. Dr. Alexander, however, remarks very 
correctly from another stand-point: "Bodily and 
spiritual healing was more frequently coincident than 
we are apt to think, the one being really a pledge 
and symbol of the other. Saving faith and healing 
faith, to use an analogous expression, were alike the 
gift of God, and often, if not commonly, bestowed 
together, as in this case, where the singularity is not 
the coincidence of healing and forgiveness, but the 
prominence given to the latter by the Savior, who 
instead of saying, ' be thou whole,' or, ' thy disease is 
healed,' surprised all who heard him by the declara- 
tion that his sins were pardoned. This paradoxical 
expression was no doubt designed to turn attention 
from the lower to the higher cure or miracle, and 
also to assert his own prerogative of pardon in the 
very face of those whom he knew to be his enemies." 
Equally pertinent is the remark of Dr. Whedon: 
" Our Lord here has a double purpose. In the man 
he sees repentance and faith, and his first purpose is 
to show him mercy. In the scribes' hearts he knows 
there is impenitence and cavil, and he means to re- 
fute, and even, if it were possible, furnish argument 
to convince them." 



1 Properly, the ship or boat — meaning the one in which 
he came, and which was no doubt waiting for him. 
2 Capernaum, as appears from chap, iv, 13, Mark ii, 1. 



3 A mattress on a light frame, on which the sick were 
borne. 4 Literally, evil things. For what cause do you 
entertain such evil thoughts? 



JESUS HEALS A PARALYTIC. 



297 



Verse 3. This one. This expression in the orig- 
inal denotes contempt, as much as to say: this fel- 
low. — Blasphemes. To blaspheme (pXaa^/xeiv) 
means to speak evil of a person, or to injure one's 
reputation ; when used with reference to God, it 
means, 1, to ascribe things to God that are unworthy 
of him; 2, to deny his attributes; 3, to ascribe to 
creatures what exclusively belongs to God. 

Veese 4. As the Lord had seen through the 
thoughts of the sick man and his bearers, so he be- 
holds also those of the Pharisees, and lays open the 
wickedness of their hearts by a question directed to 
their conscience. This, his knowledge of other men's 
thoughts, was a new proof that he was more than a 
mere man, and ought to have convinced the scribes 
and Pharisees that he was the promised Messiah, 
especially as, according to the teachings of the Tal- 
mud, such a knowledge characterizes and marks the 
Messiah. 

Verse 5. For assigns the reason of his calling 
their thoughts evil. In themselves considered the 
two acts, namely, that of forgiving sins and that of 
a miraculous cure, can be performed only in Divine 
power. But our Lord's question is about the saying: 
"Thy sins be forgiven thee, or, arise and walk." To 
the natural man the first seems easier, because the 
result to be accomplished by the words can not be 
discerned by human eyes, whereas, in the latter case, 
the effect is visible, and thus furnishes a safe criterion 
for the truth, or the hollowness of the claims ad- 
vanced. But spiritually considered, the order is re- 
versed. Miraculous cures have been performed by 
many, prophets and apostles; but forgiving sins is 
the exclusive prerogative of God. 

Verse 6. But that you may know by what au- 
thority I tell this man that his sins have been for- 
given, I will show you what authority I have over his 
disease. — Then saith he to the sick of the palsy. 
We would expect as sequel to the preceding clause : 
"I now say to the man." But the Evangelist abbre- 
viates the sentence by throwing the last clause of 
the sentence into a narrative form. — On earth is 
significantly added, as distinguished from his power 
in heaven. Christ's work is to declare to man on 
earth what is transpiring in heaven. Sins are being 
committed on earth, and there they must be for- 
given. These words administer also a rebuke to the 
doctrine that man never can know, to a certainty, 
whether his sins are forgiven in heaven. This also 
claims our attention, that Christ forgave sins before 
he had accomplished the work of redemption by his 
self-sacrifice on the cross — he did so as the lamb 
slain from the foundation of the world. 

Verse 7. And he arose. "Familiar as we are 
with this astounding scene, it is not easy to imagine 
the solicitous suspense with which both the enemies 
and friends of Jesus must have awaited the result. 
Had the paralytic failed to obey the summons the 
pretensions of the new religious teacher were re- 
futed by the test of his own choosing." (Alexander.) 



Verse 8. The people, more susceptible of Divine 
impressions than their leaders, glorified God as the 
author of all that is good, for the manifestation of 
his glory in Jesus, of whose divinity they could not 
have a clear perception. — Unto man — that is, man 
in general. Seeing this power in one man they 
looked upon it as a new gift of God unto mankind. 
They felt instinctively, without any clear conception 
of the connection between the "Son of man" and 
other men, that the power which manifested itself in 
the one man, Jesus Christ, was given unto him to 
benefit all men. This truth is self-evident, for as 
certainly as Jesus Christ is God manifested in the 
flesh, so certainly he was also truly man, and the 
Divine fullness revealed in him has through him be- 
come the heritage of the regenerated race. They 
hailed with joy not only the miraculous cure of the 
paralytic, but also his power to forgive sin.' The 
Shekinah, thus far confined to the holy of holies, 
stood now visible before their eyes in the God-man. 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 

1. Jesus exercises his prerogative to forgive sins 
on condition of the exercise of faith by the sinner. 
The faith of the paralytic and that of his friends 
were different in kind, but both deserve to be pon- 
dered and imitated by us. The latter sought simply 
his bodily cure, but their confidence in Jesus' ability 
and willingness to heal their suffering friend was so 
great that no obstacle could keep them away from 
him. As they, through their faith, were instrumental 
in securing to the paralytic not only the recovery of 
his bodily health, but also the forgiveness of his 
sins, so can and shall every one of us become instru- 
mental in the salvation of our fellow-men by bring- 
ing them to Jesus in the arms of that faith that 
worketh by love. But no one can obtain the forgive- 
ness of his sins without a deep conviction and pain- 
ful sense of his sinfulness and guilt, and without an 
earnest longing after salvation, which is always ac- 
companied by faith in a higher or lower degree. If 
the Lord had not discovered this frame of mind in 
the paralytic he would not have said to him : " Son, 
be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee;" although 
he might have cured his bodily malady in answer to 
the faith of his friends. 

2. The forgiveness of sins is more necessary for 
man than any thing else, in order to free him from 
his sufferings. All suffering is the consequence of 
sin. The consciousness of guilt is the real sting in 
all our temporal sufferings, and the forgiveness of our 
sins the help and comfort which we need first and 
above all in the ills of life. Where forgiveness of 
sin is, there is life, and peace, and joy. Though the 
temporal consequences of sin are not always at once 
removed by pardon, yet they lose their punitive 
character and become blessings in disguise, sent to 
us by our Heavenly Father. Christ's object in 



298 



MATTHEW IX, 9-17. 



coming into this world was to take away, as the 
Lamb of God, the sin of the world, to destroy the 
works of Satan and thus to dry up the fountain 
whence all the streams of human misery flow, and to 
tear up the pestiferous upas by the roots. All other 
attempts to remedy the ills of suffering humanity 
are miserable quackeries. The cause of the disease 
is neither met nor recognized. 

3. The forgiveness of their sins is, for the persever- 
ingly faithful, the earnest of eternal life and of their 
perfect restoration as to body and soul. In the re- 
stored paralytic we see a picture and a pledge of the 
myriads of the redeemed, who shall rise from their 
graves with bodies formed for unending life, and 
fashioned like unto the glorious body of Jesus 
Christ. 

4. Christ's power to forgive sins on earth is at- 
tested by the highest proof. There were three kinds 
of proof displayed in that crowd in the house at 
Capernaum. (1.) That of consciousness. The pal- 
sied sinner who was forgiven required no further 
evidence of Christ's power to pardon. As soon as 
he was pardoned he felt its heavenly influence. This 
is the highest proof, but the proof accessible only to 
the pardoned. How immense is the number of wit- 
nesses from personal experience! (2.) That of 
Christ's testimony. If the value of testimony de- 
pends upon the intellectual and moral competence 
of the testifier, who in the history of the race was 



ever so competent to bear testimony to any thing as 
Christ was to bear testimony of his power to forgive 
sins? If Christ's testimony is not to be taken, whom 
are we to believe ? If you doubt his testimony you 
must repudiate all history. (3.) That of miracle. 
This was a species of evidence which Christ con- 
descended to give to meet the prejudices of these 
men. When he had proclaimed the pardon of the 
poor sufferer, these sneering Jewish skeptics said in 
their hearts : It is very easy for this pretender to 
pronounce the man forgiven; the poor sufferer wants 
to be healed; he can not heal him, and to conceal 
his weakness he pronounces the man forgiven ! He 
finds it easier to pronounce forgiveness than to re- 
store the sufferer. And Jesus knowing their thoughts 
said, as it were : It is a greater work to forgive sins 
than to perform a miraculous cure of the body; but 
you are too ignorant to understand this, and in con- 
descension to your ignorance I '11 cure the man. 
The miracle thus came as that kind of evidence 
which they challenged and would be most likely to 
feel. But as Christ gave an ocular demonstration 
of his power to forgive sins by the miraculous cure 
of the paralytic, so the workings of his grace, in all 
that believe, are demonstrated by the new temper 
and disposition, by the new walk and conversation 
of the pardoned sinner. True Christianity has the 
seal of its divinity in the power of the new life which 
it imparts. 



§16. THE CALL OF MATTHEW AND THE CONVERSATION OF OUB LORD 

WITH SOME PHARISEES AND DISCIPLES OF JOHN AT 

MATTHEW'S FEAST. 

Verses 9-ir. (Compare Mark ii, 13-22; Luke t, 27-39.) 

(9) And as Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man, named Matthew, sit- 
ting at the receipt of custom : and he saith unto him, Follow me. And he arose, 
and followed him. (10) And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, 
hehold, many publicans and sinners l came and sat down with him and his disci- 
ples. (11) And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eat- 
eth your master with publicans and sinners? (12) But when Jesus heard that, he 
said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. 
(13) But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice : 
for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. (14) Then 
came to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast 2 oft, 
but thy disciples fast not? (15) And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of 
the bride-chamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days 
will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they 
fast. (16) No man putteth a piece of new cloth 3 unto an old garment ; for that 



1 That is, other people of bad repute, implying that I here meant, that were observed in addition to the public 
publicans belonged to this class. 2 Private fasts are | fasts prescribed by the law. 3 That is, not yet fulled, 



MATTHEW'S CALL AND FEAST. 



299 



which is put in to fill it up i taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse. 
(17) Neither do men put new wine 5 into old bottles : 6 else the bottles break, and 
the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bot- 
tles, and both are preserved. 



Verses 9, 10. From thence. Mark tells us that 
Jesus on his way to the toll-house, which was on the 
lake shore, was teaching the people. Matthew, 
called Levi by Mark and Luke, had, undoubtedly, 
heard the preaching and seen the miracles of Jesus 
in Galilee, before he received his call to the apostle- 
ship. Mark and Luke place this event correctly 
before the journey to Gadara; but Matthew men- 
tions it in this connection, probably because the 
calling of a publican to the apostleship was an act 
of that free grace which the Savior had just before 
exercised toward the paralytic, and for which he was 
so ruthlessly censured by the scribes; and also, be- 
cause it was convenient to mention the calling in 
connection with the feast — as also Mark and Luke 
do. From the fact that the visit of Jairus took place 
after our Lord's return from Jordan, and the call of 
Matthew before that event, it appears that some time 
intervened between the call and the feast, (see Synop- 
tical Table,) thus giving Matthew ample time to re- 
sign his office, settle his accounts with his employers, 
and fully get ready to follow Jesus. He seems to 
have prepared the feast for his former associates in 
order to introduce them to his new Master and his 
disciples. Mark and Luke remark expressly that it 
was given in Matthew's house; Matthew, from mod- 
esty, only hints at it. It is characteristic of the 
Evangelists to say as little as possible of themselves. 
In no uninspired writer do we find "self" so much 
suppressed as by the Evangelists. 

Verse 11. And when the Pharisees saw it. 
Luke says: " Their scribes and Pharisees," meaning 
those residing at the place. We are not to suppose 
that they intruded themselves upon the company as 
spectators or spies, much less that they were invited 
guests, but being informed of what was going on, 
they took the first occasion to speak to the disciples 
as they were passing in or out. It is worthy of note, 
that profane as must have appeared to the Pharisees 
the call of Matthew, the publican, and our Lord's 
eating with a class of men who were considered de- 
filed by their occupation, they dare not to attack 
Jesus personally. Their reproach implied that Jesus 
by eating with publicans and sinners showed an in- 
difference about their sins, and thus supported their 
character before the people. 

Verses 12, 13. These words we may suppose our 
Lord to have spoken to the Pharisees when he left 



the house. By the well-known proverb, " They that 
be whole need not a physician," etc., he adminis- 
tered unto them a twofold rebuke. In the first 
place they pretended to be teachers and shepherds 
in Israel, whose duty it was, according to Ezekiel 
xxxiv, 4, to strengthen the diseased, to heal the sick, 
etc. He is a wretched physician who avoids the sick, 
which alone have need of him, lest he should be infected 
by the disease. Secondly, a physician must needs go 
to those who consider themselves sick, and therefore 
seek his help, but he is of no use to such as fancv 
themselves whole. But, continues our Lord, you 
show by your conduct that you do not yet understand 
the meaning of the words, "I will have mercy, and 
not sacrifice." This passage is quoted from Hos. 
vi, 6. Most expositors interpret it thus: "I take 
greater delight in works of mercy than in sacrifices 
or any other (outward) religious act." Stier, how- 
ever, paraphrases it thus: "I delight in practicing 
mercy, granting grace, and not in receiving sacri- 
fices." While the words, thus understood, imply also 
an exhortation to the recipient of mercy to be mer- 
ciful to his fellow-men, this interpretation suits the 
context best, the following sentence commencing 
with the causal particle for. "Because God has 
always delighted in showing mercy, I am come," etc. 
As there is no class of men which the Lord could 
call righteous, there is none which he has not come 
to calL His call is addressed to all, but they are 
called as sinners, not as righteous. If they had no 
need of such a physician he would not have come at 
all. This completes the answer to the question asked 
in verse 11. — -The words "to repentance" are 
wanting in a number of manuscripts; they are, how- 
ever, undisputed in the parallel passage in Luke, and 
the meaning of the word to call can be no other than 
"to call to repentance." But whom have we to un- 
derstand by "the righteous?" We can not under- 
stand by them self-righteous moralists, for they need 
repentance, and receive a call to repentance as much 
as others. The word " righteous " is, therefore, to be 
taken in its proper meaning of being free from sin, 
and the Lord means to say, as Alexander paraphrases 
it: "I came not to call men as unfallen, sinless 
beings, to repentance, which would be a contradiction, 
but as sinners, which they all are; and I, therefore, 
not only may but must associate with sinners as the 
very objects of my mission." 



which contracts whenever it gets wet. * Literally, the 
filling up, the supplement, that is, the part of the gar- 
ment to which the patch is sewed. 5 New wine ferments, 
and requires strong vessels in order not to burst them. 



6 In the Orient liquids were preserved and transported 
in leathern bottles or pipes, generally goat-skins, dressed 
with the fur inside. "When they were old and dry, they 
easily burst. 



300 



MATTHEW IX, 9-17. 



Verse 14. John was at this time already im- 
prisoned. Some of his disciples had become follow- 
ers of Christ; it would seem that others that had 
adopted the rigid asceticism of John had affiliated 
with the sect of the Pharisees, which accounts for it, 
that according to Luke the Pharisees utter what in 
our text is spoken by the disciples of John. Had 
these disciples of John not been of a pharisaic mind 
they would, instead of taking umbrage at the non- 
fasting of the disciples of the Lord, have seen therein 
a sign that the Messiah had come, for it was a Jew- 
ish saying, based upon Zech. viii, 19: "All fasting 
will cease in the days of the Messiah, and there will 
be none but days of joy and mirth." — Those dis- 
ciples of John, who kept aloof from Christ after the 
cessation of John's public ministry, reappear in the 
Acts, and are merged in the course of time in the 
heretical sects. 

Verse 15. By referring the disciples of John to 
the words of their Master, (John iii, 29,) the Lord 
continues, as it were, the discourse of John, only en- 
larging its range by calling all his disciples the chil- 
dren of the bride-chamber. To fast at the time when 
He, the long-desired, the long-promised One, had 
finally come, would have involved in their case a 
contradiction, since fasting belongs to mourning, not 
to joy. This implies also, that fasting, in order to 
be of the right kind, must be both the effect and ex- 
pression of real, heart-felt grief. In calling his dis- 
ciples the children of the bride-chamber, he refers to 
their apostolic mission, for they were to be the first 
rays which the rising sun of righteousness sent down 
on the human family, or, to retain the figure, they 
were to introduce the bridegroom to his bride. While 
he, however, approvingly contemplates the joys of 
his assembled disciples, he espies the days of suffer- 
ing, when he would be put to death, and when his 
disciples would have to suffer for his name's sake. 
But though he refers to the temporary sorrow his 
disciples would have to encounter, he does not 
mean to say, the Church should be given to contin- 
ual sorrow and fasting after his departure from 
earth, as the Roman Catholic Church teaches with 
reference to her many fasts. The predominant spirit- 
in the new covenant ought to be that of joy. (Phil, 
iv, 4.) The general truth contained in our Lord's 
reply to the disciples of John, is, that our actions 
ought always to correspond to the circumstances that 
surround us. Something may be highly improper at 
one time, that may be proper and right at another. 

Verses 16, 17. Since the question of the disciples 
of John implied a censure of Jesus for not doing 
what their Master did, the Lord explains unto them 
in two similitudes the relation of the new to the old 
dispensation, as well as the difference between the 
outward form and the spirit of religion. " The old 
forms do not suit for the new life that proceeds from 
me. The attempt to put this into the old forms 
would be as injurious as to sew a piece of unfulled 
cloth on an old garment, or to put new wine into old 



bottles ; in both cases harm would be done ; in the 
first, the new cloth would not only not hold, but take 
away part of the garment and make the rent worse; 
in the second, the fermenting new wine would burst 
the bottles, and so bottles and wine would be lost. 
The new life requires now forms." The fundamental 
idea is the same in the two similitudes, but it is con- 
sidered from two different stand-points, which com- 
plete each other. Christianity is both the new cloth 
and the new wine. Considered from the stand-point 
of the disciples of John, Judaism is still the main 
thing, and the new doctrine a mere patch to mend 
the old garment; but viewed from the stand-point of 
the New Testament, the new wine of Christianity is 
the main thing, and the old forms of theocracy can 
not hold it. "How prophetic," says Rev. H. W. 
Beecher, "were these words of our Lord — -picturing 
beforehand the result which was actually accom- 
plished in the Church, when, after his death and after 
his apostles had passed away, men undertook to put 
the new cloth of Christianity upon the old garments 
of Jewish institutions and modes of thought; and to 
hold the new wine of the Gospel, its vigorous and 
life-inspiring truths, in those old bottles of heathen 
ceremony, and Jewish ritual, and pharisaic forms 
and fasts; in other words, to change the spirit and 
life of Christ's teachings into a Christian pharisaism; 
how surely was the value and the vital energy of 
Christianity lost, and itself transformed from a prin- 
ciple of life into a deadly superstition that for ages 
ruled with the scepter of death over the Church, 
crushing, brutalizing, destroying the souls of men! 
And the Reformation of the sixteenth century was 
but the ceasing from this vain endeavor to keep the 
new wine in old bottles; casting off the rubbish of 
formalism, under which Christianity was dead and 
buried out of sight, and bringing out the Gospel in 
its spiritual simplicity, leaving it free to develop its 
own outward manifestations, and to organize its own 
institutions and practices, by the energy of its own 
Divine and marvelous life — which work is yet far 
from being finished. The new developments of 
truth and life which the Gospel is meant to accom- 
plish can not and should not be bound in the shackles 
of the past. It was a grand purpose of his that the 
bondage of formality should be broken; that the 
chains and incumbrances of old ceremony should be 
cast off from the minds of men for evermore ; that 
the world should busy itself henceforth, not with the 
outward shows of religion, but with its substantial 
facts — character, righteousness, love to God and man; 
and that his disciples should prove their better and 
truer understanding of the character of God, and 
their more real allegiance to him, not by fastings 
and ascetic practices, but by obedience — no longer 
seeking to please him by starving their bodies, but 
by strengthening their souls to do his will — no longer 
creating artificial righteousness and ceremonial sins, 
by establishing a multitude of fasts, and calling upon 
one another to observe them under the penalty of 



MATTHEW'S CALL AND FEAST. 



301 



God's displeasure — but laboring to purge away the 
real sins, and to establish a real righteousness of the 
heart and of the life." 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 

Verse 9. By the selection of an apostle from an 
order of men, among whom common opinion had 
pronounced that there was no worth to be found, 
Christ teaches us the freedom, impartiality, and mercy 
of the Gospel dispensation. The readiness of Mat- 
thew to give up his lucrative business and to over- 
come all the obstacles that might have prevented 
him from becoming a follower of Christ, teaches us 
that whatever Christ commands us he gives us also 
the power to do. His "follow me," turned the whole 
current of the publican's thoughts, emotions, activi- 
ties, and being, fully and forever, Christward. 

Verse 10. Jesus comes to men of all ranks to 
save them. He paid no respect to the prejudices of 
his cotemporaries, and was ashamed of no class of 
men, accepting an invitation to dine with publicans 
and sinners as willingly as one from a respectable 
Pharisee. It is a mark of self-righteousness to shun 
all outward intercourse with sinners. — The feast in 
Matthew's house teaches us that Christianity stimu- 
lates our social instincts. Never, we may suppose, 
did Matthew have such feelings as now, at this great 
feast. Man now appeared to him in the light of 
those spiritual ideas and joyous feelings, which the 
words of Jesus had awakened in his mind. His 
conversation was, no doubt, about the new light that 
had broke on his soul, and the new delights that had 
risen in his heart, and the purpose to which he was 
now going to consecrate his energies and his life. 
Happiness — like its highest emblem, light — is dif- 
fusive. Happy beings ever seek to make others par- 
ticipate in their joy, while misery isolates, seeks 
solitude, and strives to shut up all its dark and hor- 
rid feelings within the doors of its own victim. 

Verses 11-13. Jesus is the great physician of 
souls. All men need his healing power and mercy. 
But before we can be healed by him we must feel 
and acknowledge our need of him. To look upon 
himself as spiritually sound is the most dangerous 
disease of fallen man. The blessed declaration, "I 
am come to call sinners," is the bright star of hope 
in the dark firmament of fallen humanity. Let it 
shine on till every sinner responds to the call. 

Verses 14-17. The answer of our Lord to the 
question of John's disciples teaches us three lessons. 
1. The external services of religion ought always to 
be the free and honest expression of the feelings of 
the heart. Christ saw worship not in the external 



services of the Temple, but in the spirit and truth of 
the devout soul. He saw benevolence not in the 
abundance which rich men cast into the treasury, 
but in the feeling expressed in the widow's mite. 
The suppressed sigh he regarded as prayer. When- 
ever any external religious service ceases to be the 
expression of the heart, it is utterly worthless in the 
sight of God. Christ constantly reproved the Jews 
for their formalism. Paul, before his conversion, a 
zealous formalist, fully imbibed the spirit of Christ, 
declaring: ''He is not a Jew," etc., (Rom. ii, 28, 29,) 
and warning Timothy especially against those who 
have the form of godliness but deny its power. The 
kingdom of God does not consist in eating and drink- 
ing — that is, in any thing outward — but in righteous- 
ness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. 2. The 
predominant feeling, produced by the religion of 
Christ in the heart of the believer, is the spirit of 
joy. The relationship between Christ and his true 
disciples is a very intimate and tender one; and the 
conscious presence of Christ, on the part of his dis- 
ciples, is ever connected with the highest joy; their 
joy was interrupted only for a short time, while he 
was absent from them. But according to his prom- 
ise, he visited them, and was with them for forty days 
after his resurrection from the dead, and then on the 
day of Pentecost he came to them, spiritually, to be 
their constant guest. 3. The principles of the Gos- 
pel must be kept distinct from all other systems. 
What our Lord says of patching up an old garment, 
or putting new wine into old, leaky, leathern pipes, 
admits of manifold applications. A patching up of 
the old man, a mere outward reformation, avails 
nothing. On the other hand, if the old, unconverted 
man applies to his condition the glorious promises 
of the Gospel, the precious wine is spilt and his case 
becomes worse. Thou must become first a new man, 
born of God, before thou canst receive into thyself 
Christ's wine of gladness. It is equally impracti- 
cable to shut up the spirit of true Christianity into 
false, antiquated forms. A healthful religious life 
requires that the form should be the product of the 
spirit, and the spirit creates from time to time new 
forms, which progress in perfection with the devel- 
opment of the new life. The Gospel is no skeleton 
of logicalty-strung doctrines, but a living seed that 
creates for itself a proper form and shape. Give to 
the grain of corn soil, sun, air, and moisture, and it 
will give itself a body. Confide in the truth, as it is 
in Christ Jesus, and it will create a proper form for 
itself from time to time. Where the spirit of the 
Lord is, there is liberty; but where there is the letter 
of the law, there is bondage. The true idea of 
churchly conservatism is to preserve the life ; this be- 
ing accomplished, the proper form will come of itself. 



302 



MATTHEW IX, 18-26. 



§17. JESUS HEALS A WOMAN DISEASED WITH AN ISSUE OF BLOOD, AND 
RAISES THE DAUGHTER OF JAIRUS. 

■Verses 18—36. (Compare Mark t, 22-43; Luke viii, 40-56.) 

(18) "While he spake these things unto them, behold, there came a certain 
ruler, 1 and worshiped him, saying, My daughter is even now dead: but come and 
lay thy hand upon her, and she shall live. (19) And Jesus arose, and followed him, 
and so did his disciples. (20) And, behold, a woman, which was diseased with an 
issue of blood 2 twelve years, came behind him, and touched the hem 3 of his gar- 
ment: (21) for she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be 
whole. (22) But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, 
be of good comfort ; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made 
whole from that hour. (23) And when Jesus came into the ruler's house, and saw 
the minstrels 4 and the people making a noise, (24) he said unto them, Give place: 
for the maid is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn. (25) But 
when the people were put forth, he went in, and took her by the hand, and the 
maid arose. (26) And the fame hereof went abroad into all that land. 



Verse 18. While he spake these things. Mat- 
thew expressly placing the healing of the woman and 
the raising of the ruler's daughter after the feast, we 
must consider this record to be chronologically more 
correct than that of Mark and Luke, who, after 
the answer given to the Pharisees, record other facts. 
Yet these two Evangelists state the two miracles 
more in detail, while Matthew merely records the \ 
facts, it being his object to group the discourses, 
similitudes, and miracles, etc., of Christ under gen- 
eral heads. — The ruler interrupted the discussions 
of our Lord with the Pharisees and the disciples of 
John, which took place during the feast in the house 
of Matthew. This gave the Lord a chance to show 
to these fault-finders, how ready and willing he was 
to leave at once an occasion of mirth and hilarity 
and to enter syrapathizingly into the keenest grief 
of others, yea, to enter the valley of death itself, in 
order to raise a dead child. — My daughter is even 
now dead. This translation is not accurate' — i) dvyarf/p 
apn freXevT7/oev means, my daughter may even at 
this time have died. The father speaks here prolep- 
tically ; as appears from Mark and Luke, the child 
was not dead when the father left the house, but her 
symptoms were such, that, according to appearance, 
she could not live much longer; the father going by 
this symptom is apprehensive that she may have died. 



while he was on his way to Jesus; and he was right 
in his apprehensions, for before he reached his house 
messengers brought the news that death had actually 
taken place. 

Verses 20, 22. On this passage we refer the 
reader to Mark v, 27-30. Here we will only quote 
the following interesting remarks from Mr. Robert- 
son's sermon on the healing of Jairus's daughter: 
" On his way to perform one act of love the Savior 
turned aside to give his attention to another. Hu- 
manly speaking, there were many causes which might 
have led to the rejection of the suffering woman's 
request. The case was urgent, a matter of life and 
death; delay might be fatal, a few minutes might 
make all the difference between living and dying. 
Yet Jesus not only performed the miracle, but refused 
to perform it in a hurried way. But the delay was 
only apparent, and had its wise design. The mira- 
cles of Jesus were not merely arbitrary acts, they 
were subject to the laws of the spiritual world. A 
certain inward character, a certain relation to the 
Redeemer was required to make him spiritually sus- 
ceptible of the mercy to be bestowed upon him. 
Jairus, beholding the cure of the woman, saw her 
modest touch approaching the hem of the Savior s 
garment. He heard the language of Omniscience: 
'Somebody has touched me.' He heard the great 



1 According to Mark, the ruler of a synagogue at Ca- 
pernaum, named Jairus. Alexander paraphrases the 
Greek apx»>' ei?: "Among those who applied to him for 
aid was one belonging to the class of rulers." 2 This 
disease made legally unclean. (Lev. xv, 19, etc.) 3 Lit- 
erally, edge, margin; here a fringe. The Jews were 



directed by law (Num. xv, 38, sq.) to wear fringes on 
the four corners of the outer garment, to remind them 
of the law. The article — rav KpacnriSov ■, Heb. zizitii — 
designates the most important one of the four fringes. 
1 A piper, minstrel — the piping lasted seven days. (Gen. 
xv, 10; Jer. ix, 17.) 



HEALING OF TWO BLIND MEN AND A DUMB DEMONIAC. 



principle enunciated that the only touch which reaches 
God is that of faith. And remembering this, it is 
a matter not of probability, but of certainty, that the 
soul of Jairus was made more capable of a blessing 
than if Jesus had not paused to heal the woman but 
hurried on. We may draw another lesson from this. 
In worldly matters the more occupations and duties 
a man has the more certain is he of doing all im- 
perfectly. In 'the things of God it is reversed. The 
more duties you perform the more you are fitted for 
doing others : what you lose in time you gain in 
strength. You do not weaken your affection for 
your family by cultivating attachments beyond its 
pale, but deepen and intensify it. He who is most 
liberal in the case of a foreign famine, or a distant 
mission, will be found to have only learned more 
liberal love toward the poor and unspiritualized of 
his own land." — Thy faith has made thee whole. 
The woman was cured by touching the garment of 
Jesus, as Mark and Luke record, but the cure fol- 
lowed this act because it was an act of faith. Lest 
to the mere outward act the healing power might be 
ascribed Jesus spoke to her on the subject. Although 
her views as to the means by which she might obtain 
relief may have been erroneous, yet they were based 
on a strong faith in the person of Christ, and this 
faith Jesus praises. 0, how ready is the Lord to 
give unto all; how delighted with every act of re- 
ceiving a favor at his hands, no matter by what 
means it is sought! It is his uniform practice to 
ascribe to faith what his power has done, because he 
does not dispense his healing virtues without faith on 
the part of man. 



Verse 24. The maid is xot dead, but sleepeth, 
literally, " the maid did not die." Our Lord says " she 
sleepeth" with reference to her speedy awakening, and 
in this sense her death was only a sleep. Olshausen 
understands the word "she sleepeth" literally, and 
says: "Does the act of the Lord lose any of its sig- 
nificance if we conceive the state of the child as a 
suspension of all the functions of life ? Death, 
whose reality is sometimes beyond human ken, is 
here taken by the Lord in its true and full sense, 
and he declares that it had, in the present case, not 
taken place; but this very knowledge before he had 
seen the child is the miraculous in the case. What 
none knew he knew without having been present, 
and he openly declares what he knew." This inter- 
pretation is a forced one. It is apparent, from all 
attending circumstances, that the child was really 
dead, and that the Lord used the word "she sleep- 
eth" figuratively. He uses the same word with re- 
gard to Lazarus, whose actual death is doubted by 
no one. Luke expressly says: "Her spirit came 
again." It had, consequently, left the body. The 
words may, then, be paraphrased : " Do not regard 
the child as dead, but think of her as merely sleep- 
ing, since she is so soon to come to life again." — The 
New Testament records three instances of raising 
the dead by our Lord in a significant gradation. 
The girl in question had just expired; the young 
man of Nain lies on the bier, and is carried out to 
be buried; Lazarus had lain four days in the grave. 
The Bible teaches us to regard the death of the body 
as a sleep, with regard to the general resurrection. 

Verse 25. See the particulars in Mark v, 36-43. 



§18. JESUS HEALS TWO BLIND PERSONS AND A DUMB DEMONIAC. 

Verses 27-34. 

(27) And when Jesus departed thence, two blind men l followed him, crying, 
and saying, Thou son of David, have mercy on us. (28) And when he was come 
into the house, 2 the blind men came to him : and Jesus saith unto them, Believe 
ye that I am able to do this ? They said unto him, Yea, Lord. (29) Then touched 
he their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you. (30) And their eyes 
were opened; and Jesus straitly charged them, saying, See that no man know it. 

(31) But they, when they were departed, spread abroad his fame in all that country. 

(32) As they went out, behold, they brought to him a dumb man possessed with a 
devil. (33) And when the devil was cast out, the dumb spake : and the multitudes 
marveled, saying, It was never so seen in Israel. (34) But the Pharisees said, He 
casteth out devils through the prince of devils. 



1 Blindness is a widely-spread malady in the Orient, I lost their sight; one that was born blind attracts un- 



especially in Egypt, Arabia, and Palestine. The in- 
dividuals in question had, in all probability, merely 



usual attention, (John ix.) 2 That is, into the house 
where he dwelt at Capernaum. 



304 



MATTHEW IX, 35-38. 



These two miracles are recorded by Matthew alone. 
The two blind men deserve our attention chiefly, 
because they called aloud on Jesus as the son of 
David — that is, the Messiah. The other case is the 
very reverse of it. The man is dumb, perhaps not 
organically; the demon has caused his dumbness; 
whether he effected this by ruining the organ as he 
did in other cases, where he bent the spine and 
blinded the eyes, or whether he brought it about by 
influencing the mind of the individual, that he re- 
fused to speak from unconquerable melancholy or 
cunning stubbornness, does not appear. Such dumb- 
ness is a striking picture of the sinner, who is pre- 
vented by the devil from confessing his misery and 
wretchedness. But whatever may have been the im- 
mediate cause of the suffering before us, Christ 
espies its real cause at once, and removes it. The 
miracle differs in one respect from others. The total 
absence of faith in the demoniac furnished no point 
to Christ's power to work upon. Nothing but the 
faith of the men who led him was left for him, while 
the lurking and blaspheming Pharisees increased the 
power of the demon over the unfortunate man. 

Verse 27. Son of David. This was the popular 
designation of the Messiah; but because this title, 
more than any other, called attention to the Mes- 
siah's royal power, and was, therefore, more than 
any other, liable to abuse by the carnally-minded 
multitude, Jesus never used it himself, preferring 
the term " Son of man," which, by its uniqueness 
and mysteriousness, was a powerful incentive to seri- 
ous thought and reflection. 

Verses 28, 29. Jesus did not at once take notice 
of the prayers of the blind men, partly in order to 
prove their faith, partly, perhaps, also, because he 
was as yet unwilling publicly to accept the title " Son 
of David." As their faith in his power to cure them 
could rest only on the reports of others concerning 
him, it was the more remarkable. — According to 
tour faith, be it unto you. He had not asked 
them whether they believed that he was the Son of 
David, but whether they believed that he was able to 
do this. He requires faith in his miraculous powers, 



and a grateful reception of their manifestation. 
Faith never passes unrewarded; man receives ac- 
cording to the measure of his faith. 

Verses 30, 31. And Jesus straitly charged 
them — implying a strict injunction. Having called 
on him before as "the Son of. David" in public, it 
was more than likely that they would now, having 
received their" sight, still more loudly proclaim him 
as the Messiah, whereby they might easily cause 
popular risings in Galilee. That the men appeared 
before the people with their sight restored, and as- 
cribed the cure to Jesus, could not be prevented; 
but Jesus forbade them to give out under what name 
he had done it, it being the first miracle which he 
had performed as the openly-professed Messiah. 
With all his readiness to help, the Lord was con- 
stantly opposed to "all crying in the streets," and 
cautiously considered all attending circumstances. — 
It was an act of disobedience, and, as such, by no 
means praiseworthy, that they paid no attention to 
the Lord's injunction, although gratitude and zeal 
for his honor seem to have been their motives. Not 
our own inclinations, but the command of Christ, 
ought to be the rule of our conduct. 

Verses 32, 33. This narrative resembles that of 
chapter xii, 22, etc., in so far as it gave rise to the 
same blasphemous utterances by the Pharisees, but 
the individual cured is certainly not one and the 
same. The people put to shame by their sound judg- 
ment not only the Pharisees of those days, but also 
the skeptics of our days, who disbelieve such miracles. 

Verse 34. The Pharisees themselves had to ac- 
knowledge that the Lord had cast out a demon, 
and they moreover admitted that it required more 
than human powers to cast out demons; but they 
refused to acknowledge this power as a Divine 
power, and, accordingly, ascribed the deed to the 
influence of Satan, the ruler of the demons. They 
did this, however, in all probability, only clandes- 
tinely, since the Lord took no notice of it. " Envy, 
here unbelief," says Heubner, " does rather take ref- 
uge to the most absurd, malicious suppositions, than 
acknowledge virtue and its brightest deeds." 



CHRIST PITIES THE SHEPHERDLESS PEOPLE AND EXHORTS TO 
PRAYER FOR LABORERS. 



Verses 33—38. 



(35) And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their syna- 
gogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and 
every disease among the people. (36) But when he saw the multitudes, he was 
moved with compassion on them, because they fainted and were scattered abroad, 
as sheep having no shepherd. (37) Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest 
truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few; (38) pray ye therefore the Lord of the 
harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest. 



CHRIST EXHORTS TO PRAYER FOR LABORERS. 



305 



This section forms the introduction to the sending 
out of the twelve, recorded in the following chapter, 
and is, at the same time, the fitting conclusion of 
chapters viii and ix, in which we have been told how 
the Lord devoted the fullness of his Divine powers 
to the best interests of suffering humanity, how he 
entered in tender compassion into all phases of 
wretchedness, wiped away every tear, and conquered 
death itself. (Isa. xxv, 8.) Such a Savior the 
prophets had promised, and this long-promised Sav- 
ior we see traverse the country, preaching the Gos- 
pel. Here he beheld the nameless misery of the 
people in its full extent. He declares the people of 
Israel a grossly-neglected flock, deserted by their 
shepherds, the high-priest, rulers and rabbins, and 
left to destruction. The condition of the heathen 
world was, if possible, still worse. Moved by the 
sight of this deplorable woe and destitution, Jesus 
Christ, the true Shepherd of Israel and the whole 
world, stretches out his helping arm, and, for the 
salvation of the world, creates the apostolic office. 

Verse 35. Matthew does not indicate in which 
direction Jesus went on this occasion; but, from the 
other Evangelists, it would appear that he went 
down the lake toward Jerusalem. Dr. Alexander 
considers the statement of Matthew to be not on ac- 
count of one particular mission, but, like that in 
iv, 23, a general description of our Lord's itinerant 
ministry, with its two great functions, working mira- 
acles and teaching, and adds: "The question why 
this general description should be thus repeated al- 
most in the same words may be readily answered, 
and the answer furnishes a key to the whole struc- 
ture of this first great division of the history. The 
answer is, that Matthew, having executed his design 
of showing by examples how the Savior taught and 
wrought in his great mission, now returns to the 
point from which he started in beginning this exem- 
plification, and resumes the thread there dropped or 
broken by repeating his summary description of the 
ministry which he has since been painting in detail. 
This view of the connection is not only recom- 
mended by grammatical considerations, such as the 
imperfect tense and participles following in either 
case, but also by the clear light which it throws upon 
the structure of the book and the progress of the 
history. Even a mere hypothesis, which thus con- 
verts an incoherent series of details into a system- 
atic, well-compacted whole, can scarcely be denied 
as fanciful. According to this theory, the meaning 
of the verse before us is, ' And thus, or so it was, as 
I before said, that Jesus went about.' " 

Verse 36. They fainted — ycav 'tKKtkvjxkvoi — they 
were exhausted and ready to faint, like a flock that 
is worn-out by a long run in the wilderness. An- 
other reading is, f/aav LanvTifxhoi — they were skinned, 
rent, that is, by ravenous beasts, or ruined by hunger 
and cold. — And were scattered ; that is, aban- 
doned, unprotected, so that this — their being aban- 
doned by their shepherds — appears as the cause of 



20 



the former. They had no shepherd to protect them 
against wolves and other ravenous beasts, no shep- 
herd to lead them on to good pastures. What a 
heavy charge against the priests does this life-picture 
of an abandoned flock present ! 

Verse 37. The good Shepherd is moved with 
compassion on the poor, deluded people, and gra- 
ciously overlooking their own share of guilt in bring- 
ing about their wretched condition, reproves the 
more severely those who, instead of being shepherds, 
proved to be their deceivers. How ready is He to 
heal and to help! But this can not be done so easily 
as to restore health to the diseased and life to the 
dead. The healing of this evil is a long process, to 
be carried on through human instmmentality , illus- 
trated by the metaphor of sowing and reaping. It 
is true the harvest alone is spoken of, but the previ- 
ous labor of preparing the wild, neglected ground, 
of sowing the good seed, is meant as well as the act 
of reaping itself. The laborers have, therefore, to 
perform not only the duties of reapers — that is, bind 
up the sheaves — but they must do all the prepara- 
tory work from the very beginning. — The harvest 
is plenteous. This refers primarily to Israel as 
likely to give work enough to his disciples for the 
present; but before his mind stood undoubtedly the 
whole world, as ripe for a glorious ingathering. — 
The laborers are few; that is, the real, true labor- 
ers, although nominal laborers have been plenty at 
all times. 

Verse 38. These words express a great and glori- 
ous truth. The sending out of laborers into the 
harvest field, which is the Lord's prerogative, the 
salvation of the world, the gradual development of 
his kingdom, the Lord here declares to depend on 
the prayers of his followers. Stier remarks on this 
point: "It is easy to comprehend that the salvation 
of lost souls, the preparation of the great harvest, is 
to be accomplished through human instrumental- 
ities ; but it is a mystery that the sending out of such 
laborers is made to depend on the prayers of men; 
yet this is attested by the Scriptures and by experi- 
ence ; and this being the case, how earnestly should 
we pray for ourselves and the world around us!" 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 
We iufer from this passage two lessons : 
I. That a right view of human society is very 
affecting. " When Christ saw the multitudes he 
was moved with compassion." What was the view 
that thus affected him? 

1. He regarded them as being in a deplorable 
spiritual condition. They were (1.) The subjects 
of spiritual faintness. Spiritual faintness is the 
want of power to feel and do the right. Paul de- 
clares the world, apart from Christianity, to be "with- 
out strength;" that is, without strength to bear trials 
with magnanimity, and to prosecute duty without 



306 



MATTHEW IX, 35-38. 



fear; "without strength" to battle manfully with the 
wrong, and to side ever with the right; "without 
strength" to rectify our moral errors, to roll off the 
load of guilt that presses upon the conscience, and 
to appear with acceptance before our Maker. This 
is the weakness — the faintness— that Jesus saw, and 
which now moved his compassion. And this is gen- 
eral. It belongs to all ages and lands ; it is a calam- 
ity common to the race. (2.) They are the subjects 
of spiritual perversity. Christ saw them not only 
"faint," but "scattered abroad, as sheep having no 
shepherd." A sheep is one of those animals that 
seem to have a propensity to wander from their 
home, and to go astray; nor does it seem to have 
any instinct to stimulate and guide it back to its lost 
pasture and position. "Without proper pasture, shel- 
ter, and guardianship, they are exposed to ruin. 
Thus human souls appeared to Christ. Sheep thus 
"scattered" were to him types of men in their alien- 
ation from God and each other. They have left the 
fold of heaven; the golden tie of love which once 
bound them to each other is broken, and they are 
"scattered," one by one, over all the bleak scenes of 
selfishness, ignorance, and guilt. Though men are 
bound together by compacts, crowded together in 
populous cities, organized into companies and em- 
pires, their souls, if sinners, are divided from each 
other, and scattered wide as the poles asunder. 

2. He regarded them as inadequately supplied 
with spiritual helpers. " The harvest truly is plen- 
teous, but the laborers are few." There was no pro- 
portion between the vastness of the work and the 
fewness of the laborers. What errors, what preju- 
dices, what habits, what propensities in the case of 
each of the millions of the Jewish people now re- 
quired to be worked off, and superseded by the prin- 
ciples of truth and the spirit of holiness, and how 
few were the men consecrated to the work ! Though 
laborers have greatly multiplied since the days of 
Christ, and though, perhaps, they are more numer- 
ous than ever, the disproportion here lamented by 
Christ, between the work and the workers, is as great 
to-day as ever. Who can think upon the multitudes 
of skeptics, the millions of worldlings, the crowds 
of mere nominal Christians, the teeming myriads of 
heathens, in connection with the few earnest Chris- 
tian reformers, without exclaiming, " The harvest is 
plenteous, but the laborers are few?" Have we 
now one true, faithful, laborious Christian teacher to 
a hundred ? — to a thousand ? — to ten thousand ? The 
question, indeed, tends to oppress the energies and 
darken the hopes of the philanthropic soul. This 
disproportion between the work and the workers is, I 



confess, one of the most humbling and discouraging 

thoughts that steal over this doubting soul of mine. 

II. That the philanthropist who desires to 

IMPROVE SOCIETY MUST DEVOUTLY LOOK TO HEAVEN 

for suitable agents. " Pray ye therefore the Lord 
of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into 
his harvest." But why should they look to him ? 

1. Because he has the deepest interest in the work. 
He is " the Lord of the harvest." All souls are his. 
Souls are "his husbandry." Who feels such an in- 
terest in an object as its proprietor ? Who can feel 
such an interest in the human soul as God? 

2. Because he alone can supply the men suitable 
to the work. While all souls come forth from God, 
those that are fitted for spiritual labor are his chil- 
dren and messengers in an especial sense. He en- 
dows them with those particular attributes which 
qualify them for the work ; he molds their characters 
and inspires their faculties by his gracious influence. 
When Christ ascended up on high, he gave some to 
be apostles, etc. Great men — the men to do the 
spiritual labor of the world — must come from God. 

3. Because he gives the men suitable to the work 
in answer to prayer. " Pray ye," etc. Erect schools, 
found colleges, establish universities, promote the 
means of education to the utmost of your ability, if 
you will, but unless you get men of the right stamp, 
you have done but little to help the world. You 
have merely furnished tools, but you have no work- 
men to use them efficiently. One true man, fitted 
with the right faculties, and baptized with the true 
spirit — of the stamp of Elijah, or Paul, or Luther — 
would do more to help on the world than all your 
religious libraries, schools, and colleges. God's plan 
is to improve, elevate, and save man, by man. The 
want of the world is not so much better books, insti- 
tutions, and schools, as better men — men of a higher 
and diviner type. 

As God helps the world by men, let the Church 
select from the humble classes of society those chil- 
dren who are the choicest specimens of the race; 
children with the largest supply of brain, and heart, 
and physical vigor — whose whole conformation is 
of the highest type. Let those, at the earliest possi- 
ble age, be placed under the tuition and superin- 
tendence of teachers of the highest intellectual and 
moral mold. Boys of such high natural order, 
thus selected and trained, would, under God, become 
the kind of laborers the world wants. As God 
works by means, we believe that, through such an 
agency as this, in connection with prayer, he would 
send forth laborers equal to the work. (Abridged 
from " The Homilist.") 



THE FIRST MISSION OF THE APOSTLES. 307 

CHAPTEE X. 
§2 0. THE FIRST MISSION OF THE APOSTLES. 

]STot the original vocation of the individual apostles, which took place at an earlier 
period, and is here presupposed, nor even their first formal induction into the apostolic 
office, which Luke (vi, 13) mentions as immediately preceding the delivery of the Sermon 
on the Mount, but the appointment to their first mission, with which Matthew could con- 
nect very properly their ordination to the apostolic office, not mentioned by him before, 
are narrated here. Matthew's purpose is here, as elsewhere, not to record certain inci- 
dents or acts in the order of their actual occurrence, but to present another striking feat- 
ure in the ministry of Christ; namely, his appointing to active service those who had 
been previously chosen one by one, or two by two — the first step toward the reorganiza- 
tion of the Church. 

In our chapter the twelve are evidently spoken of as a constituted body. They form 
already a family, of which Jesus is the head. Henceforth the Lord calls himself the 
Master, and the twelve the members of his household, (Matt, x, 25.) who eat his bread, 
(John xiii, 18 ; Luke xxii, 35,) and for whom he has, as the head of the family, the Pass- 
over prepared, (Luke xxii, 7, 8;) yea, he extends his relation to them beyond the narrow 
limits of the present world, (Luke xxii, 30.) The intimate relation existing between 
himself and them is described in the words: " He that receiveth you, receiveth me; for as 
the Father sent me, so I send you." These men, whom he here sent out on a short mis- 
sionary tour, preparatory for their future high embassy, were destined to represent him 
as his apostles, not only in Israel, but all over the world. They are called apostles at 
their first formal mission. The term " apostles" comes from the Greek verb dnoeriXXetv, to 
send forth with a message, and was used to designate a person that was commissioned by 
a king to transact any business between him and another king or people. The apostles 
of Christ were to be the specially-commissioned embassadors of Cod and representatives 
of Christ. Before all others, that were to become afterward organs of the Holy Ghost, 
they are distinguished by this, that they were to receive the immediate impi-ession of 
Christ's whole life, of his works and words, of his sufferings, death, and resurrection, that 
they might be able to testify what they had heard and seen themselves. (John xv, 27.) 
For this reason the twelve, when they had lost one of their number, deemed it necessary 
to fill up the original number as established by Christ himself, by the choice of a new 
member in the place of the one that had fallen out. (Acts i, 8; comp. vs. 21, 22.) That 
Christ chose twelve apostles had undoubtedly reference to the twelve tribes of Israel. 
(Comp. Matt, xix, 28 ; Rev. xxi, 12, 14.) The apostles were sent, at first, only to the lost 
sheep of the house of Israel, in order to prepare a spiritual Israel for Christ before the 
formal calling of the Gentiles. Christ wished, accordingly, to indicate by this choice of 
the twelve, that their mission embraced all Israelites, and that he desired to labor among 
the twelve tribes as the Messiah, as the spiritual King of Israel, through his twelve 
judges and representatives. In the old Israel there lay the germ of the whole new 
Church of believers, whose rulers the apostles are, both by their preaching of the Word 
and the founding of the Church. For this reason they were Christ's immediate disciples, 
always about his person, and, after his resurrection (John xx, 22) and ascension, (Gal. i, 
11, 12; Acts x, 9, etc.,) illuminated by him in an especial manner, his immediate instru- 
ments for the founding of the Church by the preaching of the Word and the administra- 
tion of discipline. To their number another was subsequently added — Paul, the apostle 
of the Gentiles, whose especial calling was not to exclude the other apostles from minis- 
tering unto the Gentiles, but to establish, in the strongest manner possible, the equality 



308 MATTHEW X, 1-4 



of believing Jews and Gentiles. It is true the term "apostle " was applied sometimes to 
those also that were sent forth by Christ to preach or announce the kingdom of God, and 
Paul himself used it in this more general sense; yet (1 Cor. xv, 7) he presupposes the 
more limited meaning as the original one, and applies the term in the latter sense to 
himself only, because he had been immediately called by the Lord himself. (1 Cor. ix, 
1 ; xt, 9.) 

A few more general remarks on the men whom Christ chose to be apostles may find a 
place here. Olshausen says: "They were to form by themselves a perfect unit. It was, 
therefore, necessary that they should mutually complete each other in their dispositions 
and endowments, and carry in themselves the germ of those leading peculiarities which 
afterward characterized the different parts of the Church. None but the Searcher of 
Hearts was able to establish such a circle of kindred spirits as represented the whole body 
of Christ, the Church of the New Testament. The one light that radiated from Christ 
passed, like prismatic colors in variously-modified splendor, over into the hearts of the 
apostles, and in this way the Gospel reaches all men, being adapted to their different dis- 
positions and wants." Neander remarks: "Although we have not a sufficient knowl- 
edge of each of these twelve men to enable us to know and point out the reason why 
Jesus received exactly such into that number, yet the wisdom of Christ displayed in 
their selection appears sufficiently from the example of the most jDrominent characters, 
of a Peter and a John, in whom we see how the principal types of human nature were 
employed to appropriate and develop Christianity. At the same time it is by no means 
necessary, for the purpose of justifying the wisdom of Christ, to suppose that all the 
apostles were men of striking peculiarities and towering talents, and that only such could 
accomplish great things. It was sufficient for the purpose, which the apostles were to 
subserve, that their body consisted of such men as attached themselves, with unfeigned 
love, to the Savior, and by their childlike confidence in him and willingness to be gov- 
erned in all things by his Spirit, were qualified to transmit his true image in its purity to 
others. It was sufficient that from out of the apostolic college, which, as a whole, fully 
answered its purpose, only a few members should shine forth by their strength of mind 
and importance of character, on whom the others could lean for their support." 

Lange thinks that, as the apostolic office required, before every thing else, men in 
whom the life and spirit of Christ would be reflected, without human coloring — men of 
whom it might be expected that they would send forth the water of life as pure as they 
had received it from the fountain — Christ chose laymen, who did not entangle his work in 
priestly ordinances ; unlettered men, who did not mix his wisdom with the tenets of human 
philosophy; plain men, who did not obscure the Divine truth by a false culture. Only 
upon the stem of the mind of a true Israelite Jesus could graft the scion of the New Test- 
ament life, and it was this mind which brought the disciples to Jesus; and yet it must 
not be overlooked that the piety of these Galileans had assumed a more liberal character 
through their independence of the hierarchical influence of Judea and their intercourse 
with Gentiles of their native country." 

But how can we account for it that Judas was received into the apostolical college? 
The Evangelist says that "Jesus knew him from the beginning." By these words of the 
Evangelist we must not understand that Judas had been a reprobate from the beginning, 
and that Jesus chose him- for this very purpose, that he should betray him, as if the awful 
necessity had rested on this castaway to become the instrument of Christ's death. This 
view is diametrically opposed to the word of Jesus, that he had come to seek what is lost, 
and assumes a necessity which by no means existed ; namely, that Jesus should be be- 
trayed by a member of his most intimate circle. In such a sense men are never used as 
instruments in the hand of Providence, and victimized to a higher purpose. But as we 
can not suppose that Jesus was mistaken as to the character of Judas, on what ground is 
the choice of Judas to be accounted for? This question is satisfactorily answered by 



THE FIRST MISSION OF THE APOSTLES. 



309 



Ullmann,who says: " When Judas was called to be an apostle, there was already in him a 
strong tendency to ambition and covetousness. He might fall, but he might also, like 
Peter, rise again. His proximity to Jesus might influence him for good or for evil; and, 
with the possibility of success before him, Jesus regarded it as worth while to make the 
attempt to recover him. If Judas were gained to the side of good, he would prove one 
of the most powerful of the apostles; if he were lost, he might still, yea, must of neces- 
sity, serve the plan of Jesus. By an act of wickedness, which is, at the bottom, as inca- 
pable of rational explanation as evil is generally, Judas hardened himself, even while in 
communion with the purest goodness. Thus that Divine love which might have saved 
him only worked his destruction. And just as all evil must finally serve the good, so 
Judas, when the process of hardening had once set in, was compelled to further the ends 
of Jesus, whatever his own intentions might be. In contrast to the purity of Jesus, he 
exhibited sin in all its abominableness, and by bringing about the catastrophe of the 
death of Jesus, he helped on the accomplishment of the work of redemption. Through 
him and his crime it became possible for Jesus to enter into the suffering of death, with- 
out seeking it himself. Finally, too, by his own desperate death, he testified to the purity 
of Him whom he had betrayed. In all this, however, we must not seek the end, the 
reason, but only the result of the choice of Judas by Jesus. The choice was dictated by 
the motives indicated above ; and these motives can not but be acknowledged to have 
been pure, seeing that they were based on the possibility of the salvation even of Judas." 

"Verses 1—4. (Mark in, 13-19; Luke n, 12-19.) 

(1) And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, l he gave them 
power against unclean spirits, z to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness 
and all manner of disease. (2) S"ow the names of the twelve apostles are these : 
The first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of 
Zebedee, and John his brother; (3) Philip, and Bartholomew; Thomas, and Mat- 
thew the publican; James the son of Alpheus, and Lebbeus, whose surname was 
Thaddcus; 3 (4) Simon the Cananite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him. 



Verse 1. He called them to himself, and for 
their credentials gave them power to perform some 
of the miracles which he himself was performing. 
The specific difference between the miraculous power 
of Jesus and that of his disciples consisted in this, 
that in Christ it was intrinsic, while in the case of 
the latter it was a delegated power, and was exer- 
cised by them only in the name of Jesus, never in 
their own name. 

Verses 2-4. The names of the apostles are now 
given, arranged two by two, perhaps because they 
were sent out so. We have four catalogues of the 
apostles in the New Testament: the one in our text, 



one in Mark iii, 16, one in Luke vi, 14, and one in 
Acts i, 13. In every one there are three classes 
given, each class containing the same names, but in 
a different order. Only Peter, Philip, James, the 
son of Alpheus, and Judas Iscariot occupy in all 
the same place. Two reasons may be assigned for 
this variance of their order : 1. Matthew and Luke 
put the brothers together, while Mark follows the 
orders in which they were sent out two by two ; 2. It 
is quite likely that the greater or less importance of 
the one and the other had something to do with the 
order in which they are enumerated. Those that are 
comparatively little known are mentioned last, while 



1 The word for disciple is in Greek liaSijTTJs — a learner ; 
th'i appellation was given to the twelve, partly on ac- 
count of their outward relation to Jesus, who, after the 
fashion of the rabbins of his time, had a number of dis- 
ciples constantly about his person, partly because their 
ma-in business during Jesus' public ministry was to 
learn. After the outpouring of the Holy Ghost the 
twelve are only called apostles, and the other believers 
are called disciples, because they were now to hear in 
the twelve Jesus himself, and to see in them the in- 



fallible teachers of the Church. Subsequently the term 
" disciples" came out of use, even the apostolic epistles 
do not use it, but in its place the terms, " brethren," 
"faithful," "saints," "Christians." 2 Unclean spirits — 
TTvevfLara aiKa.Ba.pra. — so the demons are called, not only be- 
cause they are unclean and impure in themselves, but 
also because they incite men to all kinds of impurities. 
3 Lachmann reads merely ©a65aios after Cod. B, etc. — 
Tischendorf — Aej30cuos after Cod. D, Augustin, Hesy- 
chius, etc. 



310 



MATTHEW x, 1-4 



the best known stand first. From the fact that Peter 
is named first in the four lists, that James, John, and 
Andrew follow in each immediately after Peter, and 
that Judas Iscariot is invariably mentioned last, 
Lange and Alford, with others, would infer " that 
the first in the list refers not only to the early calling 
of Peter to the apostleship, (John i, 42,) but indi- 
cates also prominence of rank in the apostolic col- 
lege, without, however, implying that he was to be 
raised to the primacy in the Church," about which 
latter point we refer to Matt, xvi, 18. " His true 
historical position," says Alexander, "is that of 
a spokesman to the college of apostles, like the fore- 
man of a jury or the chairman of a committee. 
That it does not imply a permanent superiority of 
rank or office may be argued from the fact that no 
such primacy is any where ascribed to him." — Simon, 
who is called Peter. He received his surname at 
his introduction to Christ. (John i, 43.) Why the 
Lord gave him this name, see chap, xvi, 18. — An- 
drew is a Greek, not a Hebrew name. The Jewish 
practice of adopting Greek names proves the famil- 
iar use of the Greek language in Palestine at that 
time. He was a native of Bethsaida, son of Jonah, 
and had been a disciple of John the Baptist before 
he became acquainted with Christ. (John i, 37-40.) 
After the resurrection he is mentioned only once 
more. (Acts i, 13.) According to tradition, he 
preached among the Scythians, for which reason the 
Russians claim him as their apostle. — James, the son 
of Zebedee, called, in distinction from James, the son 
of Alpheus, "the greater," was partner in the fishing 
trade with Peter and Andrew, and an eye-witness of 
the miraculous draught. He was one of the three that 
were admitted to the most familiar intercourse with 
Jesus, and received, with his brother John, the sur- 
name "Boanerges," that is, sons of thunder, (Mark 
iii, 17,) probably with reference to their personal 
character, as exemplified by their desire to com- 
mand fire to fall from heaven, and to consume those 
Samaritans that would not receive Jesus. (Luke 
ix, 54.) His mother, Salome, was the sister of 
Mary, the mother of Jesus ; he was, consequently, first 
cousin to Jesus, and this accounts for the prayer of 
the two brothers to have the highest rank assigned 
to them in the kingdom of Christ. (Matt, xx, 20.) 
This James was seized and beheaded by Herod at 
Jerusalem. (Acts xii, 2.) Clement of Alexandria 
writes that the officer, to whom his execution had 
been intrusted, seeing the martyr's joy and heavenly 
serenity, was converted to Christianity, and then 
shared his martyrdom. — John, the author of the 
fourth Gospel, of three Epistles, and the Apoca- 
lypse. See more about him in the Introduction to 
his Gospel. — Philip was from Bethsaida, in Gal- 
ilee, and became a disciple the day following the 
visit of Andrew and Peter. (John i, 43.) He not 
only readily followed the short but significant invita- 
tion extended to him, but presently attempted to 
communicate his own impression about the person 



of Jesus to others. (John i, 45.) Alford infers from 
John xii, 20-22, and from his Greek name, that he 
was descended from a Greek family. He appears in 
all the lists as the fifth, and in connection with Bar- 
tholomew and Thomas, whose character seems to 
have resembled his own. (John vi, 5-7; xiv, 8.) 
The few notices about him are given by John. The 
other Evangelists merely mention his name. Of his 
apostolic labor we have only legends. He is said to 
have preached the Gospel in Scythia and Phrygia, 
and to have died at Hierapolis at a very advanced 
age. — Bartholomew is supposed to be identical 
with Nathanael of Cana, in Galilee. This supposi- 
tion rests not only on the fact that Nathaniel is 
mentioned (John i, 46) in connection with Philip, 
while in the synoptic Gospels Bartholomew is men- 
tioned in the same connection, but also on this, that 
we find Nathanael in company with the other apos- 
tles. (John xxi, 2.) Moreover, the name " Barthol- 
omew" is, properly speaking, only a surname, and 
means "son of Thalmai." If Bartholomew is iden- 
tical with Nathanael, we have a full delineation of 
his character by the Lord himself. (John i, 47.) 
The last mention of him is in Acts i, 13. After the 
testimony of some of the Fathers, Paeteenus found 
in India a copy of Matthew's Hebrew Gospel, that 
had been left there by Bartholomew. Tradition adds 
that he was flayed alive, and then crucified with his 
head downward. — Thomas, surnamed Didymus — 
that is, twin — seems to have been a native of Decap- 
olis. Wherever he saw or supposed he. saw contra- 
dictions, (John xiv, 5,) or where he was required to 
believe facts, especially miraculous facts, on the 
statement of others, (John xx, 24,) he hesitated; 
yet as soon as his difficulties were removed, he em- 
braced the subject with the whole strength of his 
soul. Some see in him the representative of the 
nobler class of rationalists, whose unbelief does not 
proceed from an unwillingness to believe, but from 
the demand of an almost ocular demonstration be : 
fore they do believe. As Christ condescended in 
mercy to the frailty of Thomas, so many of the sin- 
cere seekers after truth of the latter class may still 
find the pearl of great price. Of his apostolic labors 
we have only legends. He is said to have preached 
in India and Persia. On the coasts of Malabar 
there are still many Thomas-Christians, who trace 
their origin from Thomas, but are altogether unlike 
the apostolic Churches in doctrine and practice. — 
Matthew, the publican, author of this Gospel. See 
more about him in the Introduction. — James, the 
son of Alpheus, also called the "less." If this Al- 
pheus was, as is supposed, (see Matt, xiii, 55,) iden- 
tical with Cleopas and a brother of Joseph, the 
reputed father of Jesus, James, the son of Alpheus, 
is the often-mentioned brother of the Lord and au- 
thor of the Epistle going by that name. — Lebbeus, 
whose surname was Thaddeus. About this name 
there are difficulties. Mark calls him only Thad- 
deus; Luke has neither of these names, but in place 



THE FIRST MISSION OF THE APOSTLES. 



311 



of it he has Judas, the brother of James; and as 
both Matthew and Mark omit the name of Judas 
(not Iseariot, John xiv, 22,) it seems to follow that 
this Judas, Thaddeus, and Lebbeus were one and 
the same person, and that this Judas was Jude, the 
author of the short Epistle. (Compare the remarks 
on chap, xiii, 55.) — Simon, the Canaxite, called 
by Luke Zelotes. It is likely that he belonged, be- 
fore his conversion, to the sect of the "zealots;" 
that is, the most violent party of the Pharisees, 
which sect, it is true, was not yet fully organized in 
our Lord's times, but existed, nevertheless, in em- 
bryo. We can not say to a certainty what the term 
" Cananite" means. Some consider it equivalent 
to " zealot, or Zelotes." Meyer derives it from a place 
named Cana, different, however, from the Cana in 
Galilee, whose inhabitants were called Kavaioi. The 
position of his name at the side of James and Jude, 
(see Luke vi, 15, and Acts i, 13,) and the juxtaposi- 
tion of these names in chap, xiii, 55, makes it prob- 
able that this Simon was also one of our '' Lord's 
brethren." Besides, Eusebius, in his Church History, 
III, 11, identifies him with Simeon, Bishop of Jeru- 
salem, who, according to tradition, succeeded James 
the less in the episcopal office. — Judas Iscariot; 
that is, a man of Cariot — a place belonging to the 
tribe of Judah. (Josh, xv, 25.) Judas was, conse- 
quently, not of Galilee, but of Judea. Baumgarten, 
in his vv ©efd)idjte Sefu/' has on this point the fol- 
lowing interesting remarks: "As Jerusalem and Ju- 
dea were the principal seat of corruption in Israel 
in those days, and as this corruption has generally 
its roots in the higher classes of society, both as to 
faith and morals, Jesus chose his first disciples from 
the humbler classes of society in Galilee. The only 
exception to this rule, it seems, was Judas Iscariot, 
who was not a Galilean, but a Judean, and the Lord 
must have discovered talents of a high order in him, 
which we see even in his dreadful fall; for it must 
have required an uncommon degree of circumspec- 
tion and self-control to cover up his repeated acts 
of fraud so artfully in the presence of his Master 
and his fellow-disciples, that he was safe from direct 
blame. It was, undoubtedly, his intellectual acumen 
which, struck with the matchless clearness and grand- 
eur of the sayings and doings of Jesus, induced him 
to become one of his disciples." 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 
The men Christ personally and immediately ap- 
pointed to the work were men of the most suitable 
description. He had all men at his command. The 
men on philosophic chairs and on imperial thrones 
were as much at his command as the clerks of the 
receipt of custom and the fishermen on the shores 
of Galilee. We are, therefore, justified in looking 
at the men he selected as the right class of men for 
saving souls. 



Taking this view of the case, we infer — 

I. That it is not necessary that the men to 

SAVE SOULS SHOULD BE DISTINGUISHED BY ANY PAR- 
TICULAR mental peculiarity. All such distinctions 
were foreign to these men. They were all of the 
humbler class, unknown to fame — toll-gatherers, 
fishermen, and struggling sons of toil. But although 
they were not men marked by any particular adven- 
titious distinction, they might still, perhaps, be men 
distinguished by some one particular characteristic 
of mind. If so, one might conclude that the work 
of saving souls is limited to one particular order of 
mind, and that all others are perfectly free from the 
obligation. But these men did not belong to any 
one specific class of mind. Look at the utterances 
and acts of these men, so far as they are recorded. 
Their leading features of mind differ widely from 
each other. They seem to belong to every specific 
class. Some are, like Peter, greatly led by imagina- 
tion, impressible and impulsive — ready to believe 
without evidence and to act without thought ; others, 
like Thomas, are reflective and inquiring, withhold- 
ing faith till the most convincing evidence is brought. 
Now, if no particular adventitious distinction nor 
mental characteristic is necessary to save souls, we 
infer, that souls under God are to be saved by man 
as man; not by man as a scholar or sage; as a 
thinker, poet, or orator; as a sovereign or a judge; 
but by man. The obligation is therefore on all. 

II. It is necessary to be indoctrinated with 
THE principles, endowed with the power, and 

GUIDED BY THE RULES OF CHRIST. 

1. It is necessary to be indoctrinated with the 
principles of Christ. These were all " disciples " 
of Christ before he gave them their commission. 
" When he had called unto him his twelve disciples," 
etc. They had been taught by him before he gave 
them their commission to teach; they were his pu- 
pils before he made them apostles ; he made them 
disciples before he commissioned them to be his 
preachers. We infer, therefore, that Christian disci- 
pleship is a necessary qualification for Christian 
evangelship. 

2. It is necessary to be endowed with the power 
of Christ. " He gave them power against unclean 
spirits," etc. Some might say that if the apostles 
are the true specimens of men for saving souls, then 
their counterparts can not be found, for they were 
endowed with miraculous power, and such endow- 
ments are not to be had now. It is true that the 
apostles had those supernatural endowments, which 
were confined to their own class and age; but two 
thoughts will show that the moral power which 
Christ imparts now is far more than a compensation 
for the loss of the miraculous. First. Much of what 
is true of the miraculous is also true of the moral. 
(1.) Was the miraculous something superadded to 
the natural energies of the soul? So is the moral 
Man has not, constitutionally, true moral force of 
soul, force of profound devotion, race-wide sympathy, 



312 



MATTHEW X, 5-15. 



and holy resolve. (2.) Was the miraculous spe- 
cially derived from Christ? So is the moral. There 
is no true moral force that comes to the soul of man 
that does not come from him. (3.) Was the mirac- 
ulous given for the removal of spiritual and mate- 
rial evils — the casting out of " unclean spirits," and 
healing of "all manner" of bodily diseases? So is 
the moral. Christ gives moral power for the very 
same purpose — for the purpose of removing all the 
evils that afflict the body, and expelling all the dev- 
ils that infest the soul. Secondly. What is not 
equally true of both shows the superior importance 
of the moral. (1.) The possession of the miracu- 
lous was no virtue. Wicked men might have been 
endowed — were, perhaps, endowed — with miraculous 
power, and did many "mighty works." (2.) The 
miraculous power can not rectify or reach the moral 



springs of the soul. No miracle can change the 
current of feeling, destroy the moral habits, or turn 
the will. The soul is throned back in a pavilion 
into which no miraculous power can travel; but 
moral power — the power of truth and love — finds it 
out, reaches it by a whisper. Its still, small voice 
can reverse its mightiest currents, and make its tem- 
pests cease. (3.) The necessity of miraculous power 
might be superseded. Indeed, miracles, to be of 
any service in the cause of truth, must cease at a 
point. Their constant occurrence would destroy their 
effect. But nothing can ever supersede the necessity 
of moral power; it is necessary to the man himself, 
necessary to society, necessary to the universe. 

3. It is necessary to be guided by the rules of Christ. 
"These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded 
them." (Abridged from " The Homilist.") 



§21. OUR LORD'S INSTRUCTIONS TO THE APOSTLES. 

The first mission of the twelve is also recorded by Mark and Luke, but without those 
minute instructions which Matthew gives in connection with the event. Inasmuch as 
portions of the lengthy discourse recorded by Matthew are given by Luke, in connection 
with the sending out of the seventy disciples, (Luke x,) which event is not mentioned by 
Matthew, as well as on another occasion, (Luke xii,) Olshausen, considering the con- 
nection in Luke more natural, is of the opinion that Matthew gives us, in this chapter, 
not an original address, but a collection of maxims and principles, inculcated on differ- 
ent occasions, which were to guide the apostles in their intercourse with the world. — 
Stier contradicts this view, and says: "This lengthy discourse recorded by Matthew con- 
tains ample internal evidence that it was delivered as a whole on one occasion, and for 
one specific purpose, and what we have said in connection with the Sermon on the Mount 
against this strange notion of attributing to Matthew collections of sayings that were 
uttered on different occasions, is equally applicable here." And, really, there seems to be 
no reasonable doubt that this address was delivered as a whole at one time and for one 
specific purpose ; namely, on the occasion of sending out the twelve, although it is not 
unlikely that portions of it were repeated on different occasions. The address refers 
primarily to the first mission of the apostles, which Matthew here records; yet the 
instructions which the Lord gives to his disciples on this occasion are significant and 
prophetic words, that reach into the far-distant future. In this first mission of the apos- 
tles the Lord sees their future missions and those of their successors. What was said to 
the apostles on the occasion in question applied, if literally understood, only to their then 
circumstances, but if spiritually understood, it was fully applicable to their whole future 
calling. The discourse forms three great divisions, following in natural order; each 
treats the same subject from a new point of view, and thus forms a whole by itself. In 
the first division (vs. 5-15) the Lord speaks, according to the letter of his words, mainly 
of the first mission of the apostles and the contents of their preaching, which raised 
them as yet but little above the stand-point of John the Baptist; with this difference, 
however, that John wrought no miracles, did not itinerate, and could not offer to the 
poor the peace of the opened kingdom of heaven. The instructions given to the apostles, 
in their literal import, refer to their mission to the cities and towns of Israel. This 
division comes to a grave close in verse 15, where the fully-developed unbelief that rejects 
the offers of mercy is threatened with dreadful punishment. The second division (vs. 



OUE LORD'S INSTRUCTIONS TO HIS DISCIPLES. 



313 



16-23) has reference to the general mission of the apostles, the nature it would assume 
after their Master's departure, (vs. 17, 18,) and the persecutions to which it would expose 
them, (vs. 21, 22.) The "Behold, I send you," points out, a?, it were, something new; 
that is, " I shall send you" afterward again, and that under much more difficult circum- 
stances, into the very midst of opposition and persecution."' Their proper mission was 
not to commence before that time; the present mission was only preparatory for and 
typical of it. This division embraces, consequently, the apostolic period. The hearers 
of the preaching are no longer Jews exclusively, but men in general, and the rejection 
of Israel and the calling of the Gentiles are clearly indicated. The description of the 
duties of evangelical teachers and of their treatment by the world to the end of time, is 
followed by the announcement of a new catastrophe, by which, in this connection, the 
destruction of Jerusalem is primarily meant; but the final judgment is also included, 
since the judicial "coming of the Son of man " for the destruction of Jerusalem is inva- 
riably a type of his coming for the final judgment. Thus, as the instructions given in 
verses 5-15 apply, in their prophetic sense, to the whole future missionary career of the 
apostles, so the apostolic instructions (vs. 16-23) are applicable to all their successors, 
to all to whom it is said, "I send you," constituting the grand, authoritative platform of 
principles for missionary operations for all time to come, and to be understood more and 
more in the course of centuries and by experience. — The third division (vs. 2-1-42) is 
addressed to all disciples of the Lord. The persecutions foretold, with primary reference 
to the apostolic period, are here designated as the common lot of all believers of all 
times till they receive the great reward promised unto them. The position of the world 
toward the cause of Christ, the successive triumphs of the latter over all opposition and 
persecution are here foretold. Christ's kingdom is designated as a kingdom of suffering 
for all its members up to the moment when a more than abundantly-compensating glory 
will be the enviable lot of all the finally faithful. 

A. INSTRUCTIONS OF THE LORD WITH REGARD TO THE MISSION OP THE APOSTLES 

CONFINED TO ISRAEL. 

"Verses 5— IS. 

(5) These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into 
the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans l enter ye not: (6) but 
go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. (7) And as ye go, preach, say- 
ing, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. (8) Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, 
raise the dead, 2 cast out devils : freely ye have received, freely give. (9) Provide 
neither gold, nor silver, nor brass 3 in your purses ; 4 (10) nor scrip 5 for your journey, 



1 Samaria lay between Galilee and Judea. After the 
revolt of the ten tribes Samaria became their capital, 
and from it the population generally received the name 
Samaritans. After the taking of Samaria and the lead- 
ing away of the best part of the population into cap- 
tivity, the King of Assyria sent in their place heathen 
colonists. (2 Kings xvii, 24.) From these and the rem- 
nants of Israelites left there arose a mongrel race, and 
their religion was a mixture of revealed truth and 
heathen superstition. (2 Kings xvii, 24-41.) The Jews 
after their return from the Babylonish captivity not 
permitting them to help in erecting the second Temple, 
(Ezra iv, 1-3,) they built themselves a temple on Mount 
Gerizim under Sanballat, but it was destroyed ten years 
before Christ by the Jewish high-priest and prince, John 
Hyrcanus ; they, however, continued to resort thither for 



prayer. Subsequently they became strict monotheists, 
shared the Messianic expectations, but recognized only 
the Pentateuch. The Jews held no intercourse with 
them. (John iv, 9.) It would seem that they were 
more ready to receive the Messiah than the Jews. (John 
iv, 39-42 ; Luke ix, 51.) 2 The words " raise the dead " 
are wanting in Cod. E, F, K, L, M, etc., in many Minus- 
cles, several versions and Fathers ; Tischendorf omits it. 
3 These three coins represent every kind of money. By 
the English term " brass " is to be understood an alloy 
of tin and copper. i Literally, girdles. The folds of 
the girdle, worn by both sexes, to keep the flowing dress 
together, served poorer people also to keep money, while 
the richer classes had pockets for this purpose on the 
right side of the dress. 5 An obsolete word for sack or 
bag, in which travelers carried their provisions. 



314 



MATTHEW X, 5-1-5. 



neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet, staves : for the workman is worthy of his 
meat. (11) And into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, inquire who in it is 
worthy; and there ahide till ye go thence. (12) And when ye come into a house, 
salute it. (13) And if the house he worthy, let your peace come upon it: hut if it 
he not worthy, let your peace return to you. (14) And whosoever shall not receive 
you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the 
dust of your feet. (15) Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the 
land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city. 



Verses 5, 6. As appears from chap, ix, 36, it 
was the Lord's compassion on the Jewish people in 
their wretched and neglected condition that prompt- 
ed this mission of his apostles unto them. That he 
sent them, however, to the Jews alone, and forbade 
them to go to Samaritans or Gentiles, was not done 
to approve or confirm Jewish prejudices about their 
nation being the favorite nation of the Most High. 
Christ was to be, during his sojourn on earth, prima- 
rily the minister of the circumcision, (Rom. xv, 8,) 
and his public ministry was, accordingly, almost ex- 
clusively confined to the Jews; so also that of his 
apostles while he was with them. There were cogent 
reasons for this course. In the first place, it was 
the lighter task to preach the Gospel to the Jews, 
who by their sacred books ought to have been fully 
prepared for its reception. The Jews were the only 
nation that had received such a training. For this 
reason it was necessary to convince them of the 
truth of Christ's doctrine and claims before the Gos- 
pel could be preached to any other nation with hope 
of success. Secondly, the Gospel plan of salvation 
could, even to the Jews, not fully be preached, so 
loner as the grand facts of Christianity, the vicarious 
death, resurrection, and ascension of its Founder 
were not accomplished, much less to the heathen 
nations, who were ignorant of the typical and pre- 
paratory character of the old dispensation. Thirdly, 
so long as the Lord tabernacled on earth there ex- 
isted still a possibility of Israel accepting their Mes- 
siah, and, consequently, the relation of the Jewish 
nation to the Gentiles had to be respected; that is, 
the blessings of the covenant could not be offered 
unto the latter outside of the theocracy before the 
final rejection of the Jews. An opposite course of 
conduct — that is, a formal mission of the apostles to 
the Samaritans and Gentiles — would have destroyed 
their access to the Jews altogether. If Israel had 
accepted their offers, the prophecy of Micah (iv, 1) 
would, at once, have been fulfilled; but as they were 
rejected, what Paul says (Rom. xi, 11) came to pass. 
The apostles were, consequently, instructed for the 
present not to go into the way of the Gentiles; 
that is, not beyond the confines of Palestine, not on 
the roads that led into the countries of the Gentiles, 
nor into any city of the Samabitans ; that is, not 
settle there for the purpose of evangelizing them. 
The way of the Samaritans they could not avoid, 



since they had to travel through Samaria when going 
from Galilee to Judea. It may appear strange that 
Jesus should give such a command with regard to 
the Samaritans after he had, with his disciples, dwelt 
two days with them, had convinced many of them 
that he was the Messiah, and declared them to be a 
field white already to harvest. (John iv.) That, 
however, Jesus did not intend by that visit to lay a 
permanent foundation among the Samaritans, is 
plainly seen from the fact that he did not repeat his 
visit nor receive any Samaritan into the number of 
his apostles or disciples. He intended by that visit 
of his simply to prepare the Samaritans for the Gos- 
pel that would, at a later period, be preached unto 
them. In this respect his intercourse with Samari- 
tans was to be an example for the apostles in their 
subsequent apostolic career. He did not forbid his 
disciples all intercourse with the Samaritans. If 
they met them on the road, or any where without their 
cities, they were at liberty to converse with them, as 
he himself had done. (John iv.) Moreover, the in- 
junction of the Lord was only temporary, as is im- 
plied, in the original, in the use of the second aorist 
tense, while the commands that have a permanent 
validity are all expressed by moods of the present 
tense. Shortly after the ascension it was formally 
removed : " Ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in 
Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and 
unto the uttermost parts of the earth." (Acts i, 8.) 

Verse 7. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. 
In the full sense of the word, the kingdom of God, 
the new dispensation, did not commence till the old 
was abrogated. Before the outpouring of the Holy 
Ghost on the day of Pentecost, the apostles could 
not declare the new dispensation as having com- 
menced ; they could only announce, as the Lord 
himself did, that the kingdom of God is at hand. 
The subject-matter of what the apostles preached at 
their first tour in Israel, was, on the whole, identical 
with that of John's preaching (iii, 2) and the Lord's, 
(iv, 17,) but widely different from their subsequent 
message. (Matt, xxviii, 29; Mark xvi, 15.) 

Verse 8. The miraculous powers delegated to the 
apostles for a specific purpose, and, as it would seem, 
for the time being, foreshadowed the salvation from 
the thralldom and misery of sin, which the Messiah 
was to bring, and served as the credentials of their 
divine mission. They needed these miraculous 



OUR LORD'S INSTRUCTIONS TO THE APOSTLES. 



315 



powers at the outset of their public career more than 
at any subsequent time ; for who would have listened 
to these fishermen and publicans without such cre- 
dentials ? — The sick. The article is wanting in 
Greek, and must be left out in English too. The 
apostles were not charged to heal all the sick, etc., 
but only those that were willing to be healed by ex- 
ercising faith in what the apostles announced. — 
Raise the dead. See foot-note 2. 

Verses 9, 10. What is forbidden here had refer- 
ence only to the occasion in question. M^ KTr/ovci&e 
is the subjunctive aorist, and implies, as stated be- 
fore, something transient, something that is not to 
be a rule for life. (Comp. 2 Tim. iv, 13.) This ap- 
pears also from a comparison with Luke xxii, 35-37. 
The circumstances referred to in the latter passage 
had greatly changed for the worse, and, therefore, 
the instructions are also changed. The idea con- 
veyed here is simply that such were their circum- 
stances at present that they could well trust Provi- 
dence for their support. They were forbidden to 
take with them, 1. Money; 2. Provisions; 3. More 
than one suit of clothing, or more than one pair of 
shoes, or more than one staff. The reasons why the 
Lord prescribed such a course at the time were prob- 
ably, 1. That they might, during his lifetime, become 
accustomed to bear the hardships to which, in their 
subsequent missionary career, they would be ex- 
posed; 2. That their faith in Providence might be 
strengthened. As the apostles had subsequently to 
set out on their missionary tour with empty hands, 
the promises given them for their first preparatory 
tour were calculated to inspire them with confi- 
dence. — Fob the workman is worthy of his meat. 
This is explanatory of what goes before, stating the 
ground on which the foregoing instructions rest. 
While the apostles were to rely implicitly on Provi- 
dence, and not to indulge in any anxious cares, this 
declaration, which is but a common truth of life, re- 
minds the people of all times of their duty to supply 
the temporal wants of the messengers and servants 
of God. This declaration of the Lord accords with 
Numbers xviii, 31, where it is said to the Levites: 
" And ye shall eat it in every place, [that is, the in- 
crease of the thrashing-floor and the increase of the 
wine-press ;] for it is your reward for your service in 
the tabernacle of the congregation." While the 
Lord promises to the workmen the material support 
which they need in devoting their whole strength 
and time to his service, he fulfills this promise 
through human instrumentalities. It devolves upon 
those to whom they preach to furnish them the nec- 
essaries of life. The preachers of the Gospel have 
a clear right to expect that much as their due. It is 
a reward for their services, not a gift of charity, as, 
alas! too many persons are apt to view what they 
give for the support of the Gospel. By the spirit 
of these commands of the Lord, though not by their 
literal application, pastors of Churches, as well as 
missionaries among the heathen, are still bound. 



Verse 11. Inquire who is worthy. The duty 
of evangelizing the world does not require the 
Evangelists to expose themselves rashly and need- 
lessly to abuse aud privation. The disciples are 
here expressly commanded to inquire whether there 
are persons that are worthy. This inquiry, however, 
must be considerate. Not the least spark of life 
kindled by God's grace must be passed by unno- 
ticed. — And there abide till ye go thence. Hav- 
ing selected a lodging, they must not arbitrarily 
change it, be it either from convenience or from ap- 
prehension to be burdensome. This order was very 
appropriate and timely; for by a rash, improper 
change of their lodgings the apostles would, 1. Have 
placed themselves on an equal footing with the va- 
grant Jewish proselytes of those days; 2. They 
might have left those whom they had favorably im- 
pressed too soon, or justified the suspicion that they 
were not satisfied with their accommodations; 3. Fre- 
quent changes might have given occasion to evil sur- 
mises, and thus curtailed their usefulness. 

Verse 12. From Luke x, 5, we learn what the 
salutation was. It was, " Peace be to this house." 
This was the common form of salutation among the 
Jews, and includes every possible good wish. The 
rabbins say: "Great is peace, for it includes all 
other blessings." This beautiful, significant word is 
to become a reality in the mouths of the heralds of 
the kingdom. Not only their first salutation, but 
their whole conduct and being must breathe peace, 
"that their feet may be beautiful wherever they go." 
(Isa. lii, V.) 

Verse 13. And if the house be worthy. If the 
house pointed out to you is as described, if its occu- 
pants are willing to receive the peace which you 
proffer unto them, then let your peace come upon 
them, or, more literally, then your peace come upon 
the house. Your salutation will not be an empty 
formality; it will confer a blessing on those to 
whom it is directed. — But if it be not worthy. 
If the house thus saluted is unwilling to receive the 
peace which you offer, if they refuse to hear and re- 
ceive you, then let your peace return to you; 
literally, your peace return to you. It will be as if 
you had never pronounced peace upon this house. 
There will be no communion in spirit between this 
house and you. (Isa. Iv, 11.) It is your duty to 
continue your journey undismayed and without any 
feelings of resentment, retaining the peace refused 
by them. Let this be your consolation, if your la- 
bors of love meet with determined resistance. The 
expression, " Let your peace return to you," implies, 
also, a caution to the apostles that they should not 
forfeit this peace by offending in any way, even 
against these unworthy persons. 

Verse 14. The meaning of this verse is not that 
they should turn away from the house or city after 
the first failure, but that they should make diligent 
and persevering inquiry as to whether there was any 
congenial person about, and only after they had 



316 



MATTHEW X, 16-23. 



become satisfied that this was not the case, they 
should leave the house first and then the city. 
Some of the apostles carried out this command to 
its very letter. (Acts xiii, 51; xviii, 6.) — Shake 
off the dust of TOUR feet. This was a symbolical 
act of a very grave character. When the Jews re- 
turned home from a journey through a heathen 
country, they shook off the dust of their feet as soon 
as they reached the line, expressive of their con- 
tempt for the heathen. In the case of the apostles 
it meant: "Those that reject your message about 
the kingdom of God belong no longer to the house 
of Israel, but are in reality heathens." At the same 
time they thereby testified, 1. We take nothing of 
yours with us; we simply break off our connection 
and communion with you; 2. We have desired noth- 
ing of yours; we have sought you, not your prop- 
erty; 3. We free ourselves from all participation in 
your condemnation ; we offered you peace ; you 
rejected it, and thus you will bring on your rejection. 
Verse 15. It must be noticed that this denuncia- 
tory part, as also the commded to shake off the dust, 
applies only to the people of Israel, who had long 
been prepared for the message of the Gospel by the 
law and the prophets, and, recently, more particu- 
larly by John the Baptist. At the same time the 
Lord does not here pass final judgment on all those 
who rejected the first message of the apostles. His 



words are rather a prophetic warning against unbe- 
lief from its first incipiency to its final consumma- 
tion. That some of the number denounced might 
subsequently become subjects of converting grac» 
is not denied. In this sense these words are equally 
applicable to all despisers of the Gospel in Christian 
countries. But as they were then inapplicable to 
the heathen, so they are now inapplicable to those 
who do not know God. — Sodom and Gomorrah ; 
that is, the inhabitants of these cities are cited here 
as symbols of all ungodliness and wickedness visited 
by God's vindictive justice. The degree of guilt is 
proportional to the strength and clearness of the Di- 
vine impressions against which the individual strug- 
gles and becomes finally hardened. The clearer 
the light, the stronger the conviction, the greater the 
guilt. The Sodomites had heard but the feeble testi- 
mony of Lot; but in the case before us there was 
more than Lot. In the final rejection of the Gospel 
sin or guilt reaches its culmination. (Matt, xi, 20; 
Luke xii, 47.) Two more points deserve to be no- 
ticed: 1. The severest temporal judgments do not 
satisfy the demands of God's insulted justice; for 
Sodom and Gomorrah are still waiting for their final 
judgment and punishment; 2. Terrible as their pun- 
ishment was, and their final judgment will be, yet it 
will be more tolerable than the fate of those that 
finally reject the offers of the Gospel. 



B. CHRIST'S INSTRUCTIONS WITH REFERENCE TO THE PERSECUTIONS 
AWAITING THE APOSTLES. 

"Verses 16—33. 



(16) Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves : be 1 ye therefore 
wise as serpents, and harmless 2 as doves. (17) But beware of men : for they will 
deliver you up to the councils, 3 and they will. scourge 4 you in their synagogues; 
(18) and ye shall be brought before governors and kings 5 for my sake, for a testi- 
mony against them and the Gentiles. (19) But when they deliver you up, take no 
thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour 
what ye shall speak. (20) For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your 
Father which speaketh in you. (21) And the brother shall deliver up the brother 
to death, and the father the child : and the children shall rise up against their 
parents, and cause them to be put to death. (22) And ye shall be hated of all 
men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end 6 shall be saved. 
(23) But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily 
I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of 
man be come. 



1 Greek, become — viVeo-flc. 2 Without guile. 3 See foot- 
note on chap, v, 22. * A tribunal of three members of the 
inferior councils had the power to sentence to scourging 
in the synagogue. On the mode of executing this punish- 
ment see Deut. xxv, 2, 3 ; thirteen stripes with a leather 



scourge, consisting of three thongs, were reckoned for 
thirty-nine. 6 The governors and kings are here dis- 
tinguished as civil rulers from the ecclesiastical councils. 
6 That is, to the end of the evil hour or sore persecution, 
as is manifest from the context. 



OUR LORD'S INSTRUCTIONS TO THE APOSTLES. 



317 



Verse 16. In the solemn and emphatic words, 
" Behold, I send you," our Lord repeats the an- 
nouncement of their mission, but he does not con- 
fine it to Judea. The circumstances attending their 
first mission are greatly changed. Instead of hospi- 
table roofs, an unqualified rejection of their message 
and cruel persecutions are predicted unto them. The 
emphatic I ('Ey(S) which opens the new section must 
not be overlooked. The Lord says, It is I that 
send you on so' perilous a mission, creating in this 
way the conviction in their hearts that, amid all 
dangers and enemies, he would protect and defend 
them. The manner in which Christ introduces the 
subject of persecution, commencing with the lighter 
kinds, and passing on to persecution even unto 
death, is also worthy of notice. Even the greatest 
circumspection and wisdom can not avoid martyr- 
dom. — Dr. Alexander's comments on this verse are 
more to the point than those of the German com- 
mentators: " The contrast in the first clause is iden- 
tical with that in vii, 15, sheep and wolves being 
specified as natural enemies, but here with special 
stress upon the circumstance that one is helpless and 
the other cruel. At the same time the use of the 
term sheep, as usual, suggests the idea of compara- 
tive worth or value, and of intimate relation to the 
shepherd or proprietor. . . . The last clause states 
the duty thence arising, and the means of security 
amid such perils. — Therefore — because you are 
so precious, yet so helpless, and because your ene- 
mies are so superior in strength and malice. — Be 
ye is in Greek much more expressive, meaning 
properly, become ye, implying the necessity of a change 
to make them what they were not by nature or by 
habit. — Wise as serpents. The allusion is to a 
well-known fact, that this part of the animal crea- 
tion is peculiarly cautious in avoiding danger. It is 
this self-defensive and preservative faculty, and not 
the malignant cunning of the serpent, which is here 
presented as an emblem and a model. — Harmless 
as doves. Doves have in all ages been proverbial 
emblems of gentleness and innocence; but here a 
more specific sense attaches to the emblem, as sug- 
gested by the very derivation of the epithet em- 
ployed, which primarily means unmixed, and, in a 
moral application, free from all duplicity, corre- 
sponding with the 'single eye' of vi, 22." 

Verse 17. But beware op men. You will nat- 
urally expect support and help from your country- 
men; but beware of them, and of men in general, 
for they will prove wolves. 

Verse 18. And ye shall be brought, etc. This 
prediction conclusively proves the prescience of 
Jesus Christ. The gradual development of his king- 
dom, its constant spread amid all opposition and 
persecution, even unto the death of his apostles, 
which the Jews could, in those times, effect only by 
delivering them up to the Gentile magistrates, lay 
open and plain before his eyes. — For a testimony 
against them and the Gentiles. More correctly 



translated to them — that is, to the rulers— and to 
the nations, namely, those nations ruled by them. 
If we take "nations" in the sense of Gentiles, we 
have to understand by "them" the Jews. — From 
these words the apostles learned that it was their 
solemn duty to testify of Christ at all times and 
under all circumstances. Their examinations be- 
fore governors and kings furnished them with some 
of the finest opportunities to preach the Gospel 
of Christ. Thus the spirit of persecution, whereby 
Christianity was to be rooted out, proved a pow- 
erful means of its more rapid spread and growth, 
and "the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the 
Church." 

Verse 19. Take no thought how or what ye 
shall speak. It was but natural that the humble 
and unlettered apostles should be overcome by fear 
and confusion in the presence of the great ones of 
the earth, and, therefore, the Lord instructs them 
how they should conduct and defend themselves be- 
fore these high tribunals. — Take no thought, (jit) 
IMcpifivijcTiTE. ) Take no anxious, distracting thought — 
a spiritual prohibition, answering to the literal one 
in verses 9, 10. (Compare, also, chap, vi, 25.) In 
these words the Lord forbids his disciples to rely 
unduly on their own strength, to put forth efforts ex- 
clusively their own toward a successful management 
of their defense. In lieu thereof they are to rely on 
him, to look up to him for strength and wisdom as 
to what and how they are to speak. — For it shall 
be given you. A similar promise had 'ong before 
been given to Moses. (Exod. iv, 12.) It shall be 
given to you from God, who gives every thing else. 

Verse 20. It is the Spirit of your Father 
which speaketh in you. The Spirit of the Father 
is here opposed to the disciples' own spirit, and there 
is in this promise of the Spirit something, which 
points also to their future, more properly apostolic, 
mission. (John xv, 26, 27.) It is worthy of note, 
1. That the Lord, in speaking to his disciples, 
never says our Father, but either my Father or your 
Father, or both at the same time. He no where 
leaves any room for the opinion that God is in the 
same sense his Father in which he is ours. 2. That, 
in the great work of God in the world, not human 
individuality, but God alone, his Christ, his Spirit, 
are the great moving power to which every thing 
must be ascribed. 

Verse 21. These words point to a wider field 
than could open to the apostles at their first mission. 
The Gospel is represented here as taking precedence 
of all natural relations and conditions of life. The 
new element of life which it introduces into the 
world is checked by no kin or family ties. Where- 
soever there are susceptible souls, it seeks them out, 
and takes hold of them. But it is this very feature 
of the Gospel which also calls forth the opposition 
of those that do not yield to its influence, and so the 
Gospel of peace brings the sword even into the fam- 
ily circle. What the Lord predicts here refers there- 



318 



MATTHEW X, 24-42. 



fore, not to the apostles alone, but, as appears 
plainly from verse 24, to all that after them shall 
believe the Gospel. Hatred growing out of oppos- 
ing views on religion severs all the bonds of affec- 
tion, kin, and friendship. We have here a rising 
climax; a brother delivers up his brother, then a 
father his own children, and, what is most unnatural 
of all, children rise up against their own parents. 
The history of the spread of Christianity shows the 
literal truth of these prophetic words of the Savior. 

Verse 22. He that endureth to the end shall 
be saved. In order to understand these words, it is 
necessary to enter into the character of our Lord's 
prophecies respecting Ms coming, on which see the 
notes on Matt. xxiv. 

Verse 23. But when they persecute you in 
this city, flee ye into another. Looking to the 
persecutions in store for his disciples, the Lord lays 
down a general rule of conduct for them. They 
must not seek martyrdom ; they must not peril their 



lives unnecessarily. On the contrary, where there 
was no principle at stake, where no great object 
could be realized by submitting to persecution, they 
were to flee to other cities, where there was compar- 
ative safety. It is, therefore, the part of humility 
and prudence, except where love and justice dictate 
a different course, to avoid persecution, and all 
would-be martyrs are, in the words of our text, 
sternly rebuked. The particle of asseveration, ver- 
ily, is three times used in this discourse, at the close 
of every section — verses 15, 23, and 42. — Till the 
Son of man be come. By this coming of the Son 
of man we may understand either the ushering in 
of the new dispensation by the resurrection and as- 
cension of Christ, or the overthrow of Judaism by 
the destruction of Jerusalem. Dr. Alexander con- 
siders it "an indefinite expression, meaning some- 
times more and sometimes less, but here equivalent 
to saying, till the object of your mission is accom- 
plished." 



C. CHRIST'S INSTRUCTIONS AS TO THE COURSE TO BE PURSUED BY HIS DISCIPLES 

CONTINUED— REASONS WHY THEY SHOULD BE PERSE VERING-LY 

FAITHFUL AMID TRIALS AND SUFFERINGS. 

"Verses 24r-43. 

(24) The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. (25) It 
is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, l and the servant as his lord. 
If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, 2 how much more shall they 
call them of his household? (26) Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing 
covered, that shall not be revealed ; and hid, that shall not be known. (27) "What 
I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light : and what ye hear in the ear, that 
preach ye upon the house-tops. 3 (28) And fear not them which kill the body, but 
are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul 
and b6dy in hell. (29) Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? 4 and one of 
them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. (30) But the very hairs 
of your head are all numbered. (31) Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value 
than many sparrows. (32) "Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him 
will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. (33) But whosoever shall 
deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven. 
(34) Think not that I am come to send peace on earth : I came not to send peace, 



1 The servant must not look for better treatment than 
that of his master. 2 " This word is the Greek form of 
the name of Baal-zebub, (the Philistine god worshiped 
at Ekron,) signifying the lord of flien. (2 Kings i, 2.) 
But the reading of the word in this verse, best sup- 
ported by the manuscripts, is, by a slight alteration, 
Beelzeboul. This is undoubtedly here the true form. 
The Jews were accustomed to express their contempt of 
a thing by some slight change of its name, which gave 
it a disgusting or even indecent meaning. Beelzeboul 
signifies lord of dung. And the word dung was also 
their contemptuous epithet for idolatry, since they in- 



tended to give the filthiest possible name to what they 
considered the vilest possible sin. Beelzebub, therefore, 
they changed to Beelzeboul, lord of dung, or, perhaps, 
idolatry. It was perhaps from the title lord of idolatry, 
thus acquired, that Beelzebub was reputed prince of 
devils. And in the extremity of their hatred, their 
attributing to Jesus the name of this supreme demon, 
indicated their consciousness of the mighty power mani- 
fested." (Whedon.) 3 House-tops in Oriental countries 
were flat and surrounded with railings, so that one could 
conveniently address the people from them. From the top 
of public houses official j>roclamations were read. * The 



OUR LORD'S INSTRUCTIONS TO THE APOSTLES. 



319 



but a sword. (35) For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and 
the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in- 
law. (36) And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. (37) He that 
loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me : and he that loveth 
son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. (38) And he that taketh not 
his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. (39) He that findeth his 
life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it. (40) He that 
receiveth you receiveth me ; and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me. 
(41) He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's 
reward ; and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man 
shall receive a righteous man's reward. (42) And whosoever shall give to drink 
unto one of these little ones a cup of cold loater 5 only in the name of a disciple, 
verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward. 



Verse 25. The third division of this discourse 
reaches to the end of time, and promises to every 
one who shall receive his disciples a gracious reward 
in the day of judgment. — There is a gradation in 
the different designations of the relation between 
Christ and his disciples; namely, 1. That of teacher 
(SiddoKaTwc) and disciple, (/ladr/Tye-) (Comp. Matt, 
v, 1; xxiii, 7, 8; Luke vi, 20.) 2. That of Lord 
{jivpiog) and servant, (SoiiXoc.) (See John xiii, 13; 
Luke xii, 35-48.) And, 3. That of master of the 
house {u'iKodecTr6-Tis) and members of the household, 
(oiKiaKoi.) (Matt, xxvi, 26-29; xxiv, 35; Luke 
xxiv, 30.) Those that have found in Christ the 
Teacher and Lord become his children, the members 
of his household. As the Lord was, during his so- 
journ on earth, the head of his family, he is so still, 
only in a higher sense, as the head of his Church. — 
If they have called the master of the house 
Beelzebub. (See foot-note on preceding page.) The 
Pharisees charged Jesus with casting out devils by 
Beelzebub, the prince of the devils, and transferred 
the name itself to Christ. This involved the highest 
degree of blasphemy, and was, though not the unpar- 
donable sin itself, at least a fair approach toward it. 
To ascribe Divine influences, as such, to the powers 
of darkness is the very climax of the enmity of the 
carnal mind against God. — How much more shall 
they call them of his household? The disciples 
and members of the household, who are inferior to 
their Master in dignity and power, who can not plead 
perfect sinlessness as he could, who have their weak- 
nesses, which the world knows how to magnify, must 
be prepared for a still worse treatment than their 
Master. 

Verse 26. Fear them not, therefore. The Lord 
now addresses words of encouragement to his disci- 
ples. Their near relation to him, which would bring 
opposition and cruel persecution upon them, offers 



them the first encouragement — their Master will 
finally triumph over all opposition and all his ene- 
mies. The second encouragement lies in this, that 
the opposition which they would encounter could not 
be avoided without abandoning the very erjd for 
which Christ came himself and sent forth his apos- 
tles. — For there is nothing covered [iccKa?iv/x/ievov } 
that has been covered] that shall not be re- 
vealed ; and hid, \_Kpvn-6v, secret,] that shall not be 
known. This solemn saying, which our Lord uttered 
on different occasions, (Luke viii, 17 ; xii, 2,) implies 
the following truths: 1. It is God's purpose that 
the Gospel shall be fully published, and this pur- 
pose ye serve. Although it may be retarded by the 
opposition and attacks of its adversaries, yet it will 
in the end illuminate the whole world. 2. Beware, 
then, of hypocrisy, (Luke xii, 2,) through fear of 
men. Let the hatred of your persecutors not pre- 
vent you from preaching the truth ; for all that act 
the part of hypocrites will be detected and exposed 
hereafter. 3. Fear them not, for under whatsoever 
aspersions ye may labor from them, the day is com- 
ing which shall clear you and condemn them, if you 
are fearlessly doing the work of Him that sent you. 
(Col. iii, 3, 4; 1 John iii, 2.) Then the Lord will 
bring every thing to light, and clear it up, and the 
innocence and truth of the Master, the disciples, 
and the Gospel, that are slandered here, shall then 
be fully vindicated. 

Verse 27. "In darkness" and "in the ear" 
refer to the obscurity and limited extent of the pub- 
lic ministry of our Lord, compared with the preach- 
ing of the Gospel by the apostles, after the outpour- 
ing of the Holy Ghost. In a similar sense our Lord 
said to his disciples : " He that believeth on me, the 
works that I do shall he do also ; and greater works 
than these shall he do, because I go unto my 
Father." (John xiv, 12.) 



assarian (farthing) was a Roman coin of copper, equal | 5 In the hot countries of the Orient the offer of a cup of 
to one-tenth part of the denarius, or one cent and a half. | cold water is an act of kindness much appreciated. 



320 



MATTHEW X, 24-42. 



Verse 28. Fear not them which kill the body, 
but are not able to kill the soul. The immor- 
tality or indestructibility of the soul is here presup- 
posed as something that is self-evident, or, rather, 
Jesus, who does not arrive at his knowledge by in- 
duction or deduction, but has it by intuition, speaks 
of the condition of the soul after the death of the 
body by merely stating what is the case. This his 
statement plainly implies the self-conscious exist- 
ence of the soul in its disembodied state ; for, 1. We 
are told that what men can do to the body they can 
not do to the soul — they can kill the body, but can 
not kill the soul; 2. If the state which the soul en- 
ters after its separation from the body, or after the 
death of the body, were that of entire unsconscious- 
ness; if the soul in its disembodied state were inca- 
pable of thinking, feeling, and enjoying, those that 
kill the body would really murder the soul also — at 
least to the day of resurrection — but this is denied 
in the text. The murderers of the body can not 
affect the soul. — The disciples are warned against 
all anxious cares about their lives, since their bodies 
alone are exposed to the malice of their enemies, 
they being unable to touch the real life of Christians. 
The soul, the better part of man, is out of human 
reach, but is under the power of another, whom the 
Savior admonishes his disciples to fear. — But 
rather fear him which is able to destroy both 
body and soul in hell. On this clause expositors 
are greatly divided. Stier, whose opinions are al- 
ways entitled to respect, even when we can not en- 
tertain them, maintains positively that Satan alone 
can possibly be the object of dread, spoken of in the 
text. His reasons are, 1. The leading object of the 
whole division is to incite his disciples to exercise a 
childlike, unshaken confidence in God, whose nature 
it is to save, not to destroy ; 2. The parallelism, 
" Fear not them which kill," etc., and, "Rather fear 
him which is able," forbids us to understand by the 
fear of the second clause something radically differ- 
ent from that of the first ; 3. The New Testament 
never speaks of God as destroying the soul; but 
this is exactly the province of Satan, whose realm 
hell is, and of whom it is expressly said, (Heb. ii, 14,) 
that he has the power of death ; 4. By making the 
great object of fear Satan, and not God, the unity 
of the whole discourse is preserved. The Savior, as 
it were, says : " Ye have but one grand enemy, who is 
bent on your destruction, and sin has given him the 
right to bring it about, (Eph. vi, 12; Heb. ii, 14,) 
and him, therefore, fear. Keep, by all possible 
means, especially in the hour of the sorest trial, out 
of his reach, and all your other enemies will be 
harmless;" 5. The parallel passage (Luke xii, 3-7) 
makes the reference to Satan still more imperative. 
The disciples are represented as the intimate friends 
of Jesus and of God. To fear him would be en- 
tirely out of place in this connection ; but Satan, who 
"was a murderer from the beginning," to whom 
every murder is, strictly speaking, chargeable, is and 



remains an object of fear, not as having any abso- 
lute power over the believer, but because the believer 
can any moment, through lack of faith, expose him- 
self to Satan's power. Alford, after thoroughly 
weighing Stier's arguments, finds himself con- 
strained to reject his view for the following reasons: 
" It seems at variance with the conclusion of the 
discourse and with the universal tone of Scripture 
regarding Satan. If such a phrase as <j>ofiiuoda.i 
rbv (hd/3o?iov — to fear the devil — could be instanced 
as having the meaning of fvXdgaodac — to beware of, 
or if it could be shown that any where power is 
attributed to Satan analogous to that indicated by 
' Who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell,' 
I should then be open to the doubt whether he might 
not here be intended ; but seeing that <j>o($eiodcu and — ■ 
have no fear of — indicating terror, is changed into 
(j>o t 3eiadai — fear him — so usually followed by rbv debv — 
God — in a higher and holier sense, and that God 
alone is throughout the Scripture the Almighty Dis- 
penser of life and death, both temporal and eternal, 
seeing, also, that Satan is ever represented as the 
condemned of God, not as the one that is able, etc., 
I must hold by the general interpretation, and be- 
lieve that both here and in Luke xii, 3-7, our Heav- 
enly Father is intended as the object of our fear. 
As to this being inconsistent with the character in 
which he is brought before us in the next verse, the 
very change of construction in cpofielo&ai. would lead 
the mind on, out of the terror before spoken of, into 
that better kind of fear always indicated by that ex- 
pression when applied to God, and so prepare the 
way for the next verse. Besides, this sense is excel- 
lently in keeping with verse 29 in another way: 
' Fear Him who is the only Dispenser of death and 
life — of death as here, of life as in the case of the 
sparrows, for whom he cares.' ' Fear Him above 
men; trust Him in spite of men.' The passage in 
James iv, 12— 'There is one Lawgiver, who is able 
to save and to destroy '—would be decisive even in 
the absence of other considerations. Full as this 
epistle is of our Lord's words from this Gospel, it is 
hardly to be doubted that he had this very verse be- 
fore him. This Stier endeavors to escape by saying 
that ' to destroy,' as the opposite to ' save,' has a dif- 
ferent sense from 'destroying the soul.' But as con- 
nected with 'lawgiver,' what meaning can 'destroy' 
bear, except that of eternal destruction ? . . . The 
depth of this part of the discourse I take to be the 
setting before Christ's messengers their Heavenly 
Father as the object of childlike trust and childlike 
fear — the former from his love, the latter from his 
power to destroy body and soul in hell. Here is the 
true depth of the discourse ; but if in the midst of 
this great subject our Lord is to be conceived as 
turning aside, upholding as an object of fear the 
chief enemy, whose ministers and subordinates he is 
at the very moment commanding not to fear, and 
speaking of him as ' being able to destroy soul and 
body in hell,' the true and deep connection, to my 



OUR LORD'S INSTRUCTIONS TO THE APOSTLES. 



321 



mind, is broken." — According to this text, the pun- 
ishment of the damned after death is not annihila- 
tion. (Comp. Matt, xv, 23.) The yhtwa (hell) 
here spoken of must be in the spirit-world, since in 
the yeewa near Jerusalem, or Valley of Hinnom, the 
body alone would be thrown. Thus we learn from 
this verse that the souls of the damned are thrown 
into yeewa, or hell proper, and that after the resur- 
rection of the body, soul and body reunited will be 
in hell. 

Verses 29-31. These verses contain further en- 
couragements for the disciples, setting forth forcibly 
and touchingly Divine Providence as the basis of an 
unshaken confidence, even in the midst of the most 
trying and perilous circumstances. — Abe not two 
sparrows sold for a farthixg? Sparrows are the 
representatives of God's most insignificant creat- 
ures — two of them sell for the smallest piece of 
money, a farthing — yet they are an object of God's 
special care. For whatsoever has received life from 
him does not die without his permission. — And 

ONE OF THEM SHALL NOT FALL ON THE GROUND WITH- 
OUT tour Father. The argument arises, then, 
from the less to the greater : " Ye are of more value 
than many sparrows. Now, if no sparrow loses its 
life without your Father, how much less will ye ? 
Therefore, be not afraid: Ye, my messengers and 
disciples, are infinitely better than the brute crea- 
tion, better than many sparrows." Nor is the Divine 
care confined to your persons or lives; no, it extends 
to every thing, even the least that is yours. " The 
very hairs of your head are all numbered." Nothing 
about you, however small and insignificant, is be- 
yond the notice and care of God. (See also 1 Sam. 
xiv, 43; Luke xxi, 18; Acts xxvii, 34.) The true 
disciple of Christ can, therefore, implicitly rely on 
God's protecting care. His cause is God's, who 
makes his joy and grief, and whatever befalls him, 
subservient to his best interests. 

Verse 32. This verse contains a new and more 
comprehensive ground of encouragement. The 
ground of encouragement contained in the preced- 
ing verse was taken from God's providence, was 
negative in its character, that is, merely a pro- 
tection against their enemies; the one brought for- 
ward now is positive. The disciples that confess 
their Master before the world shall be confessed be- 
fore God, the Heavenly Father. — Whosoever, 
therefore, shall confess me. Greek, ouo^oyi/aei 
h> kfiol — shall confess in me — either a Syriac mode 
of expression — that is, shall make me the object of 
his acknowledgment among and before men— or we 
may supply the participle " being" before "in me," by 
which the idea would be expressed that true confes- 
sion rests upon a life union existing between Christ 
and the believer. The context shows that it is a 
practical, consistent confession which is meant, not 
a mere confession with the lips. — Him will I also 
confess, etc. Both in the Sermon on the Mount, 
(Matt, vii, 21-23,) and here, after mentioning the 



21 



Father, our Lord describes himself as the Judge 
and Arbiter of eternal life and death. 

Verse 33. But whosoever shall dent me be- 
fore men. The reverse of the preceding verse. Not 
a transient denial through weakness is meant here, 
since such a denial can be forgiven through repent- 
ance and a renewal of life, as was the case with 
Peter, but a practical and enduring denial, a full 
and open renunciation of the Lord — a denial of his 
love, of divine life, of the kingdom of God. Of such 
a nature is the denial of Christ before a tribunal, 
when persevered in, in order to save one's life. — 
Him will I dent also before my Father, which is 
in heaven. They shall be publicly exposed before 
the tribunal of God, and excluded from all partici- 
pation in the kingdom of glory. To appear before 
this tribunal without Christ as an intercessor, or 
rather with Christ as a Judge and witness against 
us, who can think of it without a shudder ! In these 
two verses we are taught, as a general thing, that a 
consistent and frank profession of our faith in Christ 
is a duty which is binding upon all, and has the 
promise of special blessings, while the reverse of it, 
the denial of Christ by word and deed, is sinful, and 
brings on, if persevered in, our total rejection on the 
part of God and exclusion from the kingdom of his 
Son. Yet we are not warranted to draw from this 
passage the unqualified conclusion that none can be 
saved without being a member of one or the other 
branch of the visible Church. The confession and 
denial of Christ, here spoken of, refer rather to our 
readiness to evince our love to him on every occa- 
sion, or to manifest the very opposite mind and 
disposition. 

Verse 34. Think not that I am come to send 
peace on earth. By peace the Jews understood, in 
general, all temporal and spiritual blessings. They 
expected from the Messiah especially perfect tem- 
poral happiness for themselves, and the words con- 
tain, therefore, a positive declaration against the 
erroneous notions of the Jews drawn from the 
prophecies concerning the reign of the Prince of 
Peace. The prophets had, indeed, foretold peace; 
but the disciples were not to understand this proph- 
ecy as if such peace was to be ushered into the world 
at once by the coming of the Messiah. The " glory 
to God in the highest" necessarily precedes the dec- 
laration, "and on earth peace." He that really de- 
sires this peace must also desire the way to obtain 
it, the struggle for God's honor and glory. As 
Christ, therefore, has come to bring the true peace, 
he has necessarily come to destroy the false peace, 
which can not be done without causing that dissen- 
sion which is salutary and indispensably necessary. 

1 AM NOT COME TO SEND PEACE, BUT A SWORD. The 

sword, the general symbol of war, may have special 
reference to the Roman sword, which, forty years 
after Christ's death, was sent to destroy Jerusalem, 
and to the bloody persecutions which were in store 
for the Christians. Iu their deeper, spiritual sense. 



322 



MATTHEW X, 24-42. 



however, these words point to the separation of what 
is unlike each other, of truth and falsehood, of right- 
eousness and sin, and the adherents of both, of those 
that receive and those that reject his peace. The 
Gospel in its very nature must bring contention. 
This is the necessary consequence of Christ's com- 
ing into the world or into a human heart. The king- 
dom of Christ is, in itself, a kingdom of peace, but 
outwardly it excites the hatred of the world, which 
is the more intense the more gloriously Christ's 
kingdom develops itself, and this struggle lasts till 
all enemies of Christ are laid at his feet. 

Verses 35, 36. Verse 35 is quoted nearly literally 
from Micah vii, 6. The best, most precious peace 
on earth is harmony in the family circle, but as long 
as it rests upon an inwardly-false basis, it will be 
broken by the peace of Christ. In the passage 
quoted from Micah the Messiah is promised as the 
Prince of Peace ; his reign is described (chap, iv, 
1-8) as the reign of peace; but this peaceful reign 
must be preceded by war, the pangs of the Daughter 
of Zion, (vs. 9-14;) the sins of degenerate Israel are 
in its way, (chaps, vi and vii,) and some of these sins, 
(vii, 6,) are quoted by the Savior. He designates 
his mission as the immediate cause of discord. — I 

AM COME TO SET AT VARIANCE that is, to Call forth 

lasting enmity between the most intimate friends 
and near relations by my "Word, the effects of which 
will be a new life and a new disposition in those that 
gladly receive it ; but hatred against the Word itself 
and all those that receive it, in those that disbelieve 
and reject it. By nature men are alike. The per- 
secutor and the martyr do not naturally differ; but 
their self-determination with regard to the Gospel 
makes them radically different, and produces an 
enmity, even between kin and friends, which lasts 
as long as this relation to the Gospel is persevered 
in. — And a man's foes shall be those of his own 
household. Out of hatred against the Gospel all 
ties are severed and all considerations are trampled 
under foot. 

Verse 37. This often-repeated saying (Luke xiv, 
26; xviii, 29) is based upon words of the Old Testa- 
ment. What Jehovah claimed for himself, (Deut. 
xxxiii, 9, 10; Exod. xxxii, 26-29,) Christ here 
claims for himself. If Christ were not the truth 
and life itself, (John xiv, 16,) he would have violated 
the most sacred duties by the demand to consider, 
for his sake, the strongest family ties as of little or 
no account. God alone must be obeyed more than 
father and mother, and Christ, because we see the 
Father in him. (John xiv, 9.) Christ's object is 
not to destroy the family relations, but to ennoble 
and to sanctify them, which is done by bringing 
them under his influence, under implicit obedience 
to his Word and Spirit. The love of Christ must 
exceed the love of father and mother, and must 
prove the stronger, especially where there arises a 
conflict between them ; that is, where parents, ap- 
pealing to the obedience due by children, demand 



an apostasy from Christ or disobedience to his com- 
mands. The sense of the words, therefore, is : " He 
that does not receive my Gospel in order to avoid 
the enmity of his unbelieving relations and friends, 
he who thus loves them more than me, is not worthy 
of me; he makes himself unworthy of me and all 
the blessedness that I impart. 

Verse 38. How must this declaration of the 
Lord have astonished his apostles! He had not 
yet spoken to them of his own cross, his suffering 
and death, nor was the word o-oss used by him in a 
figurative sense, as is the case now. It had then no 
moral signification, but conveyed only the idea of 
the ignominious and painful Roman punishment. 
The taking up the cross refers to the custom of 
making condemned criminals carry their cross them- 
selves to the place of execution. The disciples were 
thus told that, unless they were willing to submit to 
the greatest ignominy and to the most painful death, 
for Christ's sake, they were not worthy of him. This 
is the primary meaning of the Lord's declaration; 
but it includes, in a secondary sense, also the cruci- 
fying of the flesh and the death of the old man — a 
figurative use of the word, which we frequently meet 
with in Paul's Epistles, and which has, since that 
time, come into general use among Christians. It 
is a perversion of the meaning of this term to call, 
as is too often done, praying in public or confessing 
the Lord a taking up of the cross. 

Verse 39. He that findeth his life shall lose 
it, and he that loseth his life for my sake, shall 
find it. The words life and it in this verse refer to 
the same thing, in a higher and lower sense. " He 
that saves his natural life by faithlessness, by a de- 
nial of the truth, will lose his real life, his soul, 
eternal life. He that loses the first by a bold and 
steadfast confession of the truth, will find the latter." 
But besides the primary meaning of this saying, as 
regards the laying down of life literally for Christ's 
sake, we can not fail to recognize in it a far deeper 
sense, in which he who loses his life shall find it. 
In Luke ix, 23, the taking up of the cross is to be 
practiced daily. In Mark viii, 34, and Matt, xvi, 24, 
there is connected with it, "Let him deny himself." 
Thus we have the crucifying of the life of this world, 
the death of sin spoken of in Rom. vi, 4-11, and the 
life in and for God. This latter is the real, true life 
which the self-denier shall find, and preserve unto 
life eternal. (John xii, 25.) Another remark seems 
to be in its place here. The losing of one's natural 
life for Christ's sake is not an indispensable condi- 
tion of salvation. Even some of the apostles died a 
natural death, without sustaining thereby spiritual 
detriment; nor does, on the other hand, this losing 
of one's life invariably secure eternal life. We 
know too well, from Church history, that, after the 
apostolic age, many sought and found martyrdom 
through fanaticism, carnal ambition, and, to say the 
least, a morbid piety. These did not die for Christ's 
sake. It is only the death of the old man, the 



OUR LORD'S INSTRUCTIONS TO THE APOSTLES. 



323 



crucifying of the flesh, that is inseparably connected 
with salvation. There is, therefore, the wider mean- 
ing in the words: " He that has preserved and saved 
the life of his corrupt nature, the life of selfishness, 
shall not partake of the higher and eternal life of 
the soul, and vice versa." 

Verse 40. The Lord concludes his discourse with 
words of the highest encouragement and consola- 
tion. As Christ was the Father's representative on 
earth, so the apostles represented Christ officially, 
though imperfectly, after his ascension. In the 
treatment extended to them, he is honored or dis- 
honored. He that receives you with the full knowl- 
edge of what you are, for the sake of your character 
and office, receives me. 

Verse 41. The receiving here spoken of refers 
primarily to times of persecution, where the act of 
receiving involved a profession of the doctrine 
preached by the messenger, and exposed the friendly 
host to the same danger with the persecuted disciple 
of Christ. — ■ He that receiveth a prophet. This 
term applies here to all divinely-appointed teachers of 
the new dispensation. Sometimes the term prophet 
applies to a particular class of teachers, who had the 
gift of prophecy, and ranked next to the apostles.' 
(See 1 Cor. xiii, 28; Eph. iv, 11.) — In the name op 
a prophet; that is, in his character as a prophet, 
and because he is a prophet. It must not be over- 
looked how carefully the Lord here calls the atten- 
tion away from the mere outward act, the opus oper- 
ation, and directs it to the motives of the act. — He 
that receiveth a righteous man. By "a righteous 
man" it would seem that not a teacher, but a lay- 
man, must be understood, and he is received for the 
sake of his righteousness. — Shall receive the 
reward of a prophet and of a righteous man. We 
have, in these words, the general truth taught that 
whoever heartily receives a prophet or a righteous 
man, a teacher of religion or a layman, from love to 
Christ, secures unto himself thereby a share of their 
reward, because he manifests, by holding commun- 
ion with them in the hour of their peril, an agree- 
ment in sentiment with them. 

Verse 34. One of these little ones. By these 
we must not understand little children, as some ex- 
positors do, but disciples of Christ, who as yet had 
made but little progress in the knowledge of spirit- 
'ual things. This appears plainly from the addition, 
"In the name of a disciple." — He shall in no 
wise lose his reward. Whoever gives to a disciple, 
"as a disciple," a cup of cold water, honoreth Christ 
in the disciple, and will be rewarded for it. 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 

In order to impress the importance of this chapter 

still more upon our readers, we subjoin from the 

Homilist, in an abridged form, an excellent analysis 

of our Lord's missionary instructions to his apostles, 



which gives to every branch of the Christian Church 
useful hints in their efforts to evangelize the world: 

the laws, issues, and encouragements of evan- 
gelical MISSIONS. 

Believing that whatever Christ " spoke from time 
to time, he spoke for futurity, even to its final end ; 
yea, even to eternity itself;" that " the present and 
the immediate are the type of the more remote;" 
and that, in sending forth these " twelve," he con- 
templates all later missions of these apostles and 
their successors, we are warranted in looking at 
these verses as giving the laws, issues, and encour- 
agements of an evangelical mission in every age. 

I. The laws of an evangelical mission. We 
infer, from this commission of Christ to his apostles, 
the following laws: 

1. That the chief sphere of its labors should be 
the nearest its home. " Go not into the way of the 
Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter 
ye not: but go rather to the lost sheep of the house 
of Israel." The fact that Jesus himself confined his 
labors to Judea, and that, in the commission he gave 
to his disciples before his ascension to heaven, he 
distinctly commanded them to "begin at Jerusa- 
lem," and thence go on, acting ever on the most 
proximate, fully authorizes us in regarding this in- 
junction to the twelve as an expression of a general 
laic that should regulate all evangelizing efforts. 
This law is not an arbitrary impost ; it is founded 
in the truest love and wisdom. Genuine love says: 
If you have a favor to bestow, offer it first to those 
of your own kin and neighborhood. Home first is 
the dictate of a true philanthropy. That feeling 
which induces man to cross seas and traverse islands 
and continents, to offer blessings which he has never 
presented to his own neighbors, who stand in equal 
need, is the simpering sentiment of a morbid and 
diseased mind, not the manly love of a true heart. 
The law is the dictate of wisdom as well as love. 
(1.) We have greater facilities for giving the Gospel 
to our neighbors than to foreigners. They are 
within our reach, they understand our language, 
they can appreciate our mode of reasoning, they 
can test the sincerity of our motives. (2.) Our 
neighbors, when evangelized, would become more 
effective allies than foreigners. The stronger the 
forces in the center, the more powerfully the influ- 
ence will be felt at the extremities. 

2. That the material wants of mankind are to be 
attended to, as well as the spiritual. " And as ye 
go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at 
hand. Heal the sick," etc. The command to preach 
"the kingdom of heaven" implies, (1.) That the 
great spiritual want of mankind is the reign of 
God over all the powers of the soul — the making 
of the human will in every thing cheerfully obedient 
to the Divine. (2.) The Gospel is the system by 
which this reign is established; hence, it is called 
"the kingdom of heaven." It is not a system 



324 



MATTHEW X, 24-42. 



merely to excite the sensibilities or to enlighten and 
discipline the intellect; it is the reign of God in the 
soul. (3.) The work of the Church is to bring the 
Gospel to man for this purpose. This is the work, 
so far as the spiritual necessity of mankind is con- 
cerned. But while attending to this work, do not be 
regardless of the material exigencies of humanity. 
"Heal the sick," etc. The fact that the apostles 
were endowed with power to remove the physical 
evils of mankind in their evangelical mission, and 
commanded to employ them, does certainly give the 
idea that the Church, in her endeavors to propagate 
the Gospel, must be mindful, at the same time, of 
the corporeal and temporal requirements of men. 
This principle was acted upon in the ministry of 
Christ, and is every-where implied, and often explic- 
itly enjoined, in the writings of the apostles. Paul 
tells us to "bear each other's burdens, and so fulfill 
the law of Christ." James tells us that "pure and 
undefiled religion before God and the Father is this, 
To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction," 
and John says, "Whoso hath this world's good, and 
seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his 
bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the 
love of God in him ?" This is a principle, obedience 
to which seems almost indispensable to success in 
the promotion of Christianity. (1.) Corporeal evils 
are obstructions to the reception of the truth. Men 
suffering under disease, poverty, slavery, oppression, 
are certainly not in the best position to receive the 
Gospel. The natural tendency of corporeal evils is 
to strengthen depravity, close the heart against God 
and man, and nurse misanthropy and impiety into a 
reckless rage. (2.) Earnest efforts to remove the cor- 
poreal evils of a people are among the most likely 
means to dispose them to listen to our doctrines. 
These evils are felt; and he who generously re- 
moves them is hailed as a benefactor, and the heart 
open's to his words. Job says that when the ear 
heard him, it "blessed" him. Why? Because he 
" delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, 
and him that had none to help him." Had the 
Church always acted upon this principle ; had it 
endeavored to give bread to the hungry, as well as 
Bibles to the ignorant; had it sought to deliver man 
from the social and political despotism of his fellow, 
as well as from the despotism of Satan ; had it strug- 
gled to redeem the body as well as the soul; had it 
appeared to men more as a secular benefactor, and 
less as a theological belligerent, an ascetic devotee, 
or a sectarian partisan; had the world seen it more 
in the acts of a genial messenger of deep and genu- 
ine philanthropy, penetrating the darkest scenes of 
trial with a word to cheer and a hand to bless, and 
less in pompous ceremonies, conflicting creeds, and 
affected pietisms; I say, had this been the past his- 
tory of the Church, it would have been now the sov- 
ereign of the world. 

3. That the same disinterested benevolence which 
made us the recipients of the blessing, should ani- 



mate us in its communication. " Freely ye have re- 
ceived, freely give." Christianity can only be effect- 
ually propagated by disinterested efforts. It must 
be given "freely" — not for the sake of office, sect, 
or gain, but for the sake of souls. "Freely give" — 
a comprehensive and most pregnant position, which 
can not be too much laid to heart by God's embas- 
sadors even to the present day ; condemning all im- 
proper, methodical, and commercial stipulations in 
preaching God's grace, all payment that surpasses 
the limits of their need, (v. 10,) and all those unbe- 
coming perquisites which are ungracefully attached 
to the direct ministration of the Word and sacraments. 

4. That there must be an entire freedom of mind 
from all secular anxieties in the ivork. " Provide 
neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, nor 
scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither 
shoes, nor yet staves ; for the workman is worthy of 
his meat." Probably it would be a " narrow perver- 
sion — a fanaticism of the letter" — to regard this 
prohibition as literally binding upon all who are en- 
gaged in evangelizing labors ; but the spirit and 
meaning of the command — namely, entire freedom 
of mind from all secular anxieties — are undoubt- 
edly binding on all evangelists. Solicitude about 
gold or silver, purse or scrip, should have no place 
in the minds of those who endeavor to convert man- 
kind to the religion of Christ. There are two things 
which should always exclude this anxiety: (1.) Faith 
in the munificent providence of our Master. He is 
ever with his true servants, and always able to guard 
them in every peril, and to supply their every want. 
(2.) Faith in the power of the Gospel to dispose 
those among whom we labor to render the necessary 
temporal provisions. Men who are rightly influ- 
enced by the ministry of a man will feel that " the 
workman is worthy of his meat." Indeed, it is 
evident that Jesus here throws the support of his 
apostles upon the people they would preach to — as 
if he had said, Do n't be anxious about temporal pro- 
visions. By a law of the human mind, a feeling of 
moral obligation to support you will be awakened in 
those whom you bless by your message. The Gospel 
"workman is worthy of his meat." Worthy indeed! 
What temporal return bears any proportion to the 
good which a man conveys to another who is instru- 
mental in breaking the moral slumbers of the mind, 
unsealing the fountains of spiritual feeling, rolling 
off the sepulchral stone that entombs the soul, and 
raising it into fellowship with God ? 

5. That our conduct toward men should be ever 
regulated by their moral condition. " And into 
whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, inquire who 
in it is worthy; and there abide till ye go thence. 
And when ye come into an house, salute it. And 
if the house be worthy, let your peace come upon it : 
but if it be not worthy, let your peace return to 
you," etc. Let our conduct toward men be regulated 
by their moral character, not by their secular cir- 
cumstances. Whoever the man is, if he is " worthy," 



OUR LORD'S INSTRUCTIONS TO THE APOSTLES. 



325 



-visit him; bless him ; dwell with him, if convenient. 
If not " worthy," however rich or influential, have 
nothing to do with him: shake off the dust from 
your shoes. Know no man after the flesh. As 
evangelists we have to do with souls, and the only 
distinction we have to recognize is the distinction of 
soul. 

6. That the highest intelligence should be blended 
with the -purest character. " Be ye therefore wise 
as serpents, and harmless as doves." The general 
truth is, that intellect in the world must be met by 
intellect in the Church, and depravity in the world 
must be met by purity in the Church. An intel- 
lectual age will never bow to a weak-minded minis- 
try; a depraved age will never be reformed by a 
corrupt Church. 

7. That confidence in the paternal providence of 
God should be strong enough to raise us above the 
fear of man. — Such, then, are the laws of evangeli- 
zation which Jesus inculcated in this commission, 
and which we regard as binding upon the Church in 
all ages. If these have been neglected or trans- 
gressed, it is certainly no wonder that the evangel- 
izing work has made but little progress. The case 
stands thus : Christ committed the work of evangel- 
izing the world to the Church, and gave distinct and 
enlightened directions how it was to be carried out. 
The Church has been aiming and struggling for the 
end, but it has been comparatively regardless of the 
method. Which of the seven laws specified above 
has the Church not transgressed ? Let the Church, 
instead of being regulated by the policy of little hu- 
man organizations, go back in spirit to Capernaum ; 
Stand, with " the twelve," before Christ, listen to his 
commission, and pledge itself to carry that commis- 
sion out according to his directions ; let this be done, 
and the dawn of the brightest era will commence — 
the key-note of the highest harmony will be struck. 

II. The issues of an evangelical mission. "What 
are the results on human souls which the proper 
working out of an evangelical mission will produce? 
In other words, what moral effects on the souls of 
men will arise from the promotion of Christianity in 
the world ? The chapter under review enables us to 
answer that the effects are threefold — spiritual peace 
to the receiver, augmented guilt to the rejecter, and 
great trials to the promoter. 

1. Spiritual peace to the receiver. "And into 
whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, inquire who 
in it is worthy ; and there abide till ye go thence. 
And when ye come into an house, salute it., And 
if the house be worthy, let your peace come upon 
it." (11-13.) The apostles, in their salutation, ex- 
pressed the grand object of Christianity, which is 
to give "peace." Its language to every family and 
soul it addresses is, "Peace be unto you." Its 
author is " the Prince of Peace." The celestial 
song that announced his nativity proclaimed, "Peace 
on earth;" the last legacy he left the world was 
peace. His word is the "gospel of peace;" his 



empire is " peace in the Holy Ghost." To all who yield 
to his benign teachings and gracious influences, he 
imparts a " peace that passeth all understanding." 
What is this peace ? Though it can only be fully 
appreciated by experience, it may be — it often is — 
misunderstood. What .is it? It stands opposed, 
(1.) To the torpid state of the thoughtless. True 
peace is the peace of a quickened, active conscience, 
that has done battle with lusts and evil habits, won 
the victory, and obtained the throne of the soul, 
ruling all by the harmonious will of God. True 
peace stands opposed, (2.) To all anxieties of soul. 
It expels all anxious thoughts. The intellect trusts 
to the wisdom and goodness of God for a solution 
of all perplexing problems; the heart confides in 
the paternal providence of God for all necessary 
temporal good ; the spirit is divinely guided to form 
those friendships which, when dissolved on earth, 
will be renewed in heaven, and the soul trusts im- 
plicitly to the merits and mercy of Christ for com- 
plete salvation. He that believeth entereth into a 
rest from all these harassing anxieties. True peace 
stands opposed, (3.) To all religious inactivity. 
Peace of soul, like the peace of planets, consists in 
harmonious action. The "God of peace" is ever 
at work. " He fainteth not, neither is weary." The 
moral rest of God is right action. The " Prince of 
Peace" went about doing good. True peace of soul 
is not the peace of a stagnant lake, but the peace 
of a flowing river, too deep to be rippled, too strong 
to be resisted. 

2. Augmented guilt to the rejecter. " Let your 
peace return to you. And whosoever shall not re- 
ceive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out 
of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. 
Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for 
the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of 
judgment, than for that city." (13-15.) These 
words suggest two ideas concerning the augmented 
guilt of the rejecter: (1.) That his guilt is no in- 
jury to the minister who has offered him the bless- 
ing. His peace shall " return " to him. The stream 
of pacific sentiment and desire, which he sent forth 
from the depths of his heart, when it finds no rest- 
ing-place, shall flow back, in all its plenitude, into 
his own soul. The attempt to do good is good to 
him who makes the effort, even though the object be 
injured by it. Notwithstanding this, ministers are 
not to waste their time and energy upon the incorri- 
gible. " Whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear 
your words, when ye depart out of that house or 
city, shake off the dust of your feet." (2.) That 
his guilt will be fully manifest at the judgment day. 
" Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable," 
etc. This verse contains four solemn truths. First: 
That there is a period of retribution to dawn on 
our race. It is here called " the day of judgment." 
The state of the world requires such a day; op- 
pressed virtue cries out for such a day; the Bible 
distinctly declares that there will come such a day. 



326 



MATTHEW X, 24-42. 



Every day of our life has some gleams of retribution 
that prophesy and mirror something of such a day. 
Secondly. That men of the remotest ages will be 
concerned in the transactions of thai day. The 
men of Sodom and Gomorrah, as well as the men 
of our Savior's age, will be there. Two thousand 
years had passed away since Sodom and Gomorrah 
were destroyed; but Jesus teaches here that they 
are not gone out of existence : they shall appear 
again on the day of judgment. All will appear then. 
Thirdly. That among the myriads who will appear 
on this day, there will be an immense variety in the 
degree of guilt. " More tolerable," etc. Every land, 
and age, and individual will have their peculiarities 
of guilt. Some of the sinners will appear almost 
innocent in comparison with others. Fourthly. That 
diversity of guilt will, in a great degree, arise from 
the amount of religious opportunity abused. Sodom 
and Gomorrah will appear guilty. But their guilt 
will appear as nothing to the guilt of those who had 
the teachings of Christ and his apostles. The Gos- 
pel, then, augments the guilt of the rejecter, as well 
as imparts true peace to its receivers. It is the 
" savor of death unto death," as well as of life unto 
life. But it produces life by design and adaptation, 
death only by contingency. It is the moral cause 
of life — it is only the occasion of death. 

3. Great trials to the promoter. These trials 
would arise, (1.) From the spirit of the world in 
relation to the Gospel system. The spirit of the 
Jews, in reference to Christ, was like that of a wolf 
(v. 16,) selfish and savage. As this ravenous beast 
prowls about in search of its prey, the Jewish people 
pursued the Lamb of God. From this spirit, Christ 
tells his disciples, great trials would come to them. 
They would be delivered up to "the council;'' they 
would be "scourged in their synagogues;" they 
would be "brought before governors;" they would 
be "hated of all men" for his "name's sake." This 
savage spirit would thus express itself. Mankind, in 
their depraved state, have always more or less of 
this spirit in relation to the Gospel; and from it has 
always arisen to the disciples of Christ persecution 
in some form or other. The other cause, which is 
here suggested as producing trials to the evangelist, 
is, (2.) The influence of His system in producing 
social divisions. " The brother shall deliver up the 
brother to death, and the father the child: and the 
children shall rise up against their parents," etc. 
" Think not that I am come to send peace ou the 
earth. I come not to send peace, but a sword." 
" I am come to set a man at variance with his 
father," etc. The cause of this is not in Christian- 
ity, but in the depravity of the rejecter. Christianity 
is simply the occasion of its development. Nutritious 
food may be hurtful to a diseased stomach, light may 
be most injurious to a diseased eye, music most dis- 
tressing to a diseased brain ; and so Christianity, 
which is designed and fitted to produce peace, will 
always produce the opposite in the heart of the 



rejecter. As if the Divine Reformer had said, Do 
not expect that, because my doctrines are essentially 
pacific, and because my grand aim is peace, and 
your mission is peace, that you will meet with no 
opposition. Awful and bloody wars will frequently, 
though always incidentally, come out of your pacific 
mission. The moral atmosphere of the world is so 
charged with impurities that bitter storms must 
come before men can have the salubrious and sunny 
influences of celestial peace. 

III. The encouragements of an evangelical 
mission. Christ here supplies them with an un- 
sparing hand. Let us briefly elicit them. 

1. The cause for which the true evangelist suffers 
is most honorable. Jesus says they are " for my 
name's sake," (v. 22.) We might ask, What was 
there in the name of Christ to excite malignant feel- 
ings against his friends? Christ's name stands for 
all that is amiable in spirit, immaculate in charac- 
ter, sublime in purpose, godlike in beneficence and 
majesty. To suffer for the sake of mere worldly 
heroes might be a disgrace; but to suffer for Christ's 
sake is the greatest honor for man this side of 
heaven. The apostles, and confessors, and martyrs 
felt this amid their severest tortures. They thanked 
God that they were "counted worthy." To suffer 
for Christ is to suffer for the promotion of truth, 
rectitude, benevolence, and happiness among men. 

2. The example which the true evangelist has in 
His suffering is most glorious. " The disciple is 
not above his master, nor the servant above his 
lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his 
master, and the servant as his lord. If they have 
called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much 
more shall they call them of his household?" (Vs. 
24, 25.) But how does the fact that Christ suffered 
in his public ministry give an encouragement to all 
evangelists under their sufferings ? (1.) Because if 
the Master suffered in his work, these sufferings are 
no proofs, in themselves, that they are disqualified 
for their mission. (2.) Because if their Master suf- 
fered in his work, these sufferings were not necessa- 
rily connected with any disgrace. There are igno- 
minious sufferings. (3.) Because if their Master 
suffered in his work, their sufferings were no nec- 
essai-y indications of Divine displeasure. (4.) Be- 
cause if their Master suffered in his work, there 
would be hope that their sufferings would issue in 
the same glorious results. They would hope to 
overcome as he overcame. 

3. The success of the cause for which the true 
evangelist suffers is most certain. " There is noth- 
ing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that 
shall not be known. What I tell you in darkness, 
that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, 
that preach ye upon the house-tops." (Vs. 26, 27.) 
The idea here is, that the doctrines which were com- 
paratively concealed, shut up in the breasts of some 
twelve men, should one day become fully and uni- 
versally known. He assures them, (1.) That they 



OUR LORD'S INSTRUCTIONS TO THE APOSTLES. 



327 



would spread. "What I tell you in darkness" shall 
be known, etc. We are engaged in no doubtful en- 
terprise. The little " cloud " shall cover the heav- 
ens, the little "stone" shall grow into a mountain, 
the "mustard-seed" shall become a majestic tree. 
Those doctrines which Jesus quietly whispered in 
the ear of twelve poor men shall one day roll in 
streams of rapturous music through the world. He 
assures them, (2.) That they ought to spread. He 
not only predicts that they shall, but commands his 
disciples to set in earnest to the work. " Preach ye 
upon the house-tops." Jesus had not one doctrine 
for the initiated and another for the commonalty. 
His truths were for the race, and race-wide should 
be the proclamation. Here, then, is encouragement. 
" Therefore, be ye steadfast, unmovable," etc. 

4. The providential care of God over the true 
evangelist in suffering is positively guaranteed. 
"Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one 
of them shall not fall on the ground without your 
Father. But the very hairs of your head are all 
numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more 
value than many sparrows." (Vs. 29-31.) The 
argument in these verses may be thrown into three 
propositions, which they either imply or express: 
(1.) That in the estimation of the great God, some 
of his creatures are more valuable than pothers. Men 
are more valuable than birds. " Ye are of more 
value than many sparrows." (2.) That over those 
of his creatures which are the lowest in the scale 
of value he exercises a benevolent providence. Not 
one of the sparrows " falls on the ground without 
your Father." Over all life, even plantal life, he 
exercises care. "The lilies of the field," etc. (3.) 
The fact that he exercises a benevolent providence 
over the least valuable, is an assurance that he does 
so over the most valuable. If he takes care of the 
lesser, he will surely take care of the greater. Hence 
"the very hairs" of his children's heads "are all 
numbered." Here, then, is encouragement to the 
true evangelist under suffering. He may say with 
Job, " He knoweth the way I take," etc. 

5. The reward of the true evangelist for all suf- 
ferings will be most glorious at last. " Whosoever 
therefore shall confess me before men, him will I 
confess also before my Father which is in heaven. 
But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I 
also deny before my Father which is in heaven." 
(Vs. 32, 33.) These words contain three ideas: 
(1.) The function of true discipleship. To "con- 
fess" Christ — to confess him as the Messiah — the 
redeeming God. To confess not merely with the 
lip, but practically with the life; not in solitude, 
but "before men" on the open theater of life; not 
merely in the Temple, but in the market, the senate, 
at the bar— every-where. (2.) The temptation of 
true discipleship. There is a temptation to be 
"ashamed" of him, and to "deny" him. This 
arises from two causes, the natural tendency of the 



individual to bow to the opinions of the multitude, 
and the fact that the opinions of the multitude are 
generally against Christ Herein is the temptation. 
In heaven, where all love Christ, there is no such 
temptation. The influence flows in the other direc- 
tion. (3.) The reward of true discipleship. "Him 
will I confess also before my Father which is in 
heaven." I will acknowledge him before the Eter- 
nal and his assembled universe, as my devoted disci- 
ple, my faithful servant, my beloved friend. What a 
reward is this ! 

6. That if actuated by the right spirit, the true 
evangelist will find the greatest trials the greatest 
blessings. " He that taketh not his cross, and fol- 
loweth after me, is not worthy of me. He that 
findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his 
life for my sake shall find it." Three ideas are con- 
tained in these remarkable words: (1.) That self- 
denial is a necessary condition of Christian disciple- 
ship. The "cross" is the most powerfully-expressive 
symbol of self-denial; and this cross, says Christ, 
must be borne, painful though it is, ignominious 
though it may seem. (2.) That this self-denial may 
involve the sacrifice of our present animal well- 
being. "He that loseth his life" — that is, not ex- 
istence, but animal happiness or wellbeing. By 
following Christ a man may lose — men often have 
lost — all their physical pleasures and comforts — 
their support, liberty, energy, health, and even ani- 
mal life itself. This Christ's own self-denial led 
to; and this self denial has led to in the case of 
martyrs. (3.) That the self-denial which leads even 
to the sacrifice of animal wellbeing is the greatest 
blessing, if inspired by due respect for Christ. " He 
that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth 
his life for my sake shall find it." 

7. That the interests of the true evangelist are 
thoroughly identified with the interests of Christ. 
(Vs. 40-42.) He assures them of three things: 
(1.) That he would receive those who would receive 
them, as if they received himself. " He that receiv- 
eth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me re- 
ceiveth Him that sent me." I shall regard the treat- 
ment that you meet with, kind or otherwise, as if it 
were offered to me. I go with you — blend my sensi- 
bilities and interests with yours. Those that perse- 
cute you persecute me. (2.) He assures them that 
those that would receive them as his true servants, 
should meet with their reward. " He that receiveth 
a prophet in the name of a prophet," etc. He who 
receives them merely as men, or in some other ca- 
pacity, will not have the reward. He w.ho receives 
under his roof a truly-good man, gets a blessing in 
many ways. His ideas, his spirit, his example, his 
prayers are all blessings. He assures them, (3.) 
That even those who render the humblest service to 
the humblest of their number shall be rewarded. A 
"cup of cold water" to one of the "little ones" will 
secure a blessing. 



328 MATTHEW XI, 1-6. 



OHAPTEE XI. 
§22. THE MESSAGE OP JOHN AND THE DISCOURSE OF JESUS ON THE OCCASION. 

What is recorded in this chapter— with the exception of verse 1, on which see the 
comment — preceded in point of time the mission of the twelve. (See Synoptic Table.) 
For we learn from chap, xiv, 13, and Mark vi, 30, that Herod had beheaded John while 
the twelve were on their missionary tour. It is probable that Jesus was at or near Caper- 
naum when the messengers of John came to him with their master's question. The 
remarks made by the Lord on the occasion, form one well-connected and gradually- 
rising discourse, whose conclusion (vs. 27-30) completes the answer to the question pro- 
pounded. (See vs. 20-25.) This view is not disproved by recognizing the fact that parts 
of this discourse were spoken by the Savior at another time, (Luke vii, 10 ; xvi, 16,) and 
in another connection. We consider, therefore, the whole as one discourse of our Savior 
pronounced on the occasion in question, and divide it into four parts. 

With regard to the object of the question (v. 3) expositors diner widely. The older view, 
which is still held by Watson and Alexander, and eloquently defended by Stier, is, that 
John propounded this question to Jesus merely for his disciples' sake; but most of the 
modern commentators reject this view as unnatural, and doing violence to the letter of the 
text. Stier himself admits that it is not the first impression which the ungarnished state- 
ment of the whole transaction by two Evangelists would make upon the unbiased reader, 
but he feels himself compelled to leave the natural meaning of the words, and to put an 
artificial one in its place, because a doubt in the Messiahship of Jesus, openly expressed, 
appears to him absolutely irreconcilable with the earlier declarations of John concern- 
ing the person and dignity of Christ, and with the latter's explicit testimony concerning 
John on this very occasion. If we had, indeed, no other choice than either to ascribe the 
question to a doubt of John respecting the Messiahship of Jesus, or to adopt the view 
that the message was intended to remove the doubts of his disciples, we would not hesi- 
tate to give the preference to the latter view. But as the passage admits of another ex- 
planation, we reject both. If some of John's disciples, notwithstanding his repeated 
testimony concerning Jesus, and though well informed of the works of Christ, were nev- 
ertheless unwilling to recognize the Messiah in him, what reason had John to expect that 
a mere declaration of Jesus would remove their prejudices? And how could John pass a 
doubt of his disciples as his own? How could they reconcile the message which their 
master sent by them with his character, if, as is claimed, all was right in John's mind 
about Jesus? But still more inadmissible, on the other hand, is the view of those who 
ascribe the question to an actual doubt in John's mind concerning the Messiahship of 
Jesus. It is, indeed, true that even special embassadors of God may have the light of 
their faith temporarily obscured; but to go so far as to doubt not only Jesus' Messianic 
character, but even to express this doubt openly, would, in John's case, not have been a 
merely-temporary wavering of faith, but a formal, public taking back of the solemn test- 
imony which he had given in his official character, (John i, 7,) an act that is altogether 
irreconcilable not only with John's official character and the Divine revelations that had 
been granted to him, (chap, iii, 16, 17 ; John i, 26-37,) but also with the praise which 
Jesus bestowed upon John on this very occasion, (v. 7.) 

There is a third view of John's question which neither does violence to the text nor 
is irreconcilable with John's character and position. Let us take into consideration the 
immediate cause which induced John to send his disciples to Jesus — the hearing of the 
marvelous works of Jesus, giving the blind their sight, making the lame walk and the 
deaf hear, cleansing the lepers, and even raising the dead, (comp. chap, ix, 18-31, and 



THE MESSAGE OP JOHN AND CHRIST'S REPLY. 329 

Luke vii, 11-17,) all of which must have quickened the expectations of those who were 
waiting for the consolation of Israel, that Jesus, in whom all the Messianic prophecies 
were fulfilled, would now establish his kingdom, and proclaim himself openly and fully 
as the Messiah ; let us further consider the situation of the Baptist, that he, who was to 
usher in the Messiah, and who had proclaimed his kingdom to be at hand, by his impris- 
onment, which had now lasted for several dreary months, had been suddenly prevented 
from bearing any further witness of Christ, and that in his earnest longing to see the full 
manifestation of the Messiah, as Moses desired to see the promised land, he might have 
considered it his privilege and duty, as the forerunner of Christ, before leaving the stage 
of action, to induce Jesus, by his message, to declare himself fully and openly to be the 
Messiah, of whom he had borne witness, and that, if he meant to prompt Christ to make 
an oflicial proclamation of his Messianic reign, he could not do it in a more becoming 
manner than by closing his request in the words: "Art thou he that should come, or 
shall we look for another?" Let us, lastly, consider the imperfect knowledge that the 
Baptist evidently had of the spiritual nature of the kingdom of the Messiah and of the 
manner and time of its establishment. In verses 9 and 11 we are told by our Savior him- 
self that John, though more than a prophet, is less than the least in the kingdom of 
heaven. John's privileges were greater than those of all his predecessors. To him the 
kingdom of God was no longer an object of prophecy; he could declare that it had come 
near; he had seen the Messiah face to face; but in the brightest moments of his Divine 
illumination he had not that insight into the nature of his kingdom, the manner of its 
development and spread, into the person of the God-man, which the least true Christian 
has; for the dispensation of the Spirit had not yet come. (John vii, 39.) Though John 
the Baptist, Zacharias, and those other Israelites who waited for the consolation of Israel, 
expected the Messiah to establish a spiritual kingdom, a reign of righteousness, they con- 
nected, nevertheless, with it the idea of a visible, terrestrial kingdom, that he Avould lit- 
erally sit on David's throne, and extend his reign from the river to the ends of the earth. 
The stronger John was convinced of the Messiahship of Jesus by Divine revelation, 
the more incomprehensible he found it, that the separation of the people, commenced by 
his baptism, was not continued by Jesus, and that the judgments which he had an- 
nounced the Messiah would execute on the apostate portion of Israel, had not followed. 
It would be unaccountable if John, who was less than the least in the kingdom of heaven, 
should have purer and more enlarged views of that kingdom than the apostles had. Not 
only before the resurrection of our Lord, (chap, xx, 21; xxiv, 3; Luke xxiv, 21.) but 
shortly before his ascension, (Acts i, 3-6,) and event after the descent of the Holy Ghost, 
their ideas of the kingdom of God were very partial, Peter needing a special revelation 
to convince him of the truth that the Gentiles are accepted without circumcision. 
(Acts x.) If, accordingly, John, with all those Israelites who waited for the consolation 
of Israel, expected the Messiah to establish a visible kingdom on earth, how ardent must 
have been his longing for the decisive moment when that which he had announced for 
two years as at hand should be fulfilled; yea, how sorely must his patience have been 
tried and his Blias-like indignation roused at the corruption of the court and the people 
in general, at the apparent triumph of vice and wickedness over virtue and faith, when 
he heard, from his disappointed disciples, that Jesus did nothing to deliver either him or 
the nation from the oppressor's hand! Yet he evidently did not lose his faith in Jesus; 
otherwise he would not have applied to him; and by applying to him, he avoids the 
danger to which he was exposed of being offended in Jesus. As the servants of God, in 
their sorest trials, do not turn to the world, but to God, as they pour out their distressed 
hearts before him, and find in this very cry, mixed as it may be with impure elements, 
comfort, rest, and safety, so also John. All that can be objected to this view is expressed 
by Stier, when he says: "How is it possible that the man, who recognized in the humble 
Jesus, when he applied to him for baptism, at once the Holy One of God, and pointed to 



330 



MATTHEW XI, 1-6. 



him as the Lamb of God, who, at the very outset, understood his subordinate position so 
fully, should venture to feel or express, even in the remotest degree, any dissatisfaction 
with his course?" We do not consider this objection weighty. The inconsistency be- 
tween Peter's glorious confession and subsequent attempt to interfere with the Lord's 
design to go to Jerusalem, seems to be far greater. Peter had a genuine, Divinely- 
wrought faith that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God ; but he could not reconcile 
with his faith the fact that this Son of God should suffer and die. So John, though 
not wavering in his faith that Jesus was the Messiah, could not separate from this truth 
the idea that he would reign on earth. It is true John calls Christ the Lamb of God that 
taketh away the sin of the world ; but he might have conceived of his taking away the 
sin of the world without having a clear idea of his vicarious suffering and death. If the 
apostle so highly honored by the Lord was tempted to lay aside, for a moment, the rev- 
erence he owed his Master, so the Baptist may have been tempted. The view we have 
presented is in perfect consonance with the closing words of Christ's answer to John's 
disciples, "And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me," as well as by the 
subsequent tribute of praise which he pays to John's character before the assembled 
people, in which he defends John against the possible charge of fickleness, (vs. 7, 8,) as 
if he now doubted, like a reed shaken with the wind, what he had formerly testified, but 
accounts, at the same time, for his question by the inferior light he possessed, (v. 10.) 



A. THE MISSION OF JOHN'S DISCIPLES TO JESUS. 
Verses 1—6. (Compare Luke VII, 18-23.) 

(1) And it came to pass, when Jesus had made an end of commanding his 
twelve disciples, he departed thence to teach and to preach in their cities. (2) ISTow 
when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disci- 
ples, (3) and said unto him, Art thou he that should come, or do we look for 
another? (4) Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those 
things which ye do hear and see : (5) The blind receive their sight, and the lame 
walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the 
poor have the Gospel preached to them. (6) And blessed is he, whosoever shall 
not be offended in me. 



Verse 1. Dr. Alexander, in commenting upon this 
verse, very justly complains of the misleading divi- 
sions of the sacred text into arbitrary chapters, and 
remarks: "This verse is a winding up of the pre- 
ceding chapter by the statement that our Lord, after 
organizing and commissioning the twelve, did not 
allow that act to interrupt his own itinerant labors. 
The next verse opens an entirely new subject, with- 
out any mark of time whatever, and therefore with- 
out any contradiction of Luke's more chronological 
arrangement." 

Verse 3. Art thou he that should come ? The 
participle tpx6/j.£vog } though present in form, has gen- 
erally a future meaning — he that shall come or is to 
come. It was the designation of the Messiah, be- 
cause he was the desire of nations. (Comp. Ps. xl, 
7; exviii, 26; Mai. iii.) — Or do we look for 
another? More correctly, shall we look, have we to 
look (irpoaSoK(oi-iev) for another, whose forerunner 
only thou art ? 



Verse 4. Go and show John again those things 
which ye do hear and see. From Luke vii, 18, 
we learn that John's disciples had informed their 
imprisoned master of the mighty works done by 
Jesus ; Jesus spares indeed the two messengers be- 
fore the people, yet administers a rebuke to them in 
his answer by referring them to what they had known 
before. Inform him once more of my works, which 
prove me to be the Messiah. Their question was: 
"Shall we look for another?" the answer is, "No, 
he is come; you need but to see and to hear." In- 
stead of proclaiming himself directly as the Messiah 
he did it indirectly, leaving no ground for doubt. 
The prophecy has passed into history. The hearing 
refers to the rumor concerning him that had gone 
throughout all Judea; the seeing to the mighty deeds 
which the Lord was performing while the two mes- 
sengers were present. (See Luke vii, 21.) 

Verse 5. Jesus refers here to the prophecies of 
Isaiah, characterizing his Messianic ministry, espe- 



THE MESSAGE OF JOHN AND CHRIST'S REPLY. 



ooJ 



cially to chapters xxxv, 5, 6, (comp. xxix, 18,) and 
lxi, 1, (comp. xxix, 19.) That these miraculous cures 
were only emblems of spiritual blessings, the new- 
life of the soul, appears, apart from other considera- 
tions, from their being connected with the preaching 
of the glad tidings to the poor and wretched. But 
what had been foretold by the prophets mainly in a 
spiritual sense, as emblematical of the soul's salva- 
tion, was fulfilled by the Savior also, in a literal 
sense, in his curing their bodily infirmities for a 
testimony of his Messiahship. The ministry of the 
Messiah appears thus as a new creation, as a re- 
moval of the ills incident to human life from the 
smallest to the greatest. Stier observes: "When 
the Lord uttered these words, more than one dead 
had already been raised. In Matt, ix we read of the 
first case. Luke records the raising of the youth at 
Nain, adding that this, along with other miracles, 
was reported by his disciples to John. And this 
seems to have been the real stumbling-block for 
John's disciples. The miraculous works of Jesus 
had reached their acme ; even two dead persons had 
been raised, and there were as yet no steps taken to 
establish the Messianic kingdom. Not even their 
master had been set free." — -To the poor. On 
these words Owen has the following excellent note : 
" By poor are meant here the humble classes of 
society. In preaching to them Christ showed him- 



self unlike the teachers of Judaism or the heathen 
philosophers, who courted the rich and despised the 
poor. This feature in his ministry, so strange that 
it is here joined with the most stupendous miracles, 
has been the peculiar feature of Christianity ever 
since the time of its founder. The poor have been 
the principal recipients of its blessings. To them it 
offers consolation in trial, heavenly riches in place 
of poverty, rest from the toil and hardships of life. 
It adapts itself to their lowly condition, and trans- 
forms many a hut and cottage into a temple of 
praise more truly glorious than the most gorgeous 
and magnificent cathedral ever constructed." 

Verse 6. And blessed is he whosoever shall 
not be offended in me. This warning, expressed 
in the mildest possible form, and having a general, 
indefinite bearing, applies as well to John as his dis- 
ciples. We must, however, bear in mind that the 
offense which John was tempted to take in Jesus 
was radically different from the offense of the car- 
nally-minded Jews. Lange remarks: "Jesus saw 
John actually exposed to a perilous temptation, but 
saw, at the same time, his ultimate safety. The 
Lord pronounces no woe against him that should 
be offended at him, but pronounces him blessed that 
should escape this danger. Jesus knew John, and 
knew well what effect this his response would have 
upon him." 



B. CHRIST'S TESTIMONY OF JOHN. 



"Verses 7"— 19. (Compare Luke vii. 24-35.) 



(7) And as they departed, Jesus began to say unto the multitudes concerning 
John, What went ye out into the wilderness to see ? A reed shaken with the wind ? 
(8) But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? behold, they 
that wear soft clothing are in kings' houses. (9) But what went ye out for to see ? 
A prophet? yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet. (10) For this is he, of 
whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall 
prepare thy way before thee. (11) Yerily I say unto you, Among them that are 
born of women tbere hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwith- 
standing, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. (12) And 
from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth 
violence, and the violent take it by force. (13) For all the prophets and the law 
prophesied until John. (14) And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for 
to come. (15) He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. (16) But whereunto shall 
I liken this generation ? It is like unto children sitting in the markets, and calling 
unto their fellows, (17) and saying, We have piped l unto you, and ye have not 
danced; we have mourned 2 unto you, and ye have not lamented. (18) For John 



1 Piping and dancing were accompaniments of the fes- 
tivals of the Jews. (Luke xv, 25.) The signal was 



commenced. 2 Lamentations took place at funeral oc- 
casions. (Matt, ix, 23.) Some one commenced and the 



given with a pipe or similar instrument, and the dance others fell in. 



332 



MATTHEW XI, 7-19. 



came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil. (19) The Son of 
man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a 
vvinebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her 
children. 



Verses 7-9. The disciples of John take their 
leave ; but before they have proceeded far Jesus 
commences addressing the people with regard to 
John, setting forth forcibly and clearly the holiness 
of his character and the greatness of his mission, 
and thus he either prevents or corrects all wrong 
views about him. Identifying the John in the wil- 
derness with the John in prison, he assures the peo- 
ple that John had not changed his views about him 
as the Messiah, although this might seem to be the 
case. The message from the imprisoned John forci- 
bly reminded the people of the stirring times of his 
first appearance. That crowding of the people 
about the man in the wilderness, although its last- 
ing results were comparatively but small, had, not- 
withstanding, been a significant admission on their 
part. They had not unwillingly listened to the ex- 
hortation, " Repent," had, for the most part, received 
his baptism, and thereby virtually admitted that they 
were sinners, and could enter the kingdom of God 
only through repentance. The questions addressed 
by the Lord to his hearers called forcibly to their 
minds these times, asking, as it were : " How was it, 
then, when you went out into the wilderness? What 
did you go out to see? You certainly did not find 
in John a reed shaken to and fro by the wind of the 
popular mind ? You may rest assured that he does 
not now retract the testimony he had borne of me. 
Neither suppose, from his message, that he is one 
of those effeminate souls that can not endure trials 
for truth's sake. He is not one of those that desire 
to be clothed in soft raiment. Only call to mind his 
raiment of camel's hair! What did you see when 
you went out into the wilderness ?" The answer to 
this question is, for emphasis' sake, put again in the 
form of an interrogation, as if saying : Certainly a 
prophet, as you acknowledged him to be, (chap, xxi, 
26,) and, I assure you, he is more than a prophet. 

Verse 10. For this is he of whom it is written. 
This prophecy stands in Malachi iii, 1. The Lord 
changes the Hebrew text " before my face " into 
" before thy face." This application of what Jeho- 
vah says of himself to the Messiah, is a clear indi- 
cation of his Divinity proper. It is, moreover, 
worthy of note that the three Evangelists have the 
quotation in this changed form. (Mark i, 2 ; Luke 
vii, 27.) Thus the Lord, instead of answering to 
the question of John's disciples directly, "I am he 
that is to come," declares in majestic humility: 
" What makes John more than a prophet is, that he 
is my forerunner." 

Verse 11. The term has risen {kyfjyeprai) prop- 
erly means has been raised up, and is used of proph- 



ets, etc., with respect to their divine mission. — Not- 
withstanding he that is least [literally, the lesser] 

IN THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS GREATER THAN HE. In 

point of a spiritual apprehension of the promised 
Messiah John was greater than all his predecessors, 
and yet a member of the kingdom of God — that is, 
of the Christian Church — though less than John in 
office and personal qualifications, is John's superior 
in this respect. This is said prophetically of the 
Gospel dispensation after the outpouring of the Holy 
Ghost, 

Verse 12. From a description of the character 
of John the Baptist, the Lord proceeds to describe 
the peculiar character of the times. — From the 
days of John the Baptist, until now. These 
words indicate that some time had elapsed since the 
imprisonment of John and the close of his public 
ministry. By the term until now we have not to 
understand that the period spoken of came now to 
a close. On the contrary, the time of John's public 
ministry is represented as the beginning of the glo- 
rious times of the kingdom of God, in so far as the 
necessary preparations for it were then made. John 
had exhorted his cotemporaries to repent, because 
the kingdom was near at hand, and Jesus himself 
opened his public career, as well as his disciples, 
with a solemn call to repentance, because the king- 
dom of God was at hand. These solemn calls had 
their effect. — The kingdom of heaven suffereth 
violence, (/} /3acuXeia rav ovpavuv ^/.d^sTaL.) The 
Greek verb in the active voice means to do violence 
to a person or thing, to overcome resistance, to mas- 
ter it by dint of great efforts. Most expositors con- 
sider it here to be in the passive voice, some in a 
bad sense, as if the meaning were: "The kingdom 
of God is violently resisted and persecuted, and by 
violence snatched away from men." But this inter- 
pretation is forbidden by the connection. Taken 
passively, in a good sense, the meaning would be : 
The kingdom of heaven is taken hold of or rushed 
into with great violence. But to this view Stier ob- 
jects on the following grounds; namely: 1. That in 
this case the additional clause, "And the violent 
take it by force," would be a tautology. 2. That it 
is not in harmony with the context. The Lord 
speaks of the absolutely-certain and momentous fact 
that the kingdom of heaven has come, proclaims its 
presence, and sends forth its invitations in tones not 
to be misunderstood, (v. 15,) and this forms the con- 
trast between now and the times of the prophets. 
We must, therefore, take flcd^erai, in the middle voice, 
it forces itself. The sense, then, would be, " the 
kingdom of God forcibly introduces itself," " breaks 



THE MESSAGE OF JOHN AND CHRIST'S REPLY. 



333 



in with violence," and the object on men can -very 
well be supplied. In thus violently breaking forth 
the kingdom of God does violence to all. The poor 
are compelled to come in, (Luke xiv, 23,) skeptics 
are forced to search and to ask for information. 
Whoever now refuses to enter must oppose force to 
the force that attacks him, but whoever is willing to 
enter must force himself through the obstacles thrown 
in his way by the determined opposers. Thus the 
kingdom of God both does and suffers violence. 
This interpretation of Stier very well agrees both 
with the Savior's subsequent lament of the absence 
of faith in the people, and with the fact that he drew 
out the masses by the friendly invitation in verse 28, 
and with the parallel passage in Luke xvi, 16, "every 
man presseth into it," every one presses eagerly for- 
ward in order to hear the good news, from the fore- 
runner John, by way of preparation, and now in its 
full extent from Jesus himself. We shall appreciate 
the meaning and force of the expression still more, if 
we bear in mind that the Jewish rabbins confined 
their instructions to small select parties of disciples, 
neglecting the masses altogether. John's preaching- 
had been very popular, and large crowds had gath- 
ered around him; so was the preaching of Christ; 
the masses, neglected and despised by the scribes and 
Pharisees, eagerly flocked to them and pressed into 
the kingdom as far as it was revealed. Yet this 
eagerness to be admitted to an enjoyment of the 
blessings and privileges of the kingdom of God had 
but commenced, and the words of the Savior points 
to the preaching of the Gospel in the demonstration 
of the Spirit, in every age, till the earth shall be full 
of the glory of the Lord. 

Verses 13, 14 state the reasons why, since John 
entered upon his public ministry, the kingdom of 
God had become the object of general and deep 
solicitude. The law and the prophets had only pre- 
dicted it, spoken of it as something future. This 
prophetic period lasted till the Baptist opened his 
ministry as the immediate forerunner of the Messiah, 
as the Elias who was to come. Before John, there- 
fore, this Messianic excitement could not take place, 
but was the natural and legitimate phenomenon, since 
the prophetic period had come to a close. — If ye 
will receive it ; that is, if you are willing or able 
to receive it with your carnal Messianic ideas and 
expectations. Taking Mai. iv, 5 literally, the Jews 
expected that Elias would come in person before the 
appearance of the Messiah; this carnal view John 
contradicts. (John i, 21.) 

Verse 15. These words are generally used by the 
Lord in order to call attention to important declara- 
tions. So here, if John was Elias, as foretold by the 
law and the prophet, the forerunner of the Messiah, 
it was self-evident that Jesus was the Messiah, and 
was as such to be recognized and believed. There- 
fore, "he that has ears" — he that has the faculty of 
hearing — let him hear, consider and understand, let 
him become convinced that I am the Messiah. 



Verses 16, 17. After bearing this explicit and 
grand testimony to the character of the Baptist, the 
Lord proceeds — the particle "but" introduces a con- 
trast — to characterize his cotemporaries, whom neither 
he himself nor John the Baptist could please. — 
Whereunto shall I liken this generation? The 
similitude our Savior employs shows that nothing 
connected with humanity, in its humblest stages of de- 
velopment, was uninteresting to him. He observed 
the play of children, imitating marriages and funer- 
als. As now and every-where, so did the children in 
the days of Christ, and in Judea, derive their sports 
and amusements from the habits and customs of 
adults. At first sight it might appear as if the 
capricious, ill-natured Jews were meant by the chil- 
dren who refused to accept the invitation of their 
fellows to dance and to lament, and that our Lord 
intended to compare himself and the Baptist to 
those children that gave the invitation by piping and 
mourning This is the interpretation of Stier and 
of most expositors. But to this view there are 
weighty objections: 1. The text says expressly: This 
generation — a term which is uniformly used in con- 
trast with Christ and his followers — is like those 
children that say, "we have piped and we have 
mourned" complaining of the non-playing children, 
from which we infer that the non-playing children, 
the party complained of, are to represent Christ and 
the Baptist. 2. This is confirmed by verses 18 and 
19, where " they who say" the complainants, are evi- 
dently the fault-finding Jews. 3. If the Baptist and 
Christ were intended to represent the children, who 
piped and mourned, and whose invitation was not 
accepted by sulky playmates, meaning the Jews, the 
order would be reversed. The mourning, corre- 
sponding to John's ministry, would precede the pip- 
ing, corresponding to the more joyous character of 
Christ's ministry. For these reasons it seems more 
probable that if one of the two sets of children is 
meant to represent Christ and the Baptist, it is the 
party of children capriciously complained of. Al- 
exander contends that it is not necessary nor proper 
to make any part of the similitude representative of 
Jesus and John, the conduct of quarrelsome chil- 
dren being, as a whole, compared with the wayward 
spirit of the Jews, while the objects of their dissatis- 
faction are named in the application which our Lord 
makes in verses 18 and 19. We can, however, not 
see the point in Dr. Alexander's objections. 

Verses 18, 19. John came neither eating nor 
drinking. Luke (vii, 33) adds the objects : "bread" 
and "wine." John was a Nazarite of the strictest 
order. (See chap, iii, 4.) Lange aptly remarks: 
" John by his rigid asceticism represented human life 
in its sternest aspects. The people were, indeed, 
powerfully impressed by the overwhelming force of 
his mind, but by and by they said, he is too rigid, too 
morose for us. The similitude of the piping genera- 
tion that could not be pleased by John, is the more 
striking if we associate with it an allusion to the 



334 



MATTHEW XI, 20-24. 



dancing party at the court of Herod, which shortly 
afterward proved the occasion of John's death. That 
the pleasure-loving Jews wished to use John for their 
religious amusement, appears from John v, 35 ; at 
length, however, most of them turned away from 
him, saying that he was possessed of a demon of 
melancholy." — The Son of man came eating and 
drinking; that is, living like other people, practicing 
no asceticism like John. The meaning is plain from 
the preceding verse. The words may be an allusion 
to the Lord's occasional presence at festive occasions, 
as e. g., the wedding at Cana, the feast in Levi's 
house, etc. On account of this he was assailed by 
the pharisaic party as a despiser of the law. Those 
very forms of life, for the non-observance of which 
they found fault with John, they declared to be crim- 
inal in Jesus. For John they desired to play a merry 
wedding-tune while he called upon them to mourn; 
and Jesus they wanted to sing a funeral dirge while 
he invited the people to the marriage-feast of the 
New Testament liberty. In this delineation of his 
times Jesus has drawn in an inimitable manner the 
experience which the preaching of the Gospel makes 
anew at all times and in all places. The preaching 
of the law people find too rigorous, inhuman, ban- 
ishing all joys of life, while they see in the preaching 



of God's free grace an encouragement to trifle with 
sin. And it is still the lot of God's messengers to 
be rejected by a fault-finding world. — But wisdom 
is justified by her children. These words form 
no part of the similitude and its application, but 
embody the judgment of Jesus on the perverse treat- 
ment, which both he himself and John experienced 
at the hands of the Jews. Wisdom — that is, the 
wisdom of God, which has made these arrangements, 
is justified — acquitted of blame "of her children " — 
that is, by and through those that being born, as it 
were, of wisdom, partake of its nature, refute by 
their repentance and conversion those slanders, (vs. 
18, 19,) and thus prove conclusively that both John 
and Jesus acted in perfect conformity to the positions 
assigned them in the development of the kingdom 
of God. The children of wisdom, the very reverse 
of the wayward children of verses 16 and 17, recog- 
nize in this very working of widely-different indi- 
vidualities for one and the same end, the infinite 
wisdom of God. The older view, which sees in the 
words of the text the censure of the Jews continued — 
that is, the declaration on the part of the Savior that 
Divine wisdom was subjected to censure and criti- 
cism by the Jews, who ought to be the children of 
wisdom — is altogether untenable. 



C. WOES PRONOUNCED BY THE LORD ON THE CITIES OF GALILEE. 
"Verses SO-24. (COMPARE Luke X, 13-15.) 

(20) Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of ,his mighty works 
were done, because they repented not : (21) "Woe unto thee, Chorazin ! 1 woe unto 
thee, Bethsaida ! 2 for if the mighty works, which were done- in you, 3 had been 
done in Tyre 4 and Sidon, 5 they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and 
ashes. (22) But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at 
the day of judgment, than for you. (23) And thou, Capernaum* which art exalted 



1 According to Jerome a city two miles from Caper- 
naum. Neither the Old nor the New Testament, with 
the exception of this and the parallel passage in Luke, 
make any mention of it. 2 Bethsaida was, according to 
John i, 45, the birthplace of Philip, Andrew, and Peter, 
and is called there a city. See more in ch. xiv, 22. 3 Here 
is a reference to miracles not recorded in our Gospels, 
but alluded to in Luke iv, 23, and John xxi, 25. 4 This 
celebrated city, the commercial metropolis of Phenicia, 
lay on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, about 
half-way between Egypt and Asia Minor. It was founded 
about two hundred years before Solomon, and was never 
subject to Israel, although situate within the borders of 
the tribe of Asher. There was always a good under- 
standing between Israel and Tyre, which rose to sueh 
importance that it was called (Isa. xxiii, 8; Ez. chaps. 
xxvi and xxvii) " the crowning city, whose merchants 
are princes, whose traffickers are the honorable of the 
earth." It was besieged several times, once for five 
years by Salmanasser, then for thirteen years by Nebu- 
chadnezzar, who in all probability took it, since it came 
under the power of the Chaldeans, and, subsequently, 
under that of the Persians. The most famous siege, how- 



ever, it sustained under Alexander the Great. During this, 
siege the old city was destroyed and the materials of it 
were used by the Greeks for the construction of a darn 
of one mile in length, and half a mile distant from the 
city, against that portion of it that was built upon a 
small, rocky island. This dam has become through 
alluvious matter an' isthmus, connecting the island with 
the main land. The greater portion of the island is, at 
present, naked and desolate, a place '.' where the fisher- 
man spreads his net." No other prophecy of Scripture 
has been so literally fulfilled as that concerning the 
downfall and ruin of this onee so mighty, large, and 
rich city. (Ez. xxvi, 21.) The pride, luxury, and vice 
of this city were great, and although it was so near 
Israel, which had the knowledge and worship of Jehovah, 
yet idolatry was never banished from it. 5 Sidon was 
also a celebrated city of Phenicia, much older than Tyre, 
and about twenty miles north of Tyre. It was probably 
founded by Sidon, the great grandchild of Noah, (Gen. 
x, 15, 19,) and was the oldest of all the Phenician cities. 
It is now called Suida, has a principally Mahomme- 
dan population of about five or six thousand inhab- 
itants, and is in the possession of the Ottoman Turks. 



WOES ON THE CITIES OF GALILEE. 



335 



unto heaven, shall be brought down to hell : 6 for if the mighty works, which have 
been clone in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. 
(24) But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in 
the day of judgment, than for thee. 



Verse 20. With regard to the time when our 
Lord pronounced these woes on the cities of Galilee 
see note to No. 63 in the Synoptical Table. — 
Then began he. These words make the narrative 
very graphic, and show that the record is from an 
ear-witness. They indicate that what follows was 
spoken after a pause and with greater emphasis. 
The preceding part of the Savior's discourse con- 
tained much censure, but now the severity of the re- 
buke rises with the greatness of the favors abused. 
These cities had enjoyed the presence of the God- 
man. They had felt his influence ; had listened, 
time and again, to his instructions; had witnessed 
many of his mighty deeds; and yet they did not 
heartily repent. Gentle and meek as the friend of 
publicans and sinners was, he did not spare the 
perseveringly impenitent. — Most or his mighty 
works. The Lord here assigns to miracles seen 
with one's own eyes the first place among the out- 
ward means of grace. Upon eye and ear-witnesses 
of miracles, who persevere in hardness of heart and 
impenitence, there rests a greater guilt and a more 
fearful responsibility than on others who do not 
enjoy these privileges, and die in their sins. — Be- 
cause they repented not. Some individuals, indeed, 
believed in Jesus; but as a body the people remained 
impenitent. The cities mentioned here did not dis- 
play that degree of hostility against Jesus that Naz- 
areth and Jerusalem manifested; but it would seem 
that the mass of the people remained indifferent, 
and this indifference was even worse than positive 
opposition, because less susceptible of being affected. 
(See Rev. iii, 15.) 

Verse 21. Woe unto thee. An expression of 
deep grief and indignation — here at the same time 
prophetic. — They would have repented, the Sav- 
ior says, if such means of grace had been given 
unto them as were enjoyed by the cities upbraided. 
The question arises here naturally, Why did God 
not give them the means of grace that would have 
saved them from destruction? It may suffice to say 
in reply: God is under no obligation to give to all 
men the same measure of grace. It does not be- 
come man to say any thing as to the amount of what 
God should do for every individual. This is left 
with God's free grace. The measure of grace allot- 
ted to each is determined by the counsel of the will 
of Him who is holy, just, and true, and willeth not 
the death of the sinner, but whose ways are past 
finding out. It is sufficient for us to know that all 



are without excuse, because God gives to every one 
a testimony of himself in his own conscience, (Rom. 
ii, 15,) and that every one shall be judged according 
to the amount of grace given unto him. But Stier 
and other German expositors maintain that in this 
way the real difficulty — namely, that some lacked 
the grace which would have effected their conversion 
and eternal salvation — is by no means solved, and 
they accordingly suppose that this declaration of the 
Savior contains a hint that, to those who die in an 
impenitent state for the want of sufficient means of 
grace, an opportunity may be given in hades to re- 
pent and be saved, while for those who have heard 
the whole counsel of God for their salvation in this 
world, but have rejected it, nothing but everlasting 
damnation is in store after death. The same idea 
they find indicated in verse 22 likewise. Guenther, 
accordingly, paraphrases verses 22-24 as follows: 
" If such mighty deeds had been done in Tyre and 
Sidon, they would have repented, like Nineveh, in 
sackcloth and ashes, and would, accordingly, not 
have been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and Alex- 
ander, as the prophets had foretold. Their repent- 
ance would thus have prevented this type of the 
final judgment of the world. But because their 
persevering impenitence was the consequence of 
their imperfect knowledge of God's being and will, 
because they would have been more willing to turn 
from their evil ways if they had enjoyed a fuller 
knowledge, they have not only fared better in the 
typical judgment — they have been rebuilt— -but it 
shall also be more tolerable for them in the final 
judgment, after a fuller revelation shall have been 
granted unto them in hades, seeing that a much 
greater portion of their citizens shall believe in the 
Gospel preached to them in hades. God knows it, 
and I, his Son, know it also, that their impenitence 
was conditioned by their ignorance. This plea will 
not be left for the cities of Galilee in the great day, 
for they have seen the Son of man in the fullness 
of his revelation, and have nevertheless not re- 
pented, and they will thus persevere in their hard- 
ness of heart in hades also, and, therefore, be 
damned on the day of judgment." 

Verse 22. It shall be more tolerable for 
Tyre and Sidon. See note on Matt, x, 15. 

Verse 23. And thou, Capernaum, which art 
exalted u.vto heaven. By the exaltation of Ca- 
pernaum can not be understood its secular prosper- 
ity or lofty situation, but the distinguished honor 



6 Hades, Hebrew sheol, means the invisible world, the I hades, the condition and place of the dead from death to 
world of disembodied spirits. The particulars about I the day of resurrection, see Luke svi, 23, and pussim. 



336 



MATTHEW XI, 25-30. 



which was conferred on the place when Jesus chose 
it for his residence. The plain meaning, accord- 
ingly, is: As highly as thou hast been favored by 
those signal honors which were conferred on no 
other town nor city, so great shall be thy degradation 
and debasement for having abused these privileges. 
The expressions unto heaven, (comp. Luke xv, 18,) 
down to hell, are here figurative expressions, mean- 
ing the highest and lowest degree. The Greek 
word for hell here is hades, not gehenna. Never- 
theless, we may infer, from verses 22-24, that not 
the temporal downfall of these cities is meant here, 
but the fate of their inhabitants in the other world. 
Olshausen remarks on the passage : " At the great 
separation which awaits the universe, each individ- 
ual life is attracted and ruled by the element into 
which it has entered. He that opened his heart to 
the light and spirit of Christ is drawn thereby 
into the regions of light, but whoso suffered the 
spirit of darkness to rule in his heart becomes a 
prey to the powers of darkness, according to the 
degree of his individual guilt, which God alone can 
determine, because it depends on the degree of the 
impression which the light made upon him, and 
against which he hardened himself." 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 

1. The guilt of the unconverted is measured by 

the Divine works that have been wrought among 

them. Thy punishment in eternity will be awful in 

the degree in which thou didst possess the means 



and motives for repentance. 0, how terrible is the 
condition of him that grows up amid the means of 
grace, and finally becomes a castaway! No city of 
Palestine, even Capernaum not excepted, enjoyed 
such a fullness of the means of grace as we do, after 
the work of redemption is completed and the Holy 
Ghost has been given to the Church. 

2. God reveals himself more to some than to 
others. "Mighty works" were done for the salva- 
tion of mankind: (1.) In the patriarchal age; (2.) In 
the dispensation under the law; (3.) During the min- 
istry of Christ upon earth; (4.) During the whole 
dispensation of the Gospel. The wonders of Pente- 
cost, the glorious triumphs which attended the preach- 
ing of the Gospel in the first three centuries, and all 
the moral revolutions accomplished by it in different 
parts of the earth to this hour, are " the mighty 
works" of God. God has not ceased to perform his 
mighty works before the children of men. Every 
false system demolished, every error exploded, every 
truth enthroned, every soul converted, is the mighty 
work of God. 

3. The same Divine operations which are suffi- 
cient for the conversion of some make no lasting 
impression upon others. This fact, for which we 
have the authority of Christ, is of deep significance, 
and teaches us, (1.) That there are different degrees 
of depravity in the human heart; (2.) That the 
Almighty has left the self-determination of man so 
completely free, that even his wonder-working power 
can not accomplish its end without the consent of 
man. This consideration impresses us with the won- 
derful energy of man's freedom to act. 



D. THE SAVIOR'S INVITATION TO ALL THAT LABOR AND ARE HEAVY LADEN. 
"Verses 25-30. (Compare Luke x, 21, 22.) 

(25) At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, Father, Lord of 
heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, 
and hast revealed them unto babes. (26) Even so, Father; for so it seemed good 
in thy sight. (27) All things ai*e delivered unto me of my Father: and no man 
knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the 
Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. (28) Come unto me, all ye 
that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. (29) Take my yoke upon 
you, and learn of me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart : and ye shall find rest 
unto your souls. (30) For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. 



Verse 25. At that time Jesus answered. To 
"answer," in the New Testament, is often used after 
the idiom of the Hebrew, where the person or thing 
to which the answer refers is not mentioned, but is 
merely present to the mind of the speaker. (Chap. 
xxii, 1; Luke xiii, 14.) The Lord replies to his 
own foregoing remarks, and puts an end to all spec- 
ulation concerning the sad fate of these cities by 



referring it to the righteous decree of his Father, 
which is, that salvation can be brought only to the 
humble and lowly, who are willing to receive it, and 
must be withdrawn from the haughty opposers. Ad- 
dressing himself once more to the wretched and the 
poor, he kindly closes by inviting them unto him. — 
I thank thee, or, I praise thee, {e^nfioloyov/j-ai am..) 
The term implies a full and unqualified agreement 



AN INVITATION TO THE HEAVY LADEN. 



337 



with the counsel and purpose of God as holy and 
righteous in granting mercy and deliverance to the 
" babes," and withholding them from the wise and 
prudent. — Father here refers to the peculiar rela- 
tion existing between Christ, as the Mediator be- 
tween God and man, and the first person of the 
adorable Trinity. Jesus was the Son of God, more 
especially, as he had his human form of existence 
from his Father; and in this form, in his Messianic 
character, he was subject to the Father, who had 
sent him into the world. In his Divine, antemundane 
form of existence he was equal with the Father in 
being, power, and glory. — Lord of heaven and 
earth ; that is, " Supreme Lord and Ruler of the 
universe." It is worthy of note that Jesus addresses 
the Father not as " his " Lord, but as the Lord of 
heaven and earth. (See Eph. i, 10.) — Thou hast 
hid these things. The best comment on this pas- 
sage is given by Dr. Whedon : "What was hid? The 
spiritual kingdom above described. How hid ? By 
the very fact that God has constituted it a spiritual 
kingdom ; for eyes that wickedly persist in being 
gross and carnal can not see spiritual realities. The 
plainest Divine truths, though placed before them, 
are hid, as the plainest objects by daylight are hid 
from the eyes of the owl — only the owl's blindness 
is natural and innocent, theirs is voluntary and 
guilty. God does right in establishing spiritual 
things ; that their spirituality renders them hid is the 
sensual man's fault. Those who understand by this 
text that God has from all eternity made salvation 
impossible to be attained by a fixed part of man- 
kind, wrong Divine justice and abuse our Lord's 
words. [The Father is as willing to reveal his sal- 
vation unto all as the Son is willing to give rest unto 
all ; but as the offer of rest can properly be given 
only to the weary and heavy laden, so wisdom and 
truth can be revealed only to the teachable.] More- 
over, it is not at all probable that the thanks of our 
Lord rested upon the fact that the Gospel was hid, 
but upon the fact that, though hid, it was wisely and 
graciously revealed to its spiritual receivers. Par- 
allel to this is the language of Paul: 'God be 
thanked that ye were the servants of sin; but ye 
have obeyed.' If, in either passage, we supply al- 
though after that, we shall obtain the actual mean- 
ing." — From the wise and prudent, all those who, 
in their self-conceit, oppose the wisdom of God. 
(1 Cor. i, 19, 21-27.) If there is any difference 
between the wise and the prudent, the former may 
mean men of great learning, the latter men of great 
shrewdness and natural talent. — By babes we are 
to understand, in the first place, the unlearned, (John 
vii, 49,) then all that are teachable and willing to 
receive instruction; "the simple," so often spoken 
of in the Old Testament, (Ps. cxvi, 6; cxix, 130;) 
the " poor in spirit," who, as children in a childlike 
frame of mind, suffer themselves to be taught and 
directed. The Lord may have had Psalm viii, 3, be- 
fore his mind, to which passage he gave subse 



22 



quently so lofty an interpretation. This declaration 
of the Savior was to the letter fulfilled in his cotem- 
poraries ; but its truth has ever since been confirmed 
in every age of the Church. 

Verse 26. Once more the Savior gives utterance 
to his emotions of thankfulness, and expresses, at 
the same time, that what he thanks the Father for is 
not the result of arbitrary decrees, but determined 
upon on the ground of the highest "wisdom" and 
" goodness." The icisdom of these Divine arrange- 
ments appears, in the first place, from the character 
of the then chosen instruments, whose lack of hu- 
man learning made "Divine wisdom" in them more 
conspicuous, and thus stamped upon their doctrine 
the seal of a Divine revelation, enabling them, at 
the same time, to impart the same unto others in 
its purity, unadulterated by any human admixture. 
The results of the labors of such men could not 
possibly be ascribed to their learning or eloquence, 
but solely to the inherent power of the truths 
preached by them. The goodness of God can be 
seen in this, that in order to learn the mysteries of 
the kingdom of God, neither great learning nor tal- 
ents of a superior order — the privilege of but com- 
paratively few — are required, but a teachable mind, 
which is within the reach of all. The secret of the 
Lord is with them that fear him, and his Word gives 
understanding to the simple. (Ps. cxix, 30; xxv, 14.) 

Verse 27. After having spoken of the Lord of 
heaven, his Father, the Savior proceeds to speak 
of himself as working in the same manner as his 
Heavenly Father. The new idea is then advanced, 
which forms, at the same time, the transition. The 
organ through and by which the Father reveals him- 
self is the Son. It appears, accordingly, most nat- 
ural, and is, moreover, grammatically required by 
the aorist wape66-&7i — that is, were delivered — to un- 
derstand by all things delivered unto me, those 
very things which the Father reveals unto babes, 
meaning that all revelation of the Father is made 
through the Son. Lange, however, and Meyer do 
not restrict the "things delivered" to doctrine, and, 
accordingly, translate, " Every thing is, or all things 
are placed at my disposal;" on which Lange makes 
the following comment: "The declaration of the 
Savior does not imply that the worship of the Fa- 
ther ceases, but that it brings every thing under the 
order of the kingdom established by Jesus in the 
name of the Father. The main stress lies on the 
idea that not only the redeemed are Christ's, but also 
the unbelievers — those that reject him and are finally 
lost. By rejecting Christ they meant to make him 
appear impotent. But in their very unbelief and 
rejection of all overtures of mercy, the majesty of 
his self-consciousness was most gloriously displayed. 
They also that rejected him are his, that is, subject 
to his power and authority." Although the ideas 
advanced by Lange are undoubtedly Biblical, taught 
in many passages, yet we do not think that they are 
taught here. Even if we allow that the aorist iropt- 



338 



MATTHEW XI, 25-30. 



66-&tj does not absolutely forbid this construction, yet 
it is certainly very far-fetched, and but ill suited to 
what follows. — No man [more correctly, no one] 

KNOWETH THE SON, BUT THE FATHER. The term 

knoweth (kTuyw&csKei) implies here a full knowledge 
of the relation which exists between the Father and 
the Son. " In one other place only in the first 
three Gospels — besides the parallel passage in Luke 
x, 22 — does the expression 6 vlog (the Son) occur; 
namely, Mark xiii, 32. The spirit of this verse and 
its forms of expression are quite those of the Gospel 
of John. We may also observe another point of 
union: This very truth (John iii, 35) had been part 
of the testimony borne to Jesus by the Baptist, and 
its repetition here, in a discourse of which the char- 
acter and office of the Baptist is the suggestive 
groundwork, is a coincidence not surely without 
meaning." (Alford.) — Neither knoweth ant man 
[more correctly, any one] the Father, save the 
Son. The Father, revealed in the Old Testament 
but dimly, was fully manifested in his incarnate 
Son. — To whomsoever the Son will reveal him. 
That this will of the Son is not an arbitrary will, 
but a will that rests on mercy and wisdom, appears 
plainly from the following invitation. The Holy 
Ghost is not mentioned in this connection, because 
his dispensation had not yet commenced. 

Verse 28. The following verses, which Matthew 
alone has, are a commentary on verse 5 : "And the 
poor have the Gospel preached to them." No mere 
man, no one but he who could say of himself what 
is said in verse 27, could give such an invitation. It 
is identical with the call, which Jehovah himself sent 
forth. (Isa. Ixv, 22.) — ■ Come unto me. "There is 
exquisite beauty," says Alexander, "in this sudden 
but not harsh transition from the mysteries of the 
Godhead to the miseries of man. The Son is the 
revealer of the Father, not to stimulate or gratify a 
mere scientific curiosity as to the mode of the Divine 
existence, but to bring the Godhead into saving con- 
tact with the sin-sick, ruined soul. Having laid the 
foundation for what follows in his own eternal son- 
ship and community of nature with the Father, he 
now turns the doctrine to a practical account, and 
calls men to avail themselves of its provisions." — Ye 
that labor and are heavy laden. The active and 
the passive side of human misery are here deline- 
ated; all those that toil and are weighed down by 
heavy burdens — the consequence of man's fallen 
condition — are invited. Outward afflictions are not 
excluded; but as the promise given is of a spiritual 
nature, the invitation too has primary reference to 
spiritual misery. Lange remarks: " The two verbs, 
'to labor and to be heavy laden,' represent the burden 
of labor, 1. As voluntarily submitted to; 2. As im- 
posed by others. These two kinds were united in 
the ceremonial worship of the Jews, but were felt by 
those only who took the law in its inward sense, who 
are, therefore, nearly allied to the poor in spirit," 
The legal bondage of the Jews corresponds fully "to 



man's general condition, as bound and yet unable to 
fulfill the law, and, therefore, groaning under its in- 
tolerable penalty and condemnation as a crushing 
load." (Compare Acts xv, 10.) — And I will give 
you rest. (Compare with this promise Isa. lvii, 15; 
Jer. xxxi, 25.) What a contrast do these words form 
to what our Lord says of the scribes and Pharisees ! 
(Matt, xxiii, 4.) 

Verse 29. " Take my yoke upon you," and " learn 
of me," Stier considers as equivalent terms, since the 
first was the proverbial expression of submitting to 
one's teaching and discipline among the Jews. For 
this reason especially the law was called a yoke. To 
take upon one's self the yoke of Christ means not only 
to receive his teaching, but also to recognize him as 
the Messiah and to submit in all things to the au 
thority and guidance of his word and spirit. — For I 
am meek and lowly in heart. These words the' 
Lord adds to his kind invitation in order to encour- 
age his hearers thereby to accept it. "I am meek," 
although I have just pronounced so severe judg- 
ments. I judge, indeed, those that refuse to come 
unto me, but cast out no one that comes unto me. 
"And lowly." An example of humility and self- 
abasement, that can not be equaled by any created 
intelligence, Christ has given by his incarnation. 
(Phil, ii, 6-8.) The addition "in heart" predicates 
the humility of his inmost life as a holy turn of his 
will, voluntarily assumed. The Son of man alone 
could with propriety say of himself, that he was 
lowly or humble. — And ye shall find rest unto 
your souls is a literal quotation from Jer. vi, 16. 
The Lord does not promise those that come unto 
him a deliverance from all burdens and troubles, but 
he promises them rest unto their souls, which makes 
every yoke easy and every burden light. Every 
thing opposed to meekness and humility bears man 
down and creates wretchedness, but he that learns 
of the " meek and lowly in heart," finds real rest 
nnto his soul. Whoever has not yet found this rest 
in Jesus must seek the cause of it in himself, not in 
Jesus. 

Verse 30. The Christian religion is likewise not 
without its yoke; that is, it demands submission and 
obedience to the authority and word of Christ, to the 
chastening of his Spirit. But the yoke of Christ is 
easy. The Greek word means properly salutary, 
beneficial. In Eph. iv, 32, it is translated kind; in 
1 Pet. ii, 3, gracious. Christ requires nothing of us 
but what saves us even in this life from the misery 
of sin, and it is only the means and instrument to 
enable one to bear the burdens of life with ease and 
convenience, as an old Church father (St. Bernard) has 
beautifully expressed it: "What can be easier than 
a burden that unburdens, and a yoke that bears its 
bearer?" And the burden which Christ imposes is 
light, because he imposes it only upon him that has 
learned to love him, and endows him with the strength 
to bear it. — Let us compare the yoke of Christ with 
the burdensome and expensive ceremonies of the 



AN INVITATION TO THE HEAVY LADEN. 



339 



Jews, (Acts xv, 10,) or with the bondage of Popery, 
or with the requirements which sin makes of' its 
devotees — -with the laws which the fashionable or 
pleasure-seeking world, or the so-called code of honor 
exacts — and we shall see at once that the religion of 
Christ is liberty. (John viii, 38.) Truly it is easier 
to be a Christian than a sinner. The soul's rest in 
Christ imparts a peace that passes all understand- 
ing. (2 Cor. iv, 16.) After the love of God has 
destroyed in the heart of the "yoke-bearer" the love 
of the world and of sin, the commandments of God 
are not difficult; yea, the most afflicted followers of 
Jesus fare infinitely better even in this world than 
those that prefer to bear Satan's yoke and the burden 
of sin. 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 

THE WISE, THE PRUDENT, AND THE BABES; OB, THE 
HIDDEN AND REVEALED. (Vs. 25-21.) 

If we regard, as we are justified in doing, this 
utterance of Jesus as immediately following the an- 
nouncement of "woe" over Chorazin, Bethsaida, and 
Capernaum, we shall be at no loss to determine 
what is meant here by "these things," which he 
gives us to understand are " hid from the wise and 
the prudent, and revealed unto babes." " These 
things" were what the "mighty works" expressed 
and embodied. His works are the revelation of 
himself. His "mighty works" of redemptive prov- 
idence are intended and suited to reveal to the soul 
his moral character, his love for man, and his pur- 
pose to save him. And these are "the things" of 
which our Savior here speaks. 

Jesus teaches us to look upon " these things " — 
that is, the spirit and substance of the Gospel in two 
aspects — as hidden from some and as revealed to 
others. 

I. As hidden from some. They were " hid fr m 
the wise and the prudent." What does this conceal- 
ment arise from? In answer to this question, the 
circumstances of the people of whom Jesus now 
speaks as having these spiritual things hid from 
them, enable us to say: 

1. That they were hidden not for the want of an 
external manifestation. Spiritual truth had been 
presented to them in all the forms in which it could 
appear — not merely in living words and wonderful 
works, but in the example of him who was truth 
itself. And yet they did not discern the things thus 
represented. They were like blind men under the 
bright heavens, and deaf men amid flowing tides 
of music. That these things are hidden from hea- 
thens is no wonder, for they have never had the 
external revelation of them. They can not see 
these things because there is no light thrown upon 
them from the heavens. But that they should be 
hidden from those who live among the utterances 
and forms of revelation, is passing strange and 



solemn. We infer from the circumstances of these 
people — 

2. That they were not hidden for the want of in- 
tellectual ability to discern them. It was " from the 
wise and the prudent," not from idiots or dolts, that 
they were concealed. Had the men to whom Jesus 
refers been destitute of natural capacity, men of no 
intellect, we could not have wondered. Though the 
sun shine in nature, if the man has not the organ 
of vision, nature will be hid from him. Intellect is 
the eye of the soul, and though the sun of external 
revelation throws its radiance about him, if he has not 
the intellectual eye the whole field of truth will be 
hid in densest obscurity. But the persons to whom 
Christ alludes possessed, in an eminent degree, this 
intellectual vision. They were "the wise and the 
prudent." They had the power of understanding 
these things intellectually ; and yet spiritually they 
were "hid from them." 

3. That they were not hidden by any influence ex- 
erted by God for the purpose. It is true that the 
words as they stand would give the superficial reader 
this impression ; but the idea that Jesus here teaches, 
that the great Father exerted any influence to con- 
ceal these things from the wise and prudent is not, 
to the slightest extent, admissible. (1.) It is true that 
the Bible recognizes a sense in which God may be 
regarded as the author of things that are even con- 
trary to his will and influence. (Ex. vii, 3, 4 ; 2 Sam. 
xii, 11, 12, 24; 1 Kings xxii, 22, 23; Isa. vi, 10.) But 
it is, after all, only in a very accommodative sense that 
God can be said to be the Author of that which is 
against his holy nature, against his revealed will, 
against the whole of his creative and providential sys- 
tem of action. Morally and truly a being is only the 
author of that which he produces by purpose and 
agency. (2.) That to conceal spiritual things from 
the sinner's soul does not require the agency of God,. 
They are hid. His agency is required not to con- 
ceal, but to reveal. Infinite Wisdom works not su- 
perfluously. (3.) That, as a fact, the Divine 
agency among those to whom Jesus refers was to 
reveal. Through the life, doctrines, and miracles 
of his Son, he brought those spiritual things most 
palpably and impressively under the notice of these 
men of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum. We 
can not, therefore, for a moment entertain the idea 
that there was either on God's part a positive influ- 
ence exerted to blind the mind of these Jews, or the 
withholding of any influence required to enlighten 
them unto salvation. Such a supposition robs the 
history of Jesus of its benevolent meaning, and 
stains with hideous blot the lovely character of 
God. 

Jesus here teaches us to look upon these things — 
II. As revealed to others. They were " re- 
vealed unto babes." The passage gives certain par- 
ticulars in reference to this spiritual revelation which 
will, as we examine it, throw much light upon the 
whole of this important subject. 



340 



MATTHEW XI, 25-30. 



1. That the revelation of " these things" is some- 
thing besides both the external manifestation and 
the intellectual ability. We have seen that the men 
to whom the Savior refers had both. They had the 
external manifestations. The prophets, John the 
Baptist, and now Christ had brought "these things" 
most powerfully under their attention. They had, 
too, sufficient intellectual power to understand ''these 
things" — they were the wise and the prudent; and 
yet, with all this outward light, and with all their 
intellectual power of vision, they saw not " these 
things." 

2. That the revelation of " these things " depends 
on the state of the heart. It is "to babes" that they 
are revealed. Not babes in years, not babes in men- 
tal feebleness, not babes in knowledge, but babes in 
heart-attributes — guileless, humble, docile, loving, 
impressible, truthful. 

3. The revelation of these things calls for the 
profoundest gratitude to God. (1.) Because of the 
immense good involved in the revelation of these 
things to man. When "these things" are revealed 
to a man it is the imparting to him a new existence, 
a new universe. Vast is the difference between the 
brute and the man — they live in different worlds ; 
vast is the difference, too, between man in a savage 
state and man endowed with the genius and blessed 
with the attainments of a Milton ; but far greater is 
the difference between the most elevated mind, from 
whom these spiritual things are hid, and the hum- 
blest to whom they are revealed. There is a gulf 
between them : the one is in " the gall of bitterness 
and in the bonds of iniquity," and the other is "sit- 
ting down in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." 
(2.) Because of the wonderful condescension on 
God's pari in the revelation of these things to men. 
He who was before all, is in all and over all, conde- 
scended to reveal these spiritual things to the hearts 
of poor, sinful men. This is God's work. Paul felt 
this. "It pleased God to reveal his Son in me." He 
must therefore have the praise. 

4. The revelation of these tilings is made to the 
soul through Jesus Christ. " All things are deliv- 
ered unto me of my Father, and no man knoweth 
the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man 
the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the 
Son will reveal him." There are four thoughts here 
in relation to Christ as the revealer of these things 
to the soul. (1.) That he is a Divinely-authorized 
revealer. " All things are delivered unto me of my 
Father." (2.) That he is a transcendently-glorious 
revealer. "No man knoweth the Son but the Fa- 
ther." He is so mysteriously great in his nature, 
relations, offices, and aims, that there is but one 
Being in the universe that fully understands him, 
and that is God. (3.) That he is an absolutely- 
perfect revealer. " Neither knoweth any man the 
Father save the Son." He knows the Father, and 
he only. " No man hath seen God at any time ; 
the only-begotten Son of the Father, he only hath 



declared him." The old fathers and prophets knew 
a little of God; angels know a little of God. No 
finite being, after the study of millenniums, will ever 
know him fully. Christ knows the Father, he knows 
him perfectly — he alone comprehends the Infinite. 
(4.) That he is the indispensable revealer. "No 
man can know the Father, but he to whomsoever 
the Son will reveal him." Christ is the Logos. The 
sinner will be forever ignorant of God unless he 
reveals him. It is he alone that "opens the book" 
of the Divine character and history to the universe, 
and page after page expounds it. 

INVITATION TO THE HEAVY LADEN; OR, THE SPIRIT OF 
CHRISTIANITY. (Vs 28-30.) 

In the three preceding verses which we have com- 
mented upon, Christ appears in his relation to the 
great God. Here he appears in his relation to hu- 
manity. As the Divine Philanthropist, he looks with 
an eye of unutterable tenderness and love upon an 
afflicted and sin-burdened world, and earnestly in- 
vites every distressed soul to come to him for rest. 
The depth and glow — the universality and tender- 
ness of the love expressed in this utterance are 
enough to induce a fear, in a thoughtful expositor, 
lest he should not do justice to his love — lest his 
coldness should conceal its ardor; his selfishness, its 
freeness; his narrowness, its universality; his hard- 
ness, its exquisite pathos. It requires benevolence 
to preach benevolence, tenderness to preach tender- 
ness, pathos to preach pathos, the spirit of Christ to 
preach Christ. 

The words teach us three truths in relation to 
Christianity: First, that Christianity implies moral 
distress; secondly, that it propounds moral relief; 
and thirdly, that it demands moral effort. 

I. Christianity implies moral distress. It ad- 
dresses itself to those who " labor and are heavy 
laden." In order to understand clearly the class to 
whom Christ appeals, we may glance at the various 
classes of moral intelligences. They are divided 
into three : 

1. Those who have no burden. These are angels 
and sainted men. Christianity is not addressed to 
these. Angels never required it. The original re- 
ligion of the universe has ever been theirs, and that 
religion does not imply moral distress. Sainted men 
once required it, but it has done its redeeming work 
with them ; they have passed into a higher world, 
and are placed under another and a sublimer dis- 
pensation. 

2. Those who have heavy burdens, but which are 
not removable. The Bible gives us to believe that 
there are spirits in some dark and accursed part of 
this universe who are sinking everlastingly beneath 
a load of guilt, and for whom there is no hope. 
How appalling the aspect, how crushing the weight, 
how galling the pressure of that mountain of guilt, 
which rests upon the spirits of the lost! Wretched 
spirits ! they labor and are heavy laden, and no 



AN INVITATION TO THE HEAVY LADEN. 



341 



invitation of mercy is addressed to them — no hope 
of relief is held out to them. 

3. Those who have heavy burdens, but which can 
be removed. These are sinners on earth. There are 
heavy burdens resting upon men here. None but 
God can tell the amount of trial that is surging 
through human souls every moment. Some are suf- 
fering under one burden and some under another. 
There are millions on this lovely earth to whom life 
itself is a burden — a heavy, crushing burden. There 
are physical burdens — infirmities and diseases of 
the body; there are social burdens — the care of the 
family, the claims of business, the inconstancy of 
friends, the hollowness and selfishness of the world; 
there are political burdens — the enactments of in- 
justice and the tyranny of despotism are heavy bur- 
dens upon the heart of nations; there are religious 
burdens — the unmeaning routine, the painful pil- 
grimages, the costly sacrifice, imposed by a wily and 
wicked priesthood, are burdens on the spirits of mill- 
ions. Such burdens as these often make life intol- 
erable, and induce men to exclaim with Job: "I 
loathe life, I would not live always." But all these 
burdens may be felt, and often are where there is 
no deep sense of sin. The victims are weary of 
these burdens, not because of the sin which is the 
cause of them, but because of the inconvenience 
and pain which they produce. But that which gives 
pressure and galling force to all these burdens is a 
sense of sin. There are men under these fair heav- 
ens, on this earth, where the Savior of the world 
lived and labored, suffered and died, and where his 
blessed Gospel is faithfully preached, who feel that 
sin is the burden of all their burdens. They are 
sick of pleasure, they are tired of their life. They 
are found at the altar of paganism, in the mosque 
of the Mohammedan, as well as in different parts 
of Christendom, crying out in different languages, 
but with the same emphasis of soul: "Wherewithal 
shall we come before the Lord, and how shall we 
bow ourselves before the most high God?" This is 
the class which Christianity addresses — which Christ 
here invites. Blessed be God for providing a rem- 
edy in Christianity for this class ! 0, ye distressed 
souls, tried by the world, tempted by Satan, smitten 
by conscience, ashamed of the past, afraid of the 
future— whose heavens are cloudy and seem charged 
with storms, listen to the invitation of Christ aud 
accept it. " Come unto me all ye," etc. 

II. Christianity provides moral relief. "Ye 
shall find rest unto your souls." Rest for the soul. 
It does not promise that those who come to Christ 
shall be at once released from all corporeal burdens 
incident to our mortal life. The laws of the mate- 
rial universe are regardless of moral distinctions. 
The good and the evil, the just and the unjust, ma- 
terial nature treats alike. But what is the rest for 
the soul? Is it a deadening of the sensibilities so 
as to prevent us from feeling acutely the evils of 
life? No. Christianity instead of deadening our 



sensibilities quickens them. Nor is it the rest of in- 
activity. The rest of the soul is not the rest of 
inaction; it means neither insensitiveness nor inac- 
tivity. What is it then ? 

1. It is rest from all self-seeking. All men are 
working; labor is a Divine institution ; the world is 
full of action. Man's curse is not that he labors — 
labor itself is a blessing — but that he labors from 
the unhappy impulses of selfishness, i Every man is 
seeking his own — each individual makes himself an 
end. This is the source of distress. Because of 
this, the individual worker is full of a thousand anx- 
ieties, and because of this, society is ever in com- 
motion. There are as many conflicting interests as 
there are men. The man who comes to Christ, 
while he does not cease from work, ceases " from his 
own work." He works from love to God and his 
universe. His meat and his drink are to do the will 
of his Father. True, benevolent labor is rest to the 
soul. 

2. Rest from all secular anxieties. How much 
distress is in our world from this source ! Jesus will 
give rest from these anxieties to all who come unto 
him. He does it by pledging his disciples every 
needful blessing: "Seek ye first the kingdom of 
God," etc. He does it by assuring them of a pa- 
rental Providence that adorns the lilies of the valley 
and feeds the birds of heaven. He does it by giving 
them the consciousness that this world is, in their 
case, preparatory to a better, and that " all things 
work together for their good." " Thus they glory in 
tribulation." They know that Jesus is their guide; 
that the Eternal is their Father ; that the universe is 
their home, and that everlasting life is their heritage. 

3. Best from religious sacrifces. By religious 
sacrifices we mean whatever a man does in connec- 
tion with religion, not cheerfully and happily. How 
much of this kind of work is done in connection 
with religion ! The Church is " heavy laden " be- 
cause of these sacrifices; because of this she moves 
as a wearied traveler, with stiff limb and slow step. 
In every Church there is the complaint of too many 
collections. Why is this? Not because the demand 
is really too great, but because the spirit of religion 
is gone. You must translate the idea of sacrifice 
into that of thanksgiving, and religious burdens will 
be removed. Then the Church will move more 
cheerfully. She will take the wings of an angel, 
sweep the hemispheres of the globe, and preach the 
everlasting Gospel to all nations and kindreds of 
people. 

4. Rest from all legal obedience. There are two 
kinds of obedience to law — the literal and the spirit- 
ual. The former depends upon specific directions ; 
it is doing just as much as is in the letter, and because 
it is in the letter. This obedience is merely outward 
and mechanical; it is in the knee, tongue, or head, 
but not in the heart. It is always a burden. This 
was the observance of the Jews. The other is spir- 
itual. Supreme love to the Lawgiver is the motive 



342 



MATTHEW XII, 1-8. 



and inspiration. This is happiness. There are two 
sons, children of the same father, living under the 
same roof, subject to the same domestic laws. One 
has lost all filial love; his father has no longer any 
hold upon his affections. The other is full of the 
sentiment ; the filial instinct in him is almost pas- 
sion. How different is the obedience of these two 
sons ! The one does nothing but what is found in 
the command, and does that merely as a matter of 
form ; he would not do it if he could help it. The 
other does it not because it is in the command, but 
because it is the wish of him he loves. He goes be- 
yond the written law — he anticipates his father's 
will. Obedience is burden in the one case, but de- 
light in the other. Much of the work now being 
done in the Christian Church is like the obedience 
of the unloving son. It is done because it is com- 
manded — -done grudgingly and unhappily. Christ 
removes this. He breathes that spirit of love that 
makes obedience blessedness. 

5. Rest from all forebodings of conscience, A 
guilty conscience is the burden of burdens. It 
makes the soul gloomy and tempestuous. It makes 
death terrible, the grave a land of darkness, eter- 



nity an intolerable idea. Christianity removes this. 
" Therefore being justified by faith," etc. 

III. Christianity requires moral effort. " Come 
unto me," etc. If the burden is to be removed, some- 
thing must be done. And what? Three things: 

1. A spiritual approximation to Christ. " Come 
unto me." It would be trite to say this is not to be 
regarded in a material but in a spiritual sense. 

2. A spiritual learning of Christ. Of all things 
nothing is so important to man as learning. With- 
out some learning he is little better than a brute. 
Of all learning there is none so important as relig- 
ious learning. Of religious learning there is none 
to be compared with that taught by Christ. He is 
the Logos. "Never man spake like this man," etc. 

3. Spiritual obedience to Christ. "Take my 
yoke," etc. Every man has a moral master. He 
is under some yoke. The governing passion is your 
moral master — sensuality, worldliness, fame, and 
superstition. These are yokes — heavy yokes, too. 
Christ's yoke is easy; it does not exhaust your 
strength; it gives new energy. It does not gall; it 
inspires with happiness. Come to Christ. Mourner, 
doubter, backslider, penitent — come to Christ. 



OHAPTEE XII. 
§23. THE DISCIPLES PLUCK EARS OF CORN ON THE SABBATH DAT. 

Verses 1—8. (Compare Mark ii, 23-28; Luke vi, 1-5.) 

(1) At that time Jesus went on the Sahbath day through the corn; and his 
disciples were a hungered, and began to pluck the ears of corn, l and to eat. 
(2) But when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto him, Behold, thy disciples do 
that which is not lawful to do upon the Sabbath day. (3) But he said unto them, 
Have ye not read what David did, when he was a hungered, and they that were 
with him ; (4) how he entered into the house of God, 2 and did eat the shewbread, 3 
which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but 
only for the priests ? (5) Or have ye not read in the law, how that on the Sabbath 
days the priests in the Temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless ? (6) But I 
say unto you, That in this place is one greater 4 than the Temple. (7) But if ye had 
known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have con- 
demned the guiltless. (8) For the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath day. 



1 This word does Dot mean what we call Indian corn, 
or maize, which was not then known, but grain in gen- 
eral, including wheat, rye, and barley. Dr. Thomson 
remarks : " I have often seen my muleteers, as we passed 
along the wheat-fields, pluck off ears, rub them in their 
hands, and eat the grains unroasted, just as the apostles 
are said to have done." 2 Here the house of the priest 
Abimelech at Nobe, where the ark of the covenant then 
was. 3 The pieces of shewbread wore twelve in number, 



representing the twelve tribes of Israel. They were 
laid every Sabbath in the sanctuary by the priest, who 
performed the service of the week. As soon as the new 
pieces were brought the old ones were removed and 
eaten by the priests, who alone had the right to eat them. 
(Levit. xxiv, 8.) 4 The reading pei-iov, something greater, 
is preferred to i^iii^v, a greater one, (masc.) The sense, 
however, is the same. A superiority is claimed, which 
no created being could properly have assumed. 



PLUCKING THE CORN ON THE SABBATH. 



343 



Verse 1. At that time. This phrase can not be 
taken here as giving the exact time, as it does in 
chapter xi, 25, where the context decides. Robinson 
places the event during the journey of our Lord 
from Jerusalem to Galilee, after the cure of the im- 
potent man at the pool of Bethesda. But as, accord- 
ing to three Evangelists, it occurred just before the 
healing of the man with the withered hand, which 
healing took place in the synagogue at Capernaum, 
we have to place it a little later, most probably after 
our Lord's return from his first circuit in Galilee. 
(See Synoptic Table, No. 54.) — On the Sabbath. 
Luke specifies this Sabbath as the second Sabbath 
after the first, (Lv cra/3/Mra SEvrepoTrpuroi.) The vari- 
ous interpretations of this singular expression, which 
occurs no where else, see in Luke. It gives us no 
chronological aid. 

Verse 2. They said unto him. According to 
Luke the Pharisees address the disciples. But there 
is no contradiction in this. Our Lord and his dis- 
ciples may have been addressed by different persons, 
or the indirect attack upon the disciples may be 
represented by Luke as a direct one, without effect- 
ing at all the truthfulness of his account. — Which 
is not lawful. The act of eating was no violation 
of the Sabbath, nor was the plucking of the ears an 
infringement of the right of property. (Deut. xxiii, 
25.) But the Talmud says that it must not be done 
on the Sabbath, on the ground of Ex. xvi, 22. 

Verse 3. Our Lord meets these caviling hypo- 
crites, first, by quoting an authoritative example from 
their own history, as if he had said : " You profess to 
be governed by the Scriptures, and to have a pro- 
found reverence for David. Have you not read what 
he did? If you condemn my disciples, you must 
condemn much more David." — On the occasion re- 
ferred to (1 Sam. xxi, 1-7) David did eat the shew- 
bread, which the priests alone could lawfully eat, 
(Deut. xxiv, 6, 9,) and thus violated the letter of the 
ceremonial law. As hot bread had been put in on 
the day of David's arrival, and as the shewbread was 
changed every Sabbath for the benefit of the priests, 
it is to be presumed that David's act was committed 
on the Sabbath; thus the reference to him was ap- 
propriate in a double respect. Perhaps our Lord 
referred to David also because he was an acknowl- 
edged type of the Messiah. 

Verse 4. Our Lord's argument is from the 
greater to the less, namely: "David broke a cere- 
monial law enacted by God himself; my disciples 
have not done this: now if David could, in a case of 
necessity, set aside a positive Divine enactment with- 
out sinning, how much more are my disciples justi- 
fiable under similar circumstances in departing from 
an arbitrary human enactment!" 

Verse 5. According to Num. xxviii, 9, the priests 
were obliged to sacrifice every Sabbath two lambs 
and to place on the table fresh shewbread baked on 
the same day, so that they had actually more to do 
on the Sabbath than on a week-day. But if all work 



on the Sabbath was forbidden absolutely, then sacri- 
fices offered on that day were unlawful, though re- 
quired by express Divine authority. But to assert 
this would be self-contradictory. The legitimate in- 
ference is drawn in the next verse. 

Verse 6. In verse 3 the Lord had defended the 
conduct of his disciples by an argument from the 
greater to the less; in verse 6 this argument is from 
the "less" — that is, the Temple, whose service must 
be performed on the Sabbath, (v. 5,) to the "great- 
er" — that is, himself. If it is lawful for the servants 
of the Temple to do certain necessary works on the 
Sabbath, then the servants of him, who is more than 
the Temple, who is the true temple of God on earth, 
have a right, while following me, to satisfy their 
hunger. 

Verse 7. Having thus vindicated the conduct of 
his disciples, the Lord proceeds to expose the source 
from which the charges of the Pharisees proceeded. 
They were strangers to love and mercy, which God 
requires, Hos. vi, 6,) while they were such sticklers 
for the sacrificial worship and the ceremonial law. 
The Lord had called their attention once before to 
this passage, (Matt, ix, 13,) he now calls their atten- 
tion to it again in stronger language, sternly rebuk- 
ing them for their ignorance in spiritual matters and 
the wrong committed. The fundamental idea is here 
also : " If ye had learned to understand that the object 
of the Sabbath and of sacrifices is not to enable man 
to merit a reward from God by scrupulously comply- 
ing with all enactments concerning them, but that 
God has given both — Sabbath and sacrificial wor- 
ship — to man to show his mercy toward him, and 
that his benevolent purposes must be subserved by 
the observance of the Divine commandments; ye 
would not have brought a charge against my guilt- 
less disciples — on the contrary, you would have felt 
compassion for them, while they suffered want in 
their labors for the kingdom of God. 

Verse 8. The intermediate sentence in Mark ii, 
27, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man 
for the Sabbath." has led some critics to take the 
term "Son of man" here as identical with "man," 
and they have, accordingly, interpreted the passage 
as teaching that "as the Sabbath was appointed for 
man's benefit, it is his prerogative to regulate and use 
it for his own advantage." But this view must at 
once be rejected, for, 1. It would be absurd to assume 
that every man has a right to abrogate or suspend a 
Divine institution at his own discretion. 2. The 
expression, " Son of man," which occurs eighty-eight 
times in the New Testament, uniformly means the 
Messiah, and there is not the slightest reason to un- 
derstand it here in a different sense. The argument 
is : Since the Sabbath was an ordinance instituted 
for the use and benefit of man, the Son of man, who, 
though the Lord from heaven, (1 Cor. xv, 47,) has 
taken upon him full and complete manhood, and is, 
therefore, the great representative and head of hu- 
manity, has this institution under his own power. As 



344 



MATTHEW XII, 9-21. 



Christ showed himself the Lord of the Temple by 
abrogating the Temple and sacrificial service, so he 
showed himself also the Lord of the Sabbath, by 
transferring the day of rest from the seventh to the 



first day of the week, and its proper designation is 
the Lord's day. (Rev. i, 10.) On the subject of 
the Sabbath we shall have to say more in our com- 
ments on Mark ii. 28. 



§24. JESUS HEALS A WITHERED HAND ON THE SABBATH. 

"Verses 9— SI. (Compare Mark hi, 1-12; Luke vi, 6-11.) 

(9) And when he was departed thence, he went into their synagogue : (10) And, 
behold, there was a man which had his hand withered. x And they asked him, 
saying, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath days? that they might accuse him. 
(11) And he said unto them, "What man shall there be among you, that shall have 
one sheep, and if it fall into a pit 2 on the Sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, 
and lift it out ? (12) How much then is a man better than a sheep ? Wherefore it 
is lawful to do well 3 on the Sabbath days. (13) Then saith he to the man, Stretch 
forth thine hand. And he stretched it forth ; and it was restored whole, like as 
the other. (14) Then the Pharisees went out, and held a council against him, how 
they might destroy him. (15) But when Jesus knew it, he withdrew himself from 
thence : and great multitudes followed him, and he healed them all ; 4 (16) and 
charged them that they should not make him known : (17) That it might be ful- 
filled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, (18) Behold my servant, 
whom I have chosen ; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased : I will put 
my spirit upon him, and he shall shew judgment to the Gentiles. (19) He shall 
not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets. (20) A 
bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send 
forth 6 judgment unto victory. (21) And in his name shall the Gentiles trust. 



Verse 9. The adverb thence shows, as in chap- 
ters xi, 1, and xv, 19, that Jesus took another jour- 
ney. It does not follow from it that the event took 
place immediately after the one preceding. Luke 
places it on another, probably the following Sabbath. 
The locality where it occurred is not mentioned. 

Verse 10. This narrative is found in Mark and 
Luke, with some variety in details and some addi- 
tional particulars. According to the accounts of 
these two Evangelists, the scribes and Pharisees 
were watching our Lord to see whether he would 
heal on the Sabbath. Christ, knowing their thoughts, 
ordered the man to stand forth. It was at this point 
that the question was asked: "Is it lawful?" etc. 
Matthew ascribes it to the Pharisees, the other two 
Evangelists to our Lord himself. Both statements are 
consistent. The Pharisees may have simply indicated 



the question by their looks and gestures, or our Lord 
may have repeated their question emphatically. — 
His hand withered. According to Luke it was the 
right hand. — Is it lawful? The Greek construc- 
tion, el sgian — that is, if it is lawful — is elliptical, 
and something must be supplied, either " We should 
like to know if," etc., or, "If it is lawful, heal the 
man." According to the traditions of the Jews, the 
sick should receive medical help on the Sabbath 
only when a delay would endanger his life. The 
school of Shammai, however, forbade all help un- 
conditionally. — That they might accuse him ; 
that is, lodge a complaint against him with the local 
tribunal, (chap, v, 21,) where they were also the 
judges. 

Verses 11, 12. These two verses belong to- 
gether, and form a double question, as in chap, vii, 



1 Properly, who had a withered hand. The Greek word 
means literally dried up. It was a species of paralysis, 
wherein the member affected grows stiff and motionless, 
retaining the same position it was in when paralyzed. 
In this way Jeroboam was affected. (1 Kings xiii, 4^6.) 



This disease was considered incurable. 2 This refers to 
cisterns dug in the fields, into which animals sometimes 
fell. 3 That is, to perform an act of mercy. * All that were 
afflicted with diseases and desired to be cured. SGreek, 
eKpaAAeii', to command, to cause to issue in victory. 



JESUS HEALS A WITHERED HAND ON THE SABBATH 



345 



9, 10. The question of the Lord evidently indicates 
that the practice in question was, in his days, both 
lawful and common. Afterward, however, it was 
forbidden in the Gemara — possibly in consequence 
of these words of our Savior — and planks were laid 
by which the animal might get out. In the sec- 
ond part of the double question and the answer 
given to it, the Lord reduces a legion of casuistic 
questions, on lawful and unlawful acts on the Sab- 
bath, to a plain, general principle : Thou shalt do 
no evil, not injure thy neighbor, even not by with- 
holding from him thy helping hand. 

Verse 13. From Mark we learn that, before he 
gave this command to the afflicted man, he looked 
around upon them with holy indignation. — -Stretch 
forth thy hand. Inasmuch as the attempt to 
stretch forth the hand and the miraculous power to 
do so were simultaneous, the Lord deprived his ene- 
mies of all legal ground of charging him with a vio- 
lation of the Sabbath. It is, at the same time, the 
clearest and most forcible illustration of the cooper- 
ation of Divine grace with the human will. It is 
the duty of the penitent sinner to obey at once the 
injunctions of the Gospel, and not to plead his ina- 
bility. Where there is willingness to obey, the Lord 
will grant the required strength. — And it was re- 
stored whole, like as the other. The stretching 
forth of the hand was the evidence that the cure had 
been effected by Divine power during the act. 

Verse 14. Then the Pharisees went out. They 
left the synagogue pretending to be disgusted with 
the violation of the Sabbath. Thus they hardened 
their hearts against the influences of Divine truth. 
Luke aptly adds: "They were filled with madness." 
An aroused conscience manifests itself either by 
penitence or by bitter resentment. — This is the first 
mention of a counsel taken by the Pharisees to put 
Jesus to death. How intense their enmity to Christ 
was, appears from their associating with the Herodi- 
ans, (Mark iii, 6,) their political opponents, who up- 
held the Roman dominion, and among whom there 
were, most probably, many Sadducees. 

Verse 15. According to Mark, our Lord went 
with his disciples to the Sea of Galilee. He did so 
not from fear, but because the time of his suffering 
and death had not yet come. He withdrew, how- 
ever, only fi'om his enemies, not from doing good to 
the people, as Mark describes more fully. 

Verse 16. The end which the Lord had in view 
in this prohibition, undoubtedly, was to avoid noto- 
riety and popular enthusiasm, in order to give no 
occasion to his enemies to shorten his ministry 
prematurely. 

Verses 17, 18. The quotation from Isaiah xlii, 
1-4, is not literal. When longer quotations from 
the Old Testament are made, those parts are gener- 
ally singled out that are to the point. It has great 
similarity with Isaiah xi, 1, etc. — My servant — 
that is, the servant of Jehovah — -was a general des- 
ignation of the Messiah in the Old Testament, and 



was retained a long time by the Jewish Christians. 
Its Greek rendering is, iraZf Geod, which must be 
translated by servant, not child of God. The He- 
brew term is, ebhedth Jehovah. The Logos took 
upon himself the form of a servant. In his media- 
torial character he was subject unto the Father. — 
Whom I have chosen; that is, for the office and 
work of the Messiah. — My beloved, in whom my 
soul is well pleased. Upon whom the whole pa- 
ternal affection continually rests, not only as the 
only-begotten Son of the Father, but also on ac- 
count of his mediatorial office. These are, almost 
to the very letter, the words that were spoken from 
heaven at the baptism of Jesus. (Chap, iii, 17.) — 
I will put my Spirit upon him. This was fulfilled 
at the baptism of Jesus, (iii, 16,) and John testified 
(iii, 24) that he had not received the Spirit by meas- 
ure. If the Logos, in assuming human nature, had 
retained the same mode of existence as before his 
incarnation, he would have stood in no need of the 
Holy Spirit. But we are taught (Phil, ii, 6, 7) that 
"He who, being in the form of God, thought it not 
robbery to be equal with God, emptied himself, and 
took upon himself the form of a servant, and was 
made in the likeness of men;" he, therefore, needed, 
and received, without measure, the Spirit, to qualify 
him for his mediatorial office. — And he shall 
show judgment unto the Gentiles. By judgment 
we have to understand all that is implied in his 
Messianic office as the founder of the new covenant. 
Owen remarks aptly: "We find, in Mark iii, 8, that 
of the multitude which followed him to the sea, 
there were some from about Tyre and Sidon. The 
Gentiles — in this case, probably, proselytes — were 
thus already beginning to enjoy that Gospel which, 
in subsequent times, was to be preached to them 
more fully by Christ's apostles and ministers." 

Verse 19. He shall not strive, like a warrior, 
for supreme power. — Nor cry, like a boisterous 
demagogue. — Neither shall any man hear his 
voice in the streets ; that is, he will not frequent 
public resorts to harangue the people, as the ambi- 
tious do. By quietly retreating from before the rage 
of his enemies the Lord fulfilled this prophecy. The 
whole prophecy, however, is, as Alexander justly re- 
marks, descriptive not so much of our Savior's mild 
and modest demeanor as of the nature of his king- 
dom and the means by which it was to be estab- 
lished. (Comp. Luke xvii, 20 ; Zech. iv, 6 ; John 
xviii, 36, 37.) 

Verse 20. A bruised reed shall he not break. 
The bruised reed, in the first place, represents the 
poor and the oppressed, the Jewish people in gen- 
eral, as weighed down and crushed by the traditions 
of their rulers. The import of the prophecy is, that 
the Messiah will not oppress the poor and weak, as 
victorious warriors do. In the next place, it is also 
an emblem of the broken and contrite heart. Jesus 
treats the sinner with wisdom and heart-felt eompas- 
i sion, cautiously and tenderly. — And smoking flax 



346 



MATTHEW XII, 22-45. 



shall hk not quench. Another metaphor, which 
beautifully sets forth the Savior's kindness and con- 
descension toward penitent souls, though the spark of 
Divine life may have become almost extinct. Christ 
knows how to strengthen even the weakest desire of 
salvation, how to rekindle every spark of faith, how- 
ever weak. He suffers none to perish who wills it 
not himself. — Till he send forth judgment unto 
victory. Till he cause judgment — that is, his right- 
eous government — to issue in victory, till truth shall 
reign triumphantly over the whole earth. 

Verse 21. The Hebrew has for Gentiles, the 
isles, whereby the Old Testament phraseology under- 
stands far-distant nations. For name the Hebrew 
has law or doctrine, which, however, does not alter 
the sense, since trusting in the name of God is to 
obey the law, or, as Isaiah says, to wait for the law. 
The meaning is the same; namely, that the Gospel 
shall be preached to and be believed by the Gentiles. 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 

I. Upon the passage in verses 14-21 the Homilist 
has an excellent expository discourse. The subject, 
the glory of true gentleness as exhibited in Christ, 
is discussed under the following heads : The gentle- 
ness of Christ, 1. Existed in the presence of the 



most malignant enemies; 2. Was sustained amid 
the activities of immense labor; 3. Appeared in 
the unostentatious and tender manner in which he 
prosecuted the sublimest mission; 4. Demonstrates 
his special connection with God; and, 5. Will one 
day win the confidence of the world. 

II. The rejection of the Gospel in one place is 
often the occasion of its reception in another, 
(v. 15.) The rejecter acts with regard to himself 
like the man that turns a fertilizing stream from his 
own fields. He does not thereby dry it up ; it will 
fertilize some other fields. If a man hates the light 
of the sun he may resort to a dungeon; but the sun 
will shine and bless millions, although he is in 
darkness. 

III. Some, on hearing the Gospel, despair of their 
salvation. Others are dejected, because their faith, 
their knowledge, their love appear to them too little. 
Christ raises and encourages such souls. "A bruised 
reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he 
not quench." The very lowest degree of grace is 
an inexpressible blessing, a gift of God, and precious 
in his sight. A spark is better than absolute dark- 
ness, and a weak faith better than none at all. If 
there is but a spark of grace in the heart, like smok- 
ing flax, let us pour in oil, and pray to God that the 
breeze of his Spirit may kindle it into a flame of 
holy love. 



25. MIRACULOUS CURE OF A MAN THAT WAS BUND AND DUMB. JESUS' 
REPLY TO THE BLASPHEMY OF THE PHARISEES, AND THEIR 
DEMAND OF A SIGN FROM HEAVEN. 



Of the belief in the existence of a power hostile to God and bent on the ruin of man 
there are traces in all nations, and especially in that nation which was favored with 
special revelations of God. When the Messiah, who was to bruise the serpent's head, 
appeared, it was but natural that the powers of darkness should rally all their forces in 
order to defeat the object of his coming. It is for this reason that we meet in that time 
with more demoniacs—that is, with persons of whom evil spirits had taken bodily pos- 
session — than in any earlier or later period. Now, if Jesus, by a word of command, 
was able to free these wretched men from their misery, every one that had his eyes open 
and the full use of his mental faculties, could see at once that he was the Messiah. The 
record of such a cure we have in the following section of our chapter. A similar one was 
related in chapter ix, 32, but in that case the demoniac was dumb ; here he is dumb and 
blind. What Luke records (xi, 14-20) is so similar to the account of Matthew, that most 
harmonists consider them as referring to the same event. (See the note to No. 66 in the 
Synoptic Table.) Mark gives us in chapter iii, 23-29, a portion of our Lord's remarks 
made on this occasion, without recording the miracle itself, or the causes that called 
forth the remarks. In Matthew alone we have the whole discourse of the Savior. At 
first, up to verse 30, he repels the infamous charge by showing its absurdity and im- 
possibility. He might have treated such assailants with the contempt of silence, yet he 
replied from compassion for their immortal souls, and in order to make, at the same time, 
their unbelief inexcusable. From the argumentative part of the discourse he proceeds to 
show the criminality of the conduct of his enemies, and to what dangers those are 



OUR LORD'S WARNING AGAINST THE UNPARDONABLE SIN. 



347 



exposed who persevere in acting against their better convictions, and this is the funda- 
mental idea from verse 30-45. 

"Verses 22-45. (Compare Mark hi, 20-30; Luke xi, 14-26.) 

(22) Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb : 
and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw. 

(23) And all the people were amazed, and said, Is not this the Son of David? 

(24) But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow doth, not cast out 
devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils. (25) And Jesus knew their 
thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to 
desolation ; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand : (26) And 
if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom 
stand? (27) And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast 
them out? therefore they shall be your judges. (28) But if I cast out devils by 
the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you. (29) Or else, how 
can one enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind 
the strong man ? and then he will spoil his house. (30) He that is not with me is 
against me ; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad. (31) Wherefore 
I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but 
the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. (32) And 
whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him : but 
whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither 
in this world, neither in the world to come. (33) Either make the tree good, and 
his fruit good ; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt : for the tree is 
known by his fruit. (34) generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak 
good things ? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. (35) A 
good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things : and 
an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. (36) But I say 
unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account 
thereof in the day of judgment. (37) For by thy words thou shalt be justified, 
and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. (38) Then certain of the scribes and 
of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. (39) But 
he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous l generation seeketh after 
a sign ; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas : 
(40) For as Jonas was three days and three nights 2 in the whale's 3 belly ; so shall 



1 The covenant relation of the Jews to Jehovah is 
represented throughout the Old Testament under the 
figure of a conjugal relation, and consequently every 
apostasy from Ood as an adultery. Though the Jews, 
in the times of Christ, were not guilty of idolatry, they 
proved their apostasy from God by their rejection of the 
Messiah. 2 According to the Jerusalem Talmud, "one 
hour more is reckoned as a day, and one day more as a 
year." Again : "A day and night together make up an 
okhah, or vvx^n^pov, and any part of such a period is 
counted as the whole." With the Jews the day closed 
at six o'clock, P. M. ; now Christ was in the grave part 



of Friday — that is, he was buried before six o'clock, 
when the Sabbath commenced — the whole of the Sabbath 
and part of the succeeding day — that is, from six o'clock 
of Saturday evening to Sunday morning, consequently 
three rnxS-qixepa — three days and three nights. (See Gen. 
i, 4 ; 1 Sam. xxx, 12.) — The learned archasologist, Dr. 
Seyffarth, contends that Christ died on Thursday, the 
19th of March, and rose on Sunday morning, the 22d, 
and that he, consequently, lay in the grave three days 
and three nights. On the day of our Lord's death see 
Gen. Intro., # 35, C. 3 The word translated " whale," is 
k^tos, corresponding to the Hebrew dagh gadhol, neither 



348 



MATTHEW XII, 22-45. 



the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. (41) The 
men of Nineveh 4 shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn 
it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than 
Jonas is here. (42) The queen of the south 5 shall rise up in the judgment with 
this generation, and shall condemn it : for she came from the uttermost parts of 
the earth 6 to hear the wisdom 7 of Solomon ; and, behold, a greater than Solomon 
is here. (43) "When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through 
dry places, 8 seeking rest, and findeth none. (44) Then he saith, I will return into 
my house 9 from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, 10 
swept, and garnished. u (45) Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven 12 
other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell 13 there: and 
the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this 
wicked generation. 



Verse 22. Then. This conjunction is often used 
by Matthew in an indefinite sense. — It is expressly 
stated that the dumbness and blindness were the 
consequence of the possession by a demon, and, as 
a matter of course, he could speak and see as soon 
as Christ had dislodged the demon by the power of 
his word. The cause being removed, the conse- 
quence also ceased. 

Verse 23. We may suppose that the descent of 
Jesus from David through Joseph (see the introduc- 
tory remarks on the genealogy) was known by the 
people, and his mighty works necessarily led to the 
belief that he was the predicted Messiah. 

Verse 24. But when the Pharisees heard it; 
that is, the inference drawn from the miracle, the 
reality of which they could not call in question. 
Their intense hostility led them to make the charge 
that Jesus acted in concert with Beelzebub, the 
prince of demons. Mark states that this charge was 
made by scribes, who had come from Jerusalem, 
meaning, no doubt, such scribes as belonged to the 
pharisaic party; Luke xi, 15, restricts the slander to 
"some of them." It is evident that the general ex- 
citement of the public mind, produced by the ministry 



of Christ, had become highly alarming to the Jewish 
hierarchy. 

Verse 25. Evert kingdom. "Jesus does not 
deny," as Trench remarks, "that the kingdom of 
Satan, in respect to itself, is infinite contradiction 
and division, but only asserts that in relation to the 
kingdom of goodness, it is at one: there is one life 
in it and one soul in relation to that. But just as a 
nation or kingdom may embrace within itself num- 
berless parties, divisions, discords, jealousies, and 
heart-burnings, yet if it is to subsist as a nation at 
all, it must not, as regards other nations, have lost 
its sense of unity; when it does so, of necessity it 
falls to pieces and perishes." The same is true 
within the narrower sphere of a family, when it is 
arrayed against its own interests or existence. 

Verse 26. The inference from the general prin- 
ciple laid down in the preceding verse is stated in 
the most forcible manner. Satan can not be at war 
with himself. The demoniac state is traced directly 
to Satan, as his legitimate work. "It can not possi- 
bly be his object to give me the power to destroy his 
own work, wherever I meet it, as I do." This meets 
the objection that Satan in his craft might possibly, 



of which means the whale exclusively, but " a sea- 
monster," here in all probability the shark ; and there 
are instances on record that men were swallowed by 
sharks and afterward saved. 4 This celebrated city, 
situated on the banks of the Tigris, was the rival of 
Babylon. The walls are said to have been one hundred 
feet high, and so broad that three chariots might be 
driven on them abreast. On these walls stood fifteen 
hundred towers, each two hundred feet high, rendering 
the city well-nigh impregnable. Its ruins are seen on 
the eastern bank of the Tigris, opposite to Mosul, a 
modern city. 6 Called in the Old Testament the Queen 
of Shebah. (1 Kings x, 1.) Joscphus says that she was 
queen of all Egypt and Ethiopia; that is, of Meroe, 
whose queens were called Candaeo, according to Pliny. 
An Abyssinian tradition agreeing with this adds, that 
her name was Maqueda, and she became a proselyte at 



Jerusalem. The Arabians also claim her, and she is 
called in the Koran Balkis. As Shebah is in Arabia 
Felix, near the shores of the Red Sea and rich in sjiice, 
gold, and precious stones, it is probable that the Arabian 
tradition is the true one. 6 An expression suited to 
those days; inconsequence of the limited geographical 
knowledge and the poor facilities of traveling, countries 
were then comparatively unknown to each other, which 
are in our days close together, and in daily inter- 
course with each other. 7 That is, the extensive knowl- 
edge and learning of Solomon. (See 1 Kings iv, 29-34; 
Acts vii, 22 ; Matt, xiii, 54.) 8 Waterless deserts. 9 The 
body and soul of the demoniac. 10 Literally, unem- 
ployed, unoccupied, and thus ready for his reception. 
11 Furnished, fitted up. 12 Seven is often put for an in- 
definite round number. )3 A permanent abode is indi- 
cated by the Greek word. 



OUR LORD'S WARNING AGAINST THE UNPARDONABLE SIN. 



349 



in an insulated case, put on the garb and acts of an 
adversary to himself for his own ulterior purposes. 

Verse 27. The argument takes here another turn. 
"By whom do tour children cast them out?" 
The " children" of the Pharisees are their disciples, 
a mode of expression common among the Jews. 
(See 2 Kings ii, 3.) Both before and after the times 
of Christ, Jewish exorcists traversed the country 
pretending to cast out demons by the "authority of 
the most high and terrible Name." The question 
arises, whether the casting out by the disciples of the 
Pharisees were real or pretended exorcisms. Most 
of the expositors deny their reality, and contend that 
our Lord reasoned simply from the stand-point of the 
Pharisees, whose disciples claimed also to cast out 
devils: "On what ground can you venture to accuse 
me of collusion with the devil, when your own sons 
claim to exercise the self-same power?" We prefer 
the views of Alford, who says: "It would leave an 
unworthy impression on the reader, and one very 
open to the cavils of unbelief, were we to sanction 
the idea that our Lord solemnly compared with his 
own miracles, and should have drawn inferences 
from, a system of imposture, which on that supposi- 
tion these Pharisees must have known to be such. 
The difficulty, on the other hand, which many find in 
admitting the reality of those exorcisms by the Phari- 
sees, has arisen mainly from forgetting that miracles, 
as such, are no test of truth, but have been per- 
mitted to, and prophesied of, false religions and 
teachers. (Ex. vii, 22; viii, 7; Matt, xxiv, 24, etc.; 
Dent, xiii, 1-5.)" Though we may, however, admit 
the reality of these Jewish exorcisms, it is evident 
that they were greatly inferior to those effected by 
Jesus, for we read (ch. ix, 33) that the people be- 
holding the casting out of an evil spirit by Christ, 
exclaimed in their amazement, "It was never so 
seen in Israel." The reference by our Lord to the 
power claimed by his enemies to cast out devils, was 
a solemn and affectionate appeal to their conscience, 
if it could possibly be roused. 

Verse 28. The kingdom of God is come unto 
you — more literally, has come upon you suddenly. 
The whole is a clear deduction from the preceding 
verse: "If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, 
which your own premises almost oblige you to admit, 
then you have by these very acts of mine the most 
conclusive evidence that the kingdom of God, the 
times of the Messiah, the order of things in which 
the Divine element is signally defeating the powers 
of darkness have come upon you." 

Verse 29. Or else is in Greek simply or, and 
introduces a new illustration of the argument of 
verses 25 and 26, where he had proved to them that 
he did not act in concert with Satan, because to 
assume that would involve the absurdity that Satan 
desired to destroy his own work. Or if you assume 
that Satan did not submit to this voluntarily, it 
necessarily follows that I am his conqueror. The 
whole is an allusion to Isa. xlix, where the deliverance 



of Israel from its oppressors is made an emblem of 
its spiritual deliverance from the powers of darkness 
by Jehovah himself. But the deliverance of de- 
moniacs was only a prophetic emblem and token of 
what was to come; namely, of the great victory 
through the death and resurrection of Christ. (See 
John xiv, 30; xii, 31, 32; Heb. ii, 14, 15; Eph. iv, 
8-10.) Since the work of redemption is completed 
the devil's house — that is, the world — is spoiled, and 
he is robbed of his goods — that is, of men, whom he 
uses as his tools and instruments and claims as his 
property. This process of despoiling Satan is car- 
ried on at a constantly-increasing rate by the Lord 
through his instruments, those very men whom he 
has delivered from the power of Satan. The words 
of our Lord imply also, by way of application, that 
no man can, in his own strength, overcome the 
strong one; it can only be done by Divine strength. 

Verse 30. The Lord applies now the axiom an- 
nounced in verse 25 to himself and his own king- 
dom; the import of his words is: "Those that are 
mine must be in vital union with me. In the strug- 
gle between my kingdom and that of Satan, there 
can be no neutral party." This saying is no way in- 
consistent with that in Mark ix, 30; Luke ix, 50, 
(see note on Mark.) — And he that gathereth not 
with me, scattereth abroad. That he who is with 
him also gathereth with him the Lord takes at once 
for granted. A man that is really in Christ, can not 
but gather always and every-where for him, even 
without knowing it himself; his light shines, his 
unction sends forth its delicious odor ; he leads 
others to the Lord, and encourages them to cleave 
unto the Lord; he unites what is isolated and di- 
vided ; he feeds and watereth for the great harvest. 
But those that are not in and with Christ, that do not 
gather with him, do scatter; they are against him 
and his work, and destroy it as far as they can. 
They themselves depart wider and wider from the 
kingdom of God, dissever others from God and drag 
them with themselves into ruin, and are thus both 
actively and passively efficient instruments in the 
hands of Satan. 

Verses 31, 32. Wherefore I sat unto tou. This 
being the case, there being no middle ground be- 
tween my kingdom and the kingdom of Satan, and 
seeing that you have taken a position antagonistic 
to me, I now solemnly warn you that your opposition 
to me, if it is persevered in, will lead to a state that 
excludes pardon or forgiveness. — All manner of 
sin. That the forgiveness of all manner of sin is 
not promised, irrespective of faith and repentance on 
the part of the sinner, is self-evident. — Blasphemy 
is sin intensified, inasmuch as it is a more direct 
opposition against God and the Divine as such, and 
implies malice and the intent to hurt — i3?-aatj>q/ueiv 
fiXa-reiv rr/v <pf]fJ.r]v — that is, to ruin one's reputation; 
nevertheless, it also is pardonable, provided it does 
not progress to blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. 
The degree of guilt attaching to blasphemy is not 



350 



MATTHEW XII, 22-45. 



conditioned by the rank of the person against whom 
it is committed, but by the higher degree of divine light 
and the corresponding clearer consciousness and will- 
fulness with which the blasphemer acts. — The blas- 
phemy against the Holy Ghost is variously de- 
fined. We shall first give those definitions which we 
see ourselves compelled unqualifiedly to reject. First. 
One view is that this awful sin is the very thing 
which the Pharisees did on the occasion in question ; 
namely, to ascribe the miracles wrought by Christ, 
whose reality they did not dare to question, to the 
agency and power of Satan. According to this view 
the sin in question was, as a matter of course, possi- 
ble only in the days of Christ's sojourn on earth, 
since only then his miracles could be ascribed by 
eye-witnesses to satanic agencies. This view, how- 
ever, we must reject for the following reasons. The 
blasphemy of which the Pharisees were guilty, was 
committed against the Son, not against the Holy 
Ghost, the miracles wrought by Christ bearing wit- 
ness of the Son, not of the Holy Ghost. It is, in 
the next place, worthy of note, that before the 
Pharisees committed the offense, which induced our 
Savior to make this awful declaration, God had 
never warned men against a sin unpardonable in its 
nature. On the supposition that the Pharisees had 
committed the sin in question, Christ would have 
acted here against the whole analogy of God's deal- 
ing with man. Add to this what Stier says in refu- 
tation of this view: "From the warning ' I say unto 
you' it is clear that the Pharisees were but on the 
fairway to commit this heaviest of all offenses, or if 
this should remain doubtful, this much, at least, is 
certain, that the unpardonable sin is much more 
possible in our days than it was in those of the 
Pharisees. Or is, in our days, the convincing mani- 
festation of the Spirit in word and power less than it 
was then in the person of the Lord on earth ? Does 
not the distinction drawn between the 'Son of man' 
and 'the Holy Ghost' rather clearly point to the 
days of the Holy Ghost after the days of the Son of 
man ? The more powerfully the Comforter convinces 
and convicts- — e?Jyx e,v (John xvi, 8) has this twofold 
meaning — the world of sin, righteousness, and judg- 
ment; the greater the work is, which the apostles 
wrought, compared with Christ's personal ministry 
on earth ; the more comprehensive the scale is on 
which Christ carries on his work in the history of 
the world and the Church through his true members, 
and the brighter the evidence of its divinity grows 
from year to year: the greater becomes the possibility 
of committing the unpardonable sin by rejecting 
this testimony of the Spirit wantonly and persist- 
ingly. The blasphemy against the Spirit has been 
committed now and then since the days of Christ, 
but it will be the sin of the last times, the reign of 
absolute hatred against Christ and his religion." 
Secondly. We must by the "blasphemy against the 
Holy Ghost" not understand every willful and per- 
sonal offense against the third person of the Trinity. 



Every sinful act, every act of blasphemy against the 
Father and the Son, is also a sin against the Holy 
Ghost. But all this is pardonable, as well as the sin 
of grieving the Spirit in his specific office by unbe- 
lief and disobedience. Witness the case of Paul 
before his conversion; of the Jews on the day of 
Pentecost, many of whom, though they had spoken 
against the Holy Ghost, were converted; the words 
spoken by Peter to Simon, the sorcerer, who wanted 
to buy the gift of the Holy Ghost with money, ex- 
horting him to repent, etc. In the text under consid- 
eration, more than elsewhere, the Lord throws the door 
of the New Covenant wide open in opposition to the 
Old Covenant, where the blasphemous use of God's 
name was punished with death, admitting of no ex- 
piatory sacrifice. Thirdly. It is not to be supposed 
that a person commits the unpardonable sin and 
ruins his soul irretrievably by the mere utterance of 
certain blasphemous words. If it is objected that it 
is said in the very next verse, that "whosoever speaJc- 
eth against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven 
him," we reply that we must interpret these words 
by the universal tenor of the Scriptures. If a per- 
son that has spoken against the Holy Ghost after- 
ward repents of it, it is a clear proof that he had 
not so spoken against Him as to commit the un- 
pardonable offense ; for without the grace of the 
Holy Ghost repentance is impossible, and the blas- 
phemy against the Holy Ghost is unpardonable, be- 
cause it proceeds from such a state of enmity against 
God's Spirit that precludes the possibility of repent- 
ance. Well says Olshausen on this point : " Whoever 
is troubled by the fear that he may have committed 
the sin against the Holy Ghost, proves by his very 
sorrow and self-reproach that he has not committed 
the sin; and even where sorrow bids fair to drive the 
individual to despair, as was the case with Judas 
Iscariot, the exhortation to faith in God's pardoning 
love is still in its place, since the sin against the 
Holy Ghost remains unforgiven, not because God is 
unwilling to forgive, but because the offender has 
lost the capacity to believe that God can forgive. 
Where there is faith enough to lay hold on the 
promise of pardon, there is prima facie evidence 
that the sin against the Holy Ghost was not com- 
mitted." Nor does, fourthly, every state of impeni- 
tence persevered in to the hour of death, involve 
always the sin against the Holy Ghost. — What, 
then, must we understand by the sin against the Holy 
Ghost? We must understand by it such a resistance 
to the Holy Ghost as incapacitates the sinner ever 
afterward to become a subject of converting grace. 
That man may before his death carry his resistance 
to such a degree, we believe as fully as that the 
Pharisees were warned against it by our Savior. 
"The blasphemy of the Holy Ghost," says Dr. Schaff, 
" is the self-conscious and persistent manifestation 
of consummate hatred against the Divine in its high- 
est and purest manifestation; it is not only an un- 
qualified contradiction to, but a perfect abhorrence 



OUR LORD'S WARNING AGAINST THE UNPARDONABLE SIN. 



351 



of God's sin-pardoning grace; it is a hatred which 
manifests itself sometimes more reservedly under 
apparent composure, sometimes without any dis- 
guise, and against better knowledge calls the Divine 
satanie, and involves the stern determination to 
destroy its object by all means possible." "If it has 
come so far with a man he is no longer a dupe of 
Satan, but he has become voluntarily and self-con- 
sciously a devil himself, fully knowing that he acts 
only from malice. His sin is no longer human sin, 
properly so called, but satanie, the finished, absolute 
sin of Satan. The pardon of this sin is impossible, 
not because God is unwilling or unable to impart it, 
but because the sinner is unwilling and unable to 
seek and receive it. — Since the Lord pronounces 
here the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost the only 
unpardonable sin, it follows that those passages of 
Scripture which speak of sins unto death, for which 
there is neither expiation nor repentance, (1 John v, 
16; 2 Tim. iii, 8 ; Jude 12, 13; Heb. vi, 4-8; x, 26- 
31,) refer to the same state of mind in substance, 
though to different modes of its development and 
manifestation. These passages teach us also that 
the regenerate as well as the unregenerate can com- 
mit the unpardonable offense!" (Stier.) The pas- 
sage in Heb. vi, 4, proves incontestably, that regen- 
erate persons can so completely apostatize from 
Christ that they are forever beyond the pale of repent- 
ance and forgiveness; but we must not infer from 
this that every case of apostasy or backsliding in- 
volves the unpardonable sin. That, on the other 
hand, unregenerate persons can commit this blas- 
phemy against the Holy Ghost, appears from the 
fact that the Pharisees were warned by the Savior as 
being on a fair way of committing it. Persistent, 
wanton, malicious resistance to truth in its clearest 
manifestations may not only frustrate the sinner's 
conversion, but terminate even before death in the 
unpardonable offense. — Neither in this world nor 
the world to come. The Greek word for world is 
aii>v, age; it was a proverbial expression among 
the Jews, meaning neither at present nor in future, 
that is, never, as Mark also expresses it in the parallel 
passage, " He has never forgiveness." Most of the 
modern theologians of Germany infer from this 
passage that since it is said that the sin or blasphemy 
against the Holy Ghost alone shall not be forgiven 
neither in this world nor in the world to come, there 
is a possibility of pardon for all other sins even in 
the world to come; that is, that those who die in a 
state of impenitence, not involving the blasphemy 
against the Holy Ghost, will either proceed in the 
spirit-world in their downward course, till their sin 
is the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, or that, 
if they should repent, they may find pardon. On 
this view Alford remarks: "In the entire silence of 
Scripture (except 1 Pet. iii, 16) on any such doctrine, 
every principle of sound interpretation requires that 
we should resist the introduction of it on the strength 
of two difficult passages, in neither of which does 



the plain construction of the words require it." So 
much is certain, that it would be reckless folly to put 
off the one thiug needful to an uncertain futurity or 
the state after death, of which the Bible says so 
little, where the means of grace are, even if not en- 
tirely cut off, not as powerful as here ; add to this 
that the longer conversion is put off the more diffi- 
cult it becomes. 

Verse 33. The making (iroiljaaTe — pontic) does 
here not mean planting, but assuming, representing 
in thought. Assume a good tree, etc. Thus the 
leading argument is resumed, setting forth the in- 
consistency of the Pharisees in representing Christ, 
whose works were uniformly good, as in league with 
the evil one. "As his works, the results of his min- 
istry, were good, he himself could not be bad, could 
not be in league with Beelzebub."- — -In the second 
clause our Lord shows them, that as the corrupt 
fruit presupposes a corrupt tree, so their blasphemy 
of what is good proves them to be bad in heart. 

Verse 34. How can ye, being evil, speak good 
things? The point of comparison must not be 
sought in a physical necessity, but in a moral impos- 
sibility conditioned by the corruption of the heart. 
This corruption of the heart does not destroy man's 
moral agency, and is overcome by his conversion. 
The Lord represents it as a moral impossibility for 
the Pharisees to say any thing really good, so long 
as they remained in their present state of impeni- 
tence. Man's words and actions necessarily partake 
of the element in which his heart, the great moral 
fountain-head of man, moves. — Out of the abund- 
ance OF THE HEART THE MOUTH SPEAKETH. The 

moral state of the heart determines the character of 
both our words and actions. A fountain can not 
but send forth water partaking of its own nature. 
(Jam. iii, 11.) 

Verse 35. The same general truth, as in the 
preceding verse, is here expressed under another 
metaphor. The human heart is called a storehouse, 
wherein things are laid up for future use. Man gives 
and can only give what he finds in his storehouse. 
The human heart is the whole man in a religious 
point of view. — A good man out of the good 
treasure [of his heart, Tfjg Kapdiac; is wanting in the 
best codd.] bringeth forth good things. This 
good treasure is not what man is by nature, (see 
chap, vii, 11,) but what he has been made by the 
grace of God. He is a good man that has been re- 
generated by the Spirit of God. " Standing between 
the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan," 
says Stier, " man's moral character is formed ac- 
cording to his own free self-determination ; the strong 
man (Satan) is not so strong that he can compel 
man to become his slave ; whoever serves the devil 
and becomes morally like him, becomes so by his 
own criminal self-determination; the stronger one 
(Christ) does likewise not compel a bad man against 
his will to become good." — And an evil man, out 
of the evil treasure, bringeth forth evil things. 



352 



MATTHEW XII, 22-45. 



The evil treasure is man's corrupt nature, his evil 
heart, from which proceed evil words, that stain 
both himself and others. As a man becomes good 
only through the operations of the Holy Spirit upon 
his heart, seconded by his own self-determination, so 
no man is by nature as bad as he becomes if he re- 
mains unconverted; both the devil and the world 
develop the evil germs in his nature, and fill his 
heart with all kinds of evil. As a good man is 
known by his godly conversation and his blameless 
deportment, so the evil man is also known by his 
evil conversation and wicked conduct. 

Verse 36. What the tongue speaketh is of great 
moment Our words are, for the most part, a more 
certain index of the heart than actions. A descend- 
ing scale is here presented to us. At first the Lord 
mentioned blasphemy, the highest offense that man 
can commit, proceeding from the worst possible state 
of the heart; then evil things in general, which 
the mouth speaketh out of the abundance of the 
heart, and in this verse he comes down to every idle 
word. Whatever is not the fruit of love and truth is, 
even without being positively hurtful, evil, an evil 
fruit. There are no so-called indifferent words or 
actions; whatever they may seem unto men, in the 
eyes of God they are good or evil, according to the 
state of the heart, from which they proceed. Every 
word that passes our lips will be remembered and 
judged on the day of judgment. How careful ought 
we, therefore, to be in all our words, since man will 
have to give an account of every idle word ! More- 
over, words are not only the index of the heart, but 
they are also powerful levers of actions, one word 
often setting a train of actions in motion, that will 
continue in their effects at an ever-increasing rate, 
when the tongue that uttered it is silent in death. 
Not without good reason did even Plato warn against 
the utterance of an idle word, representing it as 
more advisable to throw a stone at random than to 
utter an idle word. 

Verse 37. A man's being judged by or accord- 
ing to his words, does, of course, not imply that he 
will not be judged according to his works. When 
our words are the witness of a penitent heart, re- 
newed and sanctified by the Spirit of God, we shall 
be justified by them. By his own words a man may 
be condemned in two ways: 1. In so far as evil 
words are the offspring of an evil heart; 2. In so 
far as words of condemnation spoken against others 
form the standard by which he himself will be judged. 
(Chap, vii, 2.) 

Verse 38. The adversaries of Jesus felt keenly 
that in the preceding declarations the Lord had met 
them with the royal and judicial authority of the 
Messiah. They felt that the decisive moment for 
them had come, that they must either openly declare 
in favor of Jesus or reject him ; and as the Jewish 
tradition distinguished between heavenly and earthly 
signs, of which they considered the first alone was 
infallibly Divine, while they believed the second could 



be brought about also by satanic influences, (by 
Beelzebub,) some stepped forward out of the crowd 
and asked, as they did on another occasion, that he 
might give them a sign from heaven to substantiate 
his claims. (See more on this subject in the notes 
on chap, xvi, 1.) 

Verses 39, 40. And there shall no sign be given 
to it. As the Pharisees evidently meant by the 
"sign" (oqfieiov) which they desired to see, not those 
miracles which they had thus far seen from Jesus, 
but some peculiar manifestation in the heavens, per- 
haps alluding to the vision of Daniel, (vii, 13,) it is 
absurd to infer from this passage, as rationalists have 
done, that our Lord himself made no claim to per- 
form miracles. On the contrary, as the God-ordained 
signs, the miracles he was performing, failed to con- 
vince them, and as they requested a sign similar to 
that which the tempter had proposed in the wilder- 
ness, (Matt, iv, 6,) Jesus simply refers them to his 
death and resurrection, which he compares with the 
miraculous deliverance of the prophet Jonas, princi- 
pally on account of the opposite effects which the 
two events had on those concerned, (v. 41.) — The 
sign of the prophet Jonas ; that is, the sign which 
was performed in the case of Jonas. — In the heart 
op the earth. This expression appears too strong 
to some commentators to be restricted to Christ's 
lying in the grave, and they understand, therefore, 
the day of Christ's soul in hades — the spirit-world — 
by it. 

Verse 41. Luke says in the parallel passage, 
(xi, 30 :) " As Jonas was a sign to the Ninevites, so 
shall also the Son of man be to this generation." 
The Lord speaks here chiefly of what would come to 
pass after his resurrection. — The Ninevites, though 
they had neither Moses nor the prophets, and had 
seen no miracle performed by or wrought on Jonas, 
repented on hearing the preaching of Jonas, but this 
generation rejects not only the most beneficent and 
undeniable miracles, but will not be brought to re- 
pentance even by the resurrection of the Son of man. 
The consequence was that impenitent Jerusalem met 
the destruction which Nineveh escaped by repent- 
ance. It also deserves notice, that as Jonas foretold 
the destruction of Nineveh within forty days, so 
Jerusalem was destroyed exactly forty years after 
the death of Christ. — Nothing so well calculated to 
call forth repentance as the Gospel of Jesus Christ 
had ever been revealed or preached, especially since 
the preaching of it -was attended with the powerful 
influences of the Holy Ghost. 

Verse 42. The queen of the south hastened of 
her own accord to Solomon, to learn human wisdom. 
The Pharisees scornfully reject the Divine Teacher 
that has come to them. 

Verses 43-45. Having declared that the Nine- 
vites and the queen of the south would rise in judg- 
ment and condemn this generation, the Lord pro- 
ceeds to show in a similitude the cause of the utter 
destruction impending over the unbelieving people. 



OUR LORD'S WARNING AGAINST THE UNPARDONABLE SIN. 



353 



He compares this generation with a demoniac, to 
whom the demon, after he has been dislodged, re- 
turns, and finding him well prepared he repossesses 
him with seven other spirits, worse than himself. 
Such will be the miserable end of this wicked gener- 
ation. In the application of this similitude, es- 
pecially with regard to the interval of dispossession, 
commentators differ. Owen remarks : " Some refer 
it to verses 38-40 in this sense; that if a sign were 
given them so celestial and glorious as to compel 
their acknowledgment of his Messiahship, yet it would 
be but momentary, for the demon of unbelief would 
return and take possession of their heart. Others, 
with more propriety, refer it to the whole of the pre- 
ceding context, embracing both his calumniators 
(v. 24) and the sign-seekers," (v. 38.) We can see 
no propriety whatever in either of the two references. 
Equally untenable appears to us the application of 
Dr. Whedon to "the transient conversion of that 
generation under the preaching of John." The only 
correct interpretation is that of Stier: "The demon 
of idolatry brought on the Jews the Babylonian 
captivity. After their return they did no more re- 
lapse into idolatry, but endured rather persecution 
under Antiochus Epiphanes. The emptying, sweep- 
ing, and garnishing, may be fitly compared to the 
growth of pharisaic hypocrisy, and the rabbinical 
schools between the return from the captivity and 
the coming of our Lord, (v. 44.) The repossession 
by the one, and the accession of seven other spirits 
more malicious than the first, hardly needs explana- 
tion. The seven demons had already come, when 
the Lord uttered these words; yet he speaks prophet- 
ically of the last manifestation of this state. During 
the time intervening between Christ's ascension and 
the destruction of Jerusalem, especially before the 
latter event, the Jewish people acted, indeed, as if 
they had been possessed of seven thousand demons. 
The fate that overtook Jerusalem is a type of God's 
judgments, that shall be passed on the day of judg- 
ment on all unconverted and finally impenitent; and 
in their hardened state the Jews have ever since 
been a warning example to the world." A striking 
parallel to this Stier finds in the history of the Church. 
There can be no doubt about the applicability of this 
similitude to the religious experience of individuals. 
By religious education or impressions, the devil is 
cast out of the heart, but many turn away from a 
godly life to "sweeping and garnishing" (see Luke 
xi, 39, 40) in formality and hypocrisy, till utter empti- 
ness of real faith and spirituality has prepared them 
for the second more dreadful invasion of the "evil 
one." (See Heb. vi, 4-6; 2 Pet. ii, 20-22.) 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 

I. What opposite effects have the glorious works 
of Christ on susceptible minds, and on such as are 
filled with prejudices against him ! (Vs. 22-24.) 



23 



II. Whoever helps in destroying the kingdom of 
Satan is not the servant of Satan, but the servant 
of God. He who slanders those that fight against 
the kingdom of Satan belongs himself to this king- 
dom. The tree is known by its fruit. When the 
fruit is good the tree must not be condemned. To 
make the Divine satanic is the index of a Satanic 
disposition. (Vs. 25-29.) 

III. He that does not declare for Christ, he that 
has not the mind of Christ through the pardon of 
his sins and the renewal of his heart, is against 
Christ, even if he should not be aware of it, for every 
man is by nature at enmity with God. (Rom. viii, 1.) 
This enmity must be overcome before a man can be 
with Christ; but the longer a person lives in his 
natural state the worse the enmity of his heart grows. 
The strongest proof that we are on Christ's side is 
that we gather with him. We can not be with Christ 
without working for his kingdom. As we are either 
with or against Christ, so we also work either for or 
against him. A middle ground is not possible. It 
is impossible at one and the same time to serve two 
masters that are at enmity with each other. Those 
that attempt to do this deceive and destroy them- 
selves. (Vs. 30.) 

IV. 1. There are those that have not yet learned 
to know and feel their wretchedness and misery, and 
who, consequently, do not know what to make of 
Christ. To this class belong, (1) those that are appa- 
rently satisfied with sensual pleasures and enjoy- 
ments; (2) the self-righteous, who think that their ap- 
parently-blameless lives will justify them before God. 
All these may become penitent believers whenever 
they become sensible of their misery and inability to 
help themselves. Their case is not hopeless, because 
neither the world with all its riches and enjoyments, 
nor man's natural righteousness can permanently 
satisfy his innate longing for true happiness. 2. The 
sin against the Holy Ghost consists in this, that 
man — not in the moment of excitement, but per- 
sistently and maliciously — slanders undeniably Di- 
vine facts, of whose truth he is perfectly convinced 
by the operations of the Holy Ghost upon his heart. 
This horrible state of the mind involves a love of 
sin that precludes sorrow and contrition of heart, 
and a degree of contempt for Divine grace, which 
even Divine love can not overcome, since it does not 
compel man against his own free will. 3. The time 
of grace closes upon some before they die. Man can 
attain to such a hight of wickedness as to preclude 
penitence and pardon ; this state, called the sin unto 
death, is twofold ; namely, that of a perfect hardening 
against God's converting grace, (the unpardonable 
sin committed by the unregenerate,) and that of 
complete and final apostasy, (the unpardonable sin 
committed by the regenerate.) No one, however, is 
authorized to apply these truths to individual cases ; 
that is, he has no Scriptural authority whatever to 
tell any human being that he is beyond the pale of 
mercy. God alone knows this infallibly. Our duty 



354 



MATTHEW XII, 4G-50. 



is to warn all men against sin and to direct them to 
Christ, the Lamb of God. (Vs. 31, 32.) 

V. There is scarcely any thing concerning which 
men are less on their guard than concerning their 
words. Many seem to think that provided they do 
right, it is of little importance what they say. But 
this is not the teaching of Christ. Words are the 
index of the state of our minds, as the taste of 
water shows the nature of its fountain. (Vs. 36, 37.) 

VI. 1. God has confirmed his truth with signs 
sufficient to convince every man. But the impeni- 
tent sinner seeks to excuse his unbelief, pretending 
that he would believe if God would convince him by 
some miracle, (v. 38.) But such a pretense serves 
only to expose the insincerity of his heart, (v. 39.) 
This appears from the conduct of the Pharisees 
against Christ related in the text. His cotempora- 
ries had an abundance of the most convincing mira- 
cles. His glorious life was full of undeniable miracles, 
and the greatest of all, to which he directs his hear- 
ers in the text, and by which every one that is will- 
ing to believe can attain to faith, is his resurrection 
from the dead. Greater evidence can not possibly 



be given unto man. Nor are any more miracles to 
be given unto man in confirmation of the truth. A 
continuation of them would destroy their desired 
effect. The efficiency of miracles is not increased 
by numbers, as is that of an army; the force of 
miracles does not lie in their abundance, but rather 
in their rarity. 2. Whoever is not satisfied with the 
amount of the miraculous that is revealed in Chris- 
tianity, is left without excuse, (vs. 41, 42.) Others 
were convinced on much less evidence. What a 
difference is there between Jonas and Solomon on 
the one hand, and Christ on the other ! 

VII. A partial outward reformation without a 
thorough change of the heart avails nothing. One 
unclean spirit may go out. A man may become 
moral, orthodox, etc. The evil may for a time take 
a direction where its manifestation is apparently 
harmless. A reformation of the outward life that 
has not the love of God exclusively for its moving 
principle, is but an exchange of one sin for another. 
Thus Satan is enabled not only to return to his old 
home, but his power is enlarged, and such a man 
sinks at last into perdition, (vs. 43-45.) 



§26. JESUS DECLARES WHO ARE HIS TRUE KINDRED ON THE OCCASION 
OF A VISIT FROM HIS MOTHER AND BROTHERS. 

Luke has the same incident, hut in another connection. Mark records peculiar cir- 
cumstances connected with it. "While Jesus was administering so severe a rebuke to 
the Pharisees, his mother and brothers, probably fearing for his life, or, as Mark adds, 
(iii, 31,) thinking that he was carried too far by his zeal, endeavored to remove him 
from the scene of excitement and danger, or at least to caution him; but on account of 
the crowd pressing around him, they could not come near him. Without violating filial 
duty or brotherly affection, the Lord repeats here in public what he had said once before 
at Cana. Bengel aptly remarks : " He does not despise his mother ; but, giving preced- 
ence to his Father, he does, with becoming earnestness, not recognize mother or brothers 
by not admitting them for the time being." From the whole tenor of his remarks it is 
probable that he refused them, on the occasion in question, access to his person. His 
conduct is a rule for all his followers. There is a spiritual relationship which takes 
precedence of all earthly ties whatsoever, whenever there arises a conflict between 
the two. 



"Verses 46— 50. (Compare Mark iii, 31-35; Luke thi, 19-21.) 

(46) While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren 
stood without, desiring to speak with him. (47) Then one said unto him, Behold, 
thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. (48) But 
he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are 
my brethren ? (49) And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, 
Behold my mother and my brethren ! (50) For whosoever shall do the will of my 
Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother. 



CHRIST'S RELATIONSHIP TO HIS MOTHER AND HIS BRETHREN. 



355 



Verse 46. On the brothers of the Lord see note 
on chap, xiii, 55, 56. — They stood without; that 
is, either outside the throng of hearers around our 
Lord or, perhaps, outside the house. 

Verse 47. Then one said unto him. In all prob- 
ability the same person that his relatives sent (Mark 
iii, 31) to inform him that they desired to speak to 
him outside the house. He seems, however, to have 
refused their request at this time, and to have con- 
tinued his discourse. 

Verse 48. Who is my mother? and who are my 
brethren? By this question the Lord invited the 
attention of his hearers to what he was going to say 
about the relation of his disciples to himself. All 
these characteristics of the mother of our Lord are 
deeply interesting, both in themselves and as build- 
ing up, when put together, the most decisive testi- 
mony against the superstition which has assigned to 
her the place of a goddess in the Roman mythology. 
Great and inconceivable as the honor of that meek 
and holy woman was, we find her more than once 
reproved by her divine Son. (John' ii, 4.) 

Verse 49. And he stretched forth his hand 
toward His disciples. Literally, having stretched 
forth, etc. This motion of his hand was, undoubt- 
edly, followed by a pause to prepare his hearers the 
better for what was to follow. By pointing with his 
hand to his disciples, saying, " Behold, my mother 
and my brethren!" the Lord positively declared that 
spiritual relationship is of more importance than 
consanguinity or any other tie. His words seem, at 
the same time, to imply a rebuke for any interfer- 
ence with the work assigned unto him by his Father. 
It was absolutely necessary that he should repel the 
malicious charge of the Pharisees; and if he had 
withdrawn on the occasion in question, leaving the 
field to his adversaries, he would have made a very 
unfavorable impression, especially on his disciples. 

Verse 50. For whosoever shall do the will 
of my Father. In this declaration Christ extends 
his spiritual relationship to his whole mystic body, 
the Church, including every believer, and sets forth, 
at the same time, the principle on which it is founded. 
The Father's will is the Word of God as revealed 
unto us by and in his Son. To do this will implies 
to believe in Christ as the Embassador of the 
Father, (John vi, 29 ; 1 John iii, 23,) to be begotten 
of the Spirit by the Word of truth, (James i, 18,) 
and to live a life of faith and obedience to the Son 
of God. In order to be a disciple of Christ one 



must not only hear but also do the Word of God. 
A mere profession and observance of the outward 
duties of religion do not suffice. — The same is my 
brother, and sister, and mother. The true be- 
liever enters into a relationship with Christ more 
tender and strong than any earthly tie. In enumer- 
ating his relations the Lord makes no mention of a 
father, because he had no human father. 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 

1. There is a spiritual family on earth which is 
constantly increasing. Its head is Christ, its mem- 
bers all believers, who sustain to each other the rela- 
tion of brothers. 

2. The basis on which this spiritual relationship 
rests is not a merely-denominational connection. 
A man may belong to the same denomination, may 
be under the same order and discipline, observe 
the same ritual, and, at the same time, sustain no 
relationship whatever with Christ's body and those 
members of it that are in his denomination. He 
may be a zealot for the best formula of faith, and 
yet not do the Heavenly Father's will. 

3. Natural relationship is subordinate to the spir- 
itual. And why? The latter is, (1.) More intimate 
than the former. Where there is spiritual relation- 
ship there is a union of hearts; there kindred spirits 
live for the same end, have consecrated themselves 
to the same cause, and have enlisted under the same 
banner. (2.) It offers higher enjoyments, uniting 
us with those whose love is pure and ardent, who 
are entitled to our full confidence, who unite their 
hymns of praise and tears of sympathy with ours. 
(3.) It is more honorable, introducing us into the 
great family of God, enabling us to call Christ our 
Brother, God our Father, and heaven our portion. 
(4.) It is more extensive, uniting us with the pious 
of all ages; and, (5.) More lasting, since death nec- 
essarily severs all earthly bonds ; but he that doeth 
the will of God remaineth forever. 

4. How tenderly does Christ; love his followers ! 
They may be poor and indigent and be hated by the 
world for his name's sake; but they need not be dis- 
mayed. Their Elder Brother will take care of his 
brethren and sisters in time and eternity. There is 
no member in the family of God of whom Christ is 
not mindful. Joseph made provision for all his kin; 
how infinitely more will Jesus Christ do it ! 



356 MATTHEW XIII, 1-52. 



OHAPTEE XIII. 
§27. THE SEVEN PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

At the outset of his public ministry Jesus had distinctly declared that the kingdom 
of God was at hand, and in the Sermon on the Mount he had clearly set forth the nature 
of this kingdom, the disposition which qualifies for membership, and his own relation to 
it as its King. He had given the most convincing proofs of his Messiahship. But when 
he had come to about the middle of his ministry, it appeared plainly that the great mass 
of the Jewish people would reject the salvation offered unto them. The Pharisees had 
matured and but ill concealed their plan to get rid of him by violence. The Lord, there- 
fore, changed the method of his instruction. This new method consisted in this, that he 
clothed the mysteries of the kingdom, which he had thus far delivered without figure, in 
parables taken from the spheres of natural and human life, whose real meaning only the 
lover of truth apprehends, while the hull protects the kernel against the abuse of the 
frivolous and carnal. This is the place to explain, 1. What a parable is; 2. To state why 
our Lord taught so much in parables; and, 3. To set forth the principles that must guide 
us in their interpretation. 

As regards, in the first place, the nature of the parable, it is fully explained by the 
etymology of the word. It is of Greek origin — napafto?.rj, from itapa(3dkXsiv — and means a 
placing side by side, a juxtaposition; for in the parable we have a spiritual, supernatural 
truth and a transaction of common life side by side. " The parable," says Neander, " dif- 
fers from the fable in this, that while in the latter human faculties and human actions are 
transferred to beings of an inferior order, as animals and even inanimate objects, in the 
parable the lower sphere of life serves as the similitude of the higher, while, at the same 
time, the two spheres are kept perfectly distinct from each other. The power and beings 
used in the parable move in perfect keeping with the laws of their nature, but represent 
what takes place in a higher sphere of life. The fable narrates what is from the nature 
of the case impossible — e. g., that animals reason, speak and act as human beings — while 
the parable describes what actually occurs in daily life or in nature." This, however, is 
but one of the differences between the parable and the fable. As they differ in their 
nature — that is, their component parts— so they differ also in their object or end. " The 
parable," says Trench, " is constructed to set forth a truth spiritual and heavenly. This 
the fable, with all its value, is not ; it is essentially of the earth, and never lifts itself above 
the earth. It never has a higher aim than to inculcate maxims of prudential morality, 
industry, caution, foresight, and these it will sometimes recommend even at the expense 
of the higher self-forgetting virtues. The fable just reaches that pitch of morality which 
the world will understand and approve. But it has no place in the Scripture. The two 
instances given in Judges ix, 8-15, and 2 Kings xiv, 9, do not impeach the universality 
of this rule, since in neither case God or a prophet of his speaks, but men, and that from 
an earthly stand-point." The parable also differs from the allegory, comparing as it does 
one thing with another, at the same time preserving them apart as an inner and an outer, 
not transferring, as does the allegory, the properties, and qualities, and relations of one 
to the other. In John xv, 1-8, and John x, 1-16, we have allegories, carrying their inter- 
pretation in themselves. These allegories are called by John proverbs. The term prov- 
erb, however, is used also in the New Testament for parable. The interchange of the two 
words is to be accounted for, partly from the fact of there being but one word in Hebrew 
to signify parable, allegory, and proverb, they being alike enigmatical or dark sayings, 
speaking a part of their meaning and leaving the rest to be inferred, partly from the fact 
that the proverb generally rests upon some comparison expressed or implied, as, for instance, 



THE SEVEN PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 357 

2 Peter ii, 22, or is a concentrated parable, (Matt, xv, 14, 15,) which might easily be 
extended into a parable. 

Secondly: as to the question which the disciples themselves put to their Master, (v. 10,) 
why he made use of this method of imparting instruction, there are, in addition to the 
reason stated by the Lord himself in his reply, (v. 13, on which see the exegetical notes,) 
some other reasons implied which deserve our notice, and on which we will dwell in these 
introductory remarks : 1. The instruction by parables is founded on the harmony which 
exists between the natural and the spiritual. Both domains have the same author, and 
are governed by the same laws. There is an intrinsic and real analogy between the phe- 
nomena which nature and human life present and man's spiritual relations, and there is a 
power in that analogy which no abstract description, no general reasoning can equal. But 
only one teacher, He without whom was not any thing made that was made, who is the 
light of men, was able to unfold to us the lessons which nature and human life are designed 
to teach us. 2. Figurative language is adapted to all minds. It has depths for the philos- 
opher ; it is not too deep for the child. It has an admirable power of gradually admitting 
light to the mental eye. At the same time, by seizing the mind so quickly through the 
channel of its natural interest in human events and surrounding objects, it awakens the 
attention of the young, of the ignorant and the careless. Its form is instantly compre- 
hended by all, while it gives the impression that there is a substance lying beneath. This 
prompts inquiry. And then the advantage is, that the memory can easily retain the 
story, and with it whatever degree of spiritual light the mind may have received. Who 
could banish from his mind, when once understood, the image of the house built on the 
sand, as the symbol of a man, sure to be disappointed in his groundless expectations ? To 
whom does not the parable of the prodigal son bring back the thought of God's merciful 
kindness toward the sinner? We must, moreover, take into consideration that the nature 
of the kingdom of heaven was not understood even by the disciples. Some sayings of the 
Lord concerning it were even to them hard, and the hearing of them caused many to go 
back, and walk no more with him. (John vi, 66.) If there was any mode of teaching 
better suited than another to the purpose of preserving truths for the memory that were 
not yet accepted by the heart — for keeping the seed safe till the time should arrive for 
the quickening Spirit to come down and give it growth — that mode would be the best 
suited to the peculiar position of the disciples. Some of the cardinal doctrines of the 
G-ospel could not be understood by them in their full extent and importance before the 
historical facts upon which they rested, the death and resurrection of Christ, had taken 
place, and before they had received the promised gift of the Holy Spirit. 

Thirdly : let us inquire into the principles that ought to guide us in the interpretation 
of parables. Inasmuch as every parable is a whole, composed of a variety of parts, the 
question arises whether each part, each trait of the picture, must be interpreted or not. 
On this point Alexander remarks: " In expounding the parables interpreters have gone to 
very opposite extremes, but most to that of making every thing significant, or giving a 
specific sense to every minute point of the analogy presented. This error is happily 
exposed by Augustine, when he says that the whole plow is needed in the act of plowing, 
though the plowshare alone makes the furrow, and the whole frame of an instrument is 
useful, though the strings alone produce the music. The other extreme, that of overlook- 
ing or denying the significance of some things really significant, is much less common 
than the first, and, for the most part, found in writers of severer taste and judgment." 
But how shall we avoid the two extremes, and find the true mean? Olshausen says: 
" The parables of our Lord being founded on the most thorough knowledge of things, it 
.may be set down as a rule that no trait must be droj)ped, except the force and harmony 
of the whole should be impaired by pressing it in the interpretation. Yet the application 
of this general rule will vary, inasmuch as an interpreter's ability to descry and apply 
more distant relations is conditioned by his more or less developed religious life." Like- 



358 MATTHEW XIII, 1-52. 



wise Tholuck: "It must be allowed that a similitude is perfect in proportion as it is on 
all sides rich in applications ; and, hence, in treating the parables of Christ the expositor 
must proceed on the presumption that there is import in every single point, and only de- 
sist from seeking it when either it does not result without forcing or when we can clearly 
show that this or that circumstance was merely added for the sake of giving intuitiveness 
to the narrative. We should not assume any thing to be non-essential, except when, by 
holding it fast as essential, the unity of the whole is marred and troubled." A safe rule 
in determining what is essential and what not, is, that we first of all ascertain the leading 
or central idea of the parable. Before this is fully ascertained and clearly defined, no 
attempt must be made to interpret its different parts, since only from this center every 
thing appears in its natural and true light. Lisco very aptly compares the entire par- 
able with a circle, of which the middle point is the spiritual truth or doctrine, and of 
which the radii are the several circumstances of the narration. So long as we have not 
placed ourselves in the center, neither the circle itself appears in its perfect shape nor will 
the beautiful unity with which the radii converge to a single point be perceived; but this 
is all observed so soon as the eye looks forth from the center. Even so in the parable: 
If we have recognized its central idea, the proportion and right signification of all par- 
ticular circumstances will be clear unto us, and we shall lay stress on them only so far as 
the main truth is thereby more vividly set forth. The finding out of this central truth 
is, indeed, often very difficult, since we meet in every parable with so many truths that 
may, at first sight, appear unto us equally important; yet on a thorough examination, we 
find one truth to outshine in brightness all the rest, which, in their turn, grow propor- 
tionally fainter. Frequently we are assisted in finding this truth by paying proper atten- 
tion to the saying which introduces or winds up the parable. 

For the meaning of the term kingdom of heaven, which forms the burden of the seven 
parables in this chapter, we refer the reader to our notes on chaps, iii, 2, and vi, 10. "In 
these seven parables," says Bllicott, "we have seven varied aspects of the kingdom of 
God on earth. In the first parable we have placed before us the various classes in the 
visible Church; in the second we contemplate the origin and presence of evil therein, and 
its final removal and overthrow; in the third we see the kingdom of God in its aspects 
of growth and extension; in the fourth in its pervasive and regenerative character; in 
the fifth and sixth in reference to its preciousness, whether as discovered accidentally or 
after deliberate search ; in the seventh in its present state of inclusiveness, combined with 
its future state of selection and unsparing separation." Olshausen finds a different mean- 
ing in the succession of these parables. According to him, the first represents the rela- 
tion of the kingdom of God to the world, the second its relation to the kingdom of 
Satan; the third and fourth describe the power inherent in the Word of the kingdom, 
that overcomes all obstacles and enemies; the fifth and sixth set forth the value of the 
kingdom of God and the relation of the individual believer to the kingdom, while the 
seventh describes the development of the Church on earth till the day of the final judg- 
ment. Some commentators see in the seven parables a prophecy of seven successive eras 
of the Christian Church; but their conflicting applications show us how little ground we 
have for ascribing to them a prophetic signification. The most ingenious application is 
that of Lange, who refers the first parable to the original sowing in the apostolic age, the 
second to the rise of heresies in the ancient Catholic Church; the parable of the mustard- 
seed to the apparently -insignificant beginning of the Christian religion, which was raised 
under Constantine to the state religion of the Koman Empire; the parable of leaven to 
the great transformation, by the Christian Church, of the heathen nations and tribes that 
overrun Western and Southern Europe during the fourth and fifth centuries ; the parable 
of the hid treasure to the great Eeformation of the sixteenth century, when the hidden 
truth was discovered again ; that of the pearl of great price to the time when, the sub- 
stance of religion being apprehended in its highest purity and fullest extent, its blessings 



THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 



359 



will be sought with the greatest earnestness, accompanied by an unqualified readiness to 
consecrate all to God, which era will be followed by the final judgment. 

The standard work on the interpretation of our Lord's parables is that of the distin- 
guished British theologian, Trench, and it is not surpassed by any German writer. "Where 
we can not give any thing better we have quoted him either fully or in a condensed form 
where a condensation appeared more useful. But while we have aimed at drawing from 
the work every thing of essential value, we have felt ourselves compelled to differ from 
the author on some points and to enlarge on others. 

A. THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 
Verses 1—33. (Compare Mark iv, 1-20; Luke viii, 1-15.) 

(1) The same day went Jesus out of the house, * and sat by the seaside. 2 
(2) And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went into 
a ship, 3 and sat ; 4 and the whole multitude stood on the shore. 5 (3) And he spake 
many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower 6 went forth to sow ; 7 
(4) and when he sowed, some seeds fell by the wayside, 8 and the fowls came and 
devoured them up : (5) some fell upon stony places, 9 where they had not much 
earth : and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth : 10 
(6) And when the sun was up, they were scorched ; and because they had no root, 
they withered away. (7) And some fell, among thorns ; u and the thorns sprung 
up, and choked them : (8) But other fell into good ground, 12 and brought forth 



1 That is, out of the house in which he had healed the 
demoniac and refuted the blasphemous charge of the 
Pharisees. (Chap, xii, 46.) ' 2 On the shore of the Lake 
of Gennesaret. " The mountains by which the lake is 
surrounded never come down into the water, but have a 
beach of greater or less extent along the water's edge." 
(Stanley.) 3 In Greek, the ship. The definite article in- 
dicates that it was a boat that either belonged to the 
disciples or was kept ready for their Master's use. * The 
Jewish teachers were in the habit of delivering their in- 
structions sitting, while their hearers were standing. 
5 Within hearing distance. It seems the pressure of the 
crowd was so great that our Lord found it more conven- 
ient to address them from the boat. 6 Literally, the 
sower, that is, the one whose business it is to sow. 7 On 
these words Dr. Thomson, in the description of his jour- 
ney through Palestine, says : " There is a nice and close 
adherence to actual life in this form of expression. The 
expression implies that the sower, in the days of our 
Savior, lived in a hamlet, or village, as all these farm- 
ers do now ; that he did not sow near his own house or 
in a garden fenced or walled. Now here we have the 
whole within a dozen rods of us. Our horses are aotu- 
ally trampling down some seeds which have fallen by 
the wayside, and larks and sparrows are busy picking 
them up. That man with his mattock is digging up 
places where the roek is too near the surface for the 
plow, and much that is sown there will wither away, be- 
cause it has no deepness of earth. And not a few seeds 
have fallen among this bellan, and will be effectually 
choked by the tangled thorn-bushes. But a large por- 
tion, after all, falls into really good ground, and four 
months hence will exhibit every variety of crop, up to 
the richest and heaviest that ever rejoices the heart 
even of an American farmer." 8 Where the field and 



the road meet. " The ordinary roads or paths in the 
East lead often along the edge of the fields, which are 
uninclosed. Hence, as the sower scatters his seed, some 
of it is liable to fall beyond the plowed portton, on the 
hard, beaten ground which forms the wayside." (Hack- 
ett's Illustrations.) 9 Rocky strata, covered with thin 
layers of earth, such as are found on the cultivated sur- 
faces of the mountains which rise in terrace-like form 
along tho Lake of Galilee. 10 Having not sufficient 
depth of earth to strike deep roots, and the shallow 
earth being heated by the sun of the day before, the 
seed springs up the more quickly ; but when the vertical 
rays of the sun fall upon it the slender blade withers 
away. n By the thorns we have not to understand 
grown-up thorns, but the seeds of thorns. The lack 
here is not in the soil, but in careful husbandry. The 
soil in question was not hard, beaten ground, nor shal- 
low ; but though the thorns and briers had been cut 
down when it was plowed up, their roots were still in 
the ground, ready to shoot forth as soon as the rays of 
the sun reached them ; and when they grew up with the 
corn, they choked it by withdrawing light and air and 
absorbing the moisture. On the abundance of briers in 
Palestine Professor Hackett remarks : " Every one who 
has been in Palestine must have been struck with the 
number of thorny shrubs and plants that abound there. 
The traveler finds them in his path, go where he may. 
Many of them are small, but some grow as high as a 
man's head. There are twenty-two words in Hebrew de- 
noting thorny and prickly plants. If proper care be not 
taken they soon get the upper hand, and spread in every 
direction. 'I went by the field of the slothful ; and lo, 
it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had cov- 
ered the face thereof.' (Prov. xxiv, 30, 31.)" 12 The 
opposite of beaten path, thin soil, ground not cleansed 



360 



MATTHEW XIII, 1-23. 



fruit, some a hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold. 13 (9) Who hath ears 
to hear, let him hear. (10) And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speak- 
est thou unto them in parables? (11) He answered and said unto them, Because 
it is given u unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them 
it is not given. u (12) For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have 
more abundance : but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that 
he hath. (13) Therefore speak I to them in parables : because they seeing see not ; 
and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. (14) And in them is fulfilled 
the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not under- 
stand ; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive : (15) For this people's heart 
is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have 
closed ; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, 
and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal 
them. (16) But blessed are your eyes, for they see : and your ears, for they hear. 
(17) For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have de- 
sired to see those things which you see, and have not seen them ; and to hear those 
things which ye hear, and have not heard them. (18) Hear ye therefore the parable 
of the sower. (19) When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and under- 
standeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was 
sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the wayside. (20) But he 
that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and 
anon with joy receiveth it; (21) yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a 
while ; for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by 
he is offended. (22) He also that received seed among the thorns is he that hear- 
eth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke 
the word, and he becometh unfruitful. (23) But he that received seed into the 
good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth 
fruit, and bringeth forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. 



Verse 1. The same day Jesus went out of the 
house. The phrase the same day is sometimes used 
indefinitely. (See Acts viii, 1.) It may be so here; 
yet we can not doubt that the delivery of the para- 
bles followed closely upon the transactions recorded 
in the last chapter. (See Synoptical Table, No. 
66-68.) 

Verse 3. " It is evidently the purpose of Matthew 
to present to his readers the parables recorded here 
as the first which the Lord spoke. With this of the 
sower he commenced a manner of teaching which 
he had not hitherto used. This is sufficiently indi- 
cated by the question which the disciples asked, 
' Why speakest thou to them in parables?' (v. 10,) 
and the answer which our Lord gave, (vs. 11-17,) in 
which he justifies his use of this method of teaching, 
and declares the purpose which he had in adopting 



it; and no less so when he seems to consider this 
parable as the fundamental one, on the right under- 
standing of which would depend their comprehen- 
sion of all which were to follow : ' Know ye not this 
parable? and how then will ye know all parables?' 
(Mark iv, 13.) And as this was the first occasion on 
which he brought forth these things new out of his 
treasure, (see v. 22,) so was it the occasion on which 
he brought them forth with the largest hand. We 
have not any where else in the Gospels so rich a 
group of parables assembled together, so many and 
so costly pearls strung upon a single thread. The 
only passage that will bear comparison is chapters 
xv and xvi, of St. Luke, where there are recorded 
five parables that were all apparently spoken on the 
same occasion. The seven that are here recorded 
divide themselves into two smaller groups — the first 



from thorns. IS The terms hundred, eixti/, thirtyfold are I crease from a moderate to a most abundant harvest, 
used as round numbers to express the varieties of in- | u Literally, has been given. 



THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 



361 



four being spoken to the multitude while he taught 
them out of the ship — the last three, as it would seem, 
on the same day, in the narrower circle of his disciples 
at his own home." (Trench.) — This parable is record- 
ed by the three Evangelists, to a great extent, in the 
same words, yet with variation enough to show that 
none copied from the other. Mark gives. the fullest 
statement, as far as the parable itself is concerned, 
while Matthew alone has the words in verse 12, and 
the formal quotation from Isaiah. 

Verse 10. According to Mark, (iv, 10, comp. v. 
36.) " they that were about him with the twelve," 
put this question to their Master, after he had fin- 
ished the parables. They had perceived that the 
Lord observed some reserve before the multitude. 

Verse 11. Because it is given unto you, etc. 
In these words there seems to be the same construc- 
tion as in Matt, xi, 25, (comp. Rom. vi, 17,) namely: 
"Because, though it is given unto you to understand 
the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven when de- 
clared in plain language, it is not given to them." 
Taken in this sense the words contain a direct 
answer to the question: "Why speakest thou unto 
them in parables?" In the sequel our Lord explains 
then the nature and design of his parabolic teaching; 
but with the exception of verse 12, where the reveal- 
ing as well as the concealing properties of the para- 
ble are referred to, he speaks only of the latter. — 
The mysteries. " The word mystery" says Dr. E. 
N. Kirk in his lectures on the parables of our Sav- 
ior, "is liable to be misunderstood, because, having 
several significations, that which is most frequently 
attached to it in English usage was the least fre- 
quently intended by the sacred writers. Its different 
significations are : a thing that can not be understood; 
a thing that has not been understood ; and a thing that 
has a deeper meaning than that which is most ob- 
vious. Now the first of these significations being 
prominent in our minds, while it is seldom that in- 
tended by the sacred writers, leads to misapprehen- 
sion. In this passage the Savior evidently does not 
mean by mysteries things that can not be known, 
because he says: 'To you it is given to know the 
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.' And the dis- 
ciples were to proclaim them to the world, for he 
thus commanded them: 'What ye hear in the ear 
that preach ye upon the house-tops, for there is noth- 
ing hid that shall not be known.' " The meaning 
here is, things heretofore not understood. It was 
given to the disciples to know them, because they 
were willing to receive the knowledge. The reason 
why it was not given to others is plainly declared in 
verses 13-15. 

Verse 12. For whosoever hath. This deeply- 
significant declaration our Lord uttered repeatedly 
and on different occasions. Its full meaning the 
reader will find in Matt, xxv, where it is illustrated 
by a parable. Here it has special reference to the 
possession of spiritual knowledge. He that has 
spiritual knowledge in consequence of his desire to 



receive it, to him shall be given, and he shall 
have more abundance; that is, his knowledge shall 
be increased; he shall penetrate more fully into the 
mysteries of the kingdom of God. — But whosoever 
has not, in consequence of his unwillingness to re- 
ceive, from him shall be taken away even that he 
has; that is, the means and opportunity to obtain 
knowledge. His scornful refusal of the truth shall 
be followed by an "inability" to understand; for 
whoever has no desire to receive the truth loses also 
the ability to receive it; the neglected and unculti- 
vated soil of his heart degenerates more and more 
and becomes entirely sterile ; the means and oppor- 
tunities of being saved, which he has slighted and 
rejected, are taken away from him altogether. This 
happened unto the Jews, whose means of grace 
Christ was even then curtailing by introducing the 
new method of speaking in parables, and who were 
soon after deprived of them altogether, as a warning 
example for all generations to come. Every gift of 
God imposes the solemn duty to make the very best 
use of it; if we fail to do so our condemnation will 
be the greater. We add the following pertinent re- 
marks of Dr. Kirk, (p. 11:) "Man is on probation. 
Astronomical truth lies hidden in the heavens. He 
that wants it may get it, but by desire and effort. 
Gold is in the mountains, but desire and effort alone 
secure it. Truth is in books and in the mind, but 
by desire and effort alone we can get it. The para- 
ble is a branch of probation. ' To you it is given to 
know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but 
to them it is not given.' This does not touch the 
ground of sovereignty, but of probation: 'for who- 
evor has,' eta The French have a proverb: 'It is 
the first step that costs.' If any man loves truth 
enough to begin to search for it he conquers the 
great difficulties in the beginning. . . . They who 
desire truth and will seek for it shall find it. But it 
will not force itself upon them against their wills. 
These men, said the Savior, seeing see not; and this 
is not unusual nor unanticipated, for Isaiah prophe- 
sied of it six hundred years ago. Their heart, he 
says, is waxed gross ; that is, they are sensual, 
worldly, careless, proud, opposed to the truth ; they 
love the darkness more than the light. And, there- 
fore, I put the truth before them in such forms that 
if they want the light they can get it, but if they 
ohoose to stop at the mere form and shell they may." 
And again this writer says on the concealing prop- 
erty of our Lord's parables: "The truth must be 
presented to all, but in such a way as to do the least 
injury and the greatest good. To some the truth 
must come enveloped in a form that at first almost 
concealed it from them. Neither their national nor 
their sectarian feelings could at first tolerate the 
full statement that the Gentiles should enter the 
Church on a level with the favored people. Accord- 
ingly he vails the important fact under the image of 
a great supper, to which the king invited guests from 
the highways and hedges. Again, he aimed at 



362 



MATTHEW XIII, 1-23. 



avoiding a premature irritation of his enemies. 
Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, elders, and 
priests, proud, earthly, ignorant, bigoted, envious, 
and murderous, were continually acting as spies 
around him. It was, therefore, indispensable that he 
should avoid giving them any ground of accusation be- 
fore the Sanhedrim, or the civil tribunal, or the people. 
While then he gives them tremendous thrusts, his 
meaning is so couched in imagery that they never 
got a plausible charge against him. . . . He de- 
scribed to them the wickedness which they were 
about to perpetrate; but he described it by husband- 
men that first killed the messengers of their king, 
and then the Son. And under that disguise he de- 
clared that God would fearfully overthrow their na- 
tion for their sin." 

Verse 13. Therefore. This particle may refer 
grammatically either to what follows or what goes 
before. We prefer the latter, as does also Dr. Whe- 
don, who paraphrases the passage thus: "In order 
to take from them that which they have — namely, 
the means of understanding my doctrines, merely to 
abuse them — I speak to them in parables, which will 
cover from their knowledge truths that will do them 
no good, but with which they will do harm." The 
immediately-following " because" sets forth more fully 
the inability of understanding on the part of those 
to whom it is not given, as the consequence of their 
unwillingness. Instead of the causal particle ore (be- 
cause) Mark and Luke have in the parallel passage 
the final particle Iva, in order that, whereby the sense 
is only in so far changed that the not seeing with 
seeing eyes is represented as the punishment for 
their previous indifference to every thing Divine. 

Verses 14, 15. This prophecy (Isa. vi, 9, 10,) 
is cited verbatim from the LXX. It is quoted 
also John xii, 40; Acts xxviii, 26, 27, and Rom. xi, 
8. The Evangelist uses for fulfilled a peculiarly 
strong term — avairXripovG-&a(— that is, to be com- 
pletely fulfilled. The crime of the children of Israel 
in the days of Isaiah, of rejecting the Divine mes- 
sage, whereby they exposed themselves to the right- 
eous judgments of Jehovah, was repeated on a larger 
scale by the Jews of our Savior's times, because in 
Jesus there was the highest self-revelation of God, 
while Isaiah had but a glimpse of it. Thus in the 
non-recognition of even this splendor of the Divine 
light, the curse of sin became manifest to its whole 
extent, and the words of the prophets were fulfilled 
in their full import. The verbs seeing and hear- 
ing as opposed to perceiving and understanding, 
indicate that if a man has no more ability to un- 
derstand the Divine, it is in consequence of his 
having forfeited it voluntarily by the moral state 
of his heart, described in the next verse. — For 
this people's heart is waxed gross — literally grew 
fat; that is, the heart was lost in the flesh and 
lost its higher life — an emblem of moral bluntness 
and insensibility, the consequence of sensual indul- 
gence and inactivity. — And their ears are dull 



of hearing — literally, hear heavily, ^sluggishly, and 
imperfectly, as if dull and confused sounds were 
striking them. — And their eyes they have closed. 
Hebrew, "smeared over," with the intention not to 
see, whereby the act is represented as willful and pre- 
meditated on their part, and they alone as responsi- 
ble for the consequences. — Lest at any time they 
should see with their eyes, and hear with their 
ears, and should understand with their heart, 
and should be converted, and i should heal 
them. "In the Hebrew original there are five im- 
peratives; namely, hear, but understand not; see, 
but perceive not; make the heart of this people fat; 
make their ears heavy and shut their eyes, expressed 
by the fut. ind. in the LXX. The prophet himself, 
by repeating before them the threatening words, 
'hear and understand not,' is to harden their hearts. 
What the real import of this language is, appears 
plainly from the whole tenor of Scripture. The 
imperative is to be considered as a form of the future 
forcibly expressing a threat. By representing the 
hardness of their hearts as being brought about by 
the prophecy, is meant that the prophet has merely 
to reveal unto them, and they through their own 
guilt make the word of prophecy the means of hard- 
ening their hearts. Jehovah, as it were, said to the 
prophet. 'Thou wilt preach unto them in vain, there- 
fore prophesy their hardness of heart.' (Jer. i, 10.)" 
(Stier.) While the prophet represents the obduracy 
of the people as an act of retributive justice, it is 
here traced to their evil hearts; they will not, and, 
therefore, they can not. (John v, 40.) — That I 
should heal them. " They are, therefore, them- 
selves the cause of their not realizing that salvation 
which to bring them I have come into the world. It 
is uniformly God's purpose to convert men through 
the preaching of his Word; hence it is the duty of 
every one that has ears to hear. But if men do not 
hear with their ears, if they close them against the 
preached Word, it is, nevertheless, preached unto 
them, that the apparent impossibility of their con- 
version may be judged as an unwillingness to be 
converted. It must not be overlooked that these 
blind and deaf persons are the same to whom the 
prophet afterward promises healing and delivery, 
(Isa. xxix, 9-12, 18, 19; xlii, 7,) to which fact the 
Lord had reference, (chap, xi, 5,) and he still speaks 
even here to these deaf people that they may hear." — 
The relation of the heart to the eyes and ears, as set 
forth here, is also worthy of notice. As moral cor- 
ruption extends from the heart to the eyes and the 
ears, so in a reversed order salvation is to reach the 
heart through the eyes and ears. The external 
means of grace are to pave the way to the heart, 
work conviction for sin and a longing for salvation, 
and thus prepare the heart for the reception of the 
joyful news. But notwithstanding this it is the 
heart which decides man's conduct toward the Gos- 
pel, and even the hearing of the ear is conditioned 
by the state of the heart." (Condensed from Stier.) 



THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 



163 



Verse 16. What is said in this and the following 
verse occurs again (Luke x, 23, 24) in a different con- 
nection and in a somewhat different form. Blessed — ■ 
that is, to be pronounced blessed — are your eyes, as 
opposed to those carnal eyes that do not see. The 
eyes and ears are instanced as the organs of recep- 
tivity for the inner man. 

Verse 17. By righteous men we must under- 
stand all the children of God of the Old Testament, 
that were not only blameless as to legal righteous- 
ness, but longed for a higher righteousness and de- 
sired to see the promised Messiah. To see him was 
the highest object of desire for the Old Testament 
saints. Luke uses for "righteous men," " kings,'' 
meaning, of course, only pious kings, such as David, 
Hezekiah, Josiah, etc. 

Verse 18. Hear ye therefore the parable of 
the sower; that is, the explanation of it which you 
have desired. "This explanation is," as Dr. Alex- 
ander remarks, "not only in itself a model of con- 
ciseness, clearness, and superiority to all conceits 
and forced analogies, but from its source and author 
an invaluable rule and guide in all cases of the same 
kind, where we have not the advantage of an infalli- 
ble interpretation." — But though our Lord confines 
himself to an interpretation of what he had said of the 
varieties of soil on which the seed is sown, his inter- 
pretation enables us to make also the proper applica- 
tion of the sower and the seed. On this point Trench 
remarks: "The comparison of the relations of the 
teacher and the taught to those between the sower 
and the soil, and of the truth communicated to the 
seed sown, is one so deeply grounded in the truest 
analogies between the worlds of nature and of spirit, 
that we must not wonder to find it of frequent re- 
currence, not merely in Scripture. (1 Pet. i, 23; 1 
John iii, 9,) but in the works of all the wiser hea- 
thens, of all who have realized in any measure what 
teaching means, and what sort of influence the spirit 
of one man ought to seek to exercise on the spirits 
of his fellows, communicating to them living and ex- 
panding truths. While all teaching that is worthy 
the name is such, while all words, even of men, that 
are really words, are as seeds, with a power to take 
root in the minds and hearts of those that hear them, 
contain germs in them that only by degrees develop 
themselves; in a much higher sense must this be 
true of the words, or rather of the Word of God, 
which he spoke who was himself the Seminal Word 
which he communicated. Best right of all to the 
title of seed has that Word which exercises not 
merely a partial working on the hearts in which it is 
received, but wholly transforms and renews them — 
that Word by which men are born anew into the 
kingdom of God, and of which the effects endure for- 
ever. I can not doubt that the Lord intended to set 
himself forth as the chief sower of the seed — not, of 
course, to the exclusion of the apostles and their suc- 
cessors — that here, as well as in the next parable, he 
that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; and 



this, even though he no where in the three interpreta- 
tions of the present one announces himself as such. 
Indeed, it is difficult to see how we can stop short of 
him, when we are seeking to give the full meaning 
to the words, ' A sower went forth to sow.' His en- 
trance into the world was a going forth to sow; the 
Word of the kingdom, which Word he first pro- 
claimed, was his seed ; the hearts of men his soil : oth- 
ers only were able to sow because he had sown first ; 
they did but carry on the work which he had aus- 
picated and begun." To the above we may add: As 
the sower soweth the seed all over the field, both on 
fertile and sterile spots, so the Gospel is to be 
preached to every creature. But as the earth does 
not of itself bring forth without seed, and as the seed 
does not spring up and bring forth fruit without the 
cooperation of the earth, so the grace of God and 
the receptivity of it by man must work together to 
bring forth fruit. Whether the seed sown will bring 
forth fruit or not, depends on the nature of the 
ground on which it has fallen. To illustrate the 
different reception which the Word of the kingdom 
meets with from men, is the main object of the 
parable, and the Lord, therefore, confines himself to 
that in his interpretation. In a few plain words he 
delineated prophetically the history of the reception 
the preached Gospel has met from the beginning 
till now, and will meet to the end of the Gospel dis- 
pensation. It is worthy of note that the four kinds 
of reception described by the Savior, embrace every 
shade of difference, large as the human family is, 
and great as the variety of temperaments and char- 
acters, and the number of individual peculiarities are. 
Verse 19. When any one heareth the word of 
the kingdom and understandeth it nov. " The 
man understands it not; he does not recognize him- 
self as standing in any relation to the Word which 
he hears, or to the kingdom of grace which that 
Word proclaims. All that speaks of man's con- 
nection with a higher invisible world, all that speaks 
of sin, of redemption, of holiness, is unintelligible 
to him and wholly without significance." (Trench.) 
However clearly the doctrines of the Gospel are set 
forth, however intelligible they are in themselves, 
the character in question pays no attention to them, 
he is perfectly unconcerned and indifferent, as if he 
had no interest whatever in the Gospel or kingdom 
of God. But why is he in this condition ? The plow- 
share of the law has not yet broken the soil of his 
heart to prepare it for the reception of the Divine 
seed, so that there is not a spot beneath the surface 
of which the scattered seed could penetrate and find 
lodgment. The Word of God that falls upon such 
hearts is not only trodden under foot, as Luke adds, 
disappearing from the mind without leaving the least 
traces amid the business and pleasures of life, but it 
is even devoured by the birds. — Then cometh the 
wicked one, and catcheth away that which was 
sown in his heart. What renders the case more 
hopeless, and takes away even a possibility of the 



364 



MATTHEW XIII, 1-23. 



Word germinating there, if perchance a fertilizing 
shower should sink it deeper, is, that besides the evil 
condition of the soil, there is also one watching to 
take advantage of that evil condition, to use every 
weapon that man puts into his hands against man's 
salvation; and he, lest by possibility such a hearer, 
as Luke adds, might believe and be saved, sends his 
ministers in the shape of evil thoughts of unbelief, 
worldly desires, and carnal lusts, and by their help, 
as Mark expresses it, immediately — quickly, and by 
force, like a bird of prey — takes away the Word that 
was sown in their hearts. Even of such as do not 
take the Word to heart, it can be said that it was 
sown in their hearts, since what has been heard lies, 
though not understood, still treasured up in the 
memory, whether man is conscious or unconscious 
of it — This is he which received seed by the 
wayside. It is not without significance that the 
hearer of the Word — on whom the seed falls — is 
identified with the seed sown. As the seed sown 
into the good ground becomes identical with the 
recipient himself, so the loss of the seed involves 
the loss of the careless hearer's eternal life. 

Verses 20, 21. The second class of hearers dif- 
fers widely from the first. They are not indifferent 
to, much less do they oppose, the Word which they 
hear; on the contrary, they receive the truth readily 
and with joy. We have here persons before us who 
are so awakened, affected, and enlightened by the 
Word of God. that they become professors of Chris- 
tianity. The plain and incontrovertible truth of the 
Word and the moral loveliness of its doctrines car- 
ries conviction to their minds; but it is especially 
the sweet and comfortable promises of the Gospel, 
and at times also the temporal advantages accruing 
therefrom, that prove so attractive for them that 
they receive it even with joy, without counting 
the costs, without taking into consideration the con- 
ditions of discipleship. (Luke xiv, 25-33.) Their 
joy is very different from that of the finder of the 
treasure who is willing to deny himself all things, 
and to suffer all things that he might win Christ. 
Moreover, the joy which the Gospel brings is pre- 
ceded by the painful sensation of conviction and 
self-condemnation on account of sin. Man's emo- 
tional nature may easily be excited, but without 
genuine repentance the proud heart remains stony 
ground, into which the seed can not penetrate deep 
enough to strike root. The faith of these persons is 
a mere emotion, or mere logical deduction, or the 
work of the imagination. " This class of hearers," 
says Olshausen, " are either emotional Christians, 
who accept the Gospel as long as they are under its 
sweet, comforting influences, but reject it as soon as 
the old man comes into contact with its demands; 
or fashionable Christians, who remain professors as 
long as it is respectable .to have religion." — Yet 
has he no root in himself. " The having that in- 
ward root here answers to the having a foundation 
on the rock, (Matt, vii, 25,) to the having oil in the 



vessels elsewhere. (Matt, xxv, 4.) And the image 
itself is not an unfrequent one in Scripture. (Ephes. 
iii, 17; Col. ii, 7; Jer. xvii, 8; Hos. ix, 16.) It has 
a peculiar fitness and beauty — for as the roots of a 
tree are out of sight, yet from them it derives its 
firmness and stability, so upon the hidden life of the 
Christian, that life which is out of the sight of other 
men, his firmness and stability depend; and as it is 
through the hidden roots that the nourishment is 
drawn up to the stem and branches, and the leaf 
continues green, and the tree does not cease from 
bearing fruit, even so in the Christian's hidden life, 
that life which 'is hid with Christ in God,' lie the 
sources of his strength and of his spiritual prosper- 
ity. Such a root in himself had Peter, who, when 
many others were offended and drew back, exclaimed, 
' To whom shall we go ? thou hast the words of eter- 
nal life.' (John vi, 68.) This faith that Christ and 
no other had the words of eternal life and blessed- 
ness, was what constituted his root, causing him to 
stand firm when so many fell away. So again when 
the Hebrew Christians took joyfully the spoiling of 
their goods, knowing in themselves that they had 
1 in heaven a better and an enduring substance,' 
(Heb. x, 34,) this knowledge, this faith concerning 
their unseen inheritance, was the root which enabled 
them joyfully to take that loss, and not to draw back 
unto perdition, as so many had done. Compare 2 
Cor. iv, 17, 18, where again the faith in the unseen 
eternal things is the root, which, as St. Paul de- 
clares, enables him to count the present affliction 
light, and to endure to the end. Demas, on the other 
hand, lacked that root. It might at first seem as if 
he would be more correctly ranged under the third 
class of hearers; since he forsook Paul, 'having 
loved this present world.' But when we examine 
more closely what was Paul's condition at Rome at 
the moment when Demas left him, we find it to have 
been one of great outward trial and danger ; so that 
it would seem more probable that the immediate 
cause of his so going back was the tribulation which 
came for the Word's sake." (Trench. ) — For when 
tribulation or persecution arises because of the 
Word. Luke says: in time of temptation. "It is not 
here, as in the last case, that Satan can merely come 
and take the Word out of the heart without further 
trouble; that Word has found some place there, and 
it needs that he bring some hostile influences to bear 
against it. What he brings in the present case are 
outward or inward trials, these being compared to 
the burning heat of the sun. It is true, that gener- 
ally the light and warmth of the sun are used to set 
forth the genial and comfortable workings of God's 
grace, as eminently, (Mai. iv, 2;) but not always, 
for see, besides the passage before us, Ps. cxxi, 6 ; 
Isa. xlix, 10; Rev. vii, 16. As that heat, had the 
plant been rooted deeply enough, would have fur- 
thered its growth, and hastened its ripening, fitting 
it for the sickle and the barn, so these tribulations 
would have furthered the growth in grace of the true 



THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 



365 



Christian, and ripened him for heaven. But as the 
heat scorches the blade which has no deepness of 
earth, and has sprung up on a shallow ground, so 
the troubles and afflictions which would have strength- 
ened a true faith cause a faith which was merely 
temporary to fail." (Trench.) — By and by. Ac- 
cording to the Greek, forthwith, suddenly. As sud- 
denly and superficially as such persons receive the 
Gospel, just as suddenly and capriciously they forsake 
it again. The persecution becomes a stumbling-block 
for them, and in order to justify their fickleness they 
pretend to find fault with the Word. This class of 
Christians is, alas ! even in our days, very numerous ; 
we hear but too often of conversions and professions 
of religion, which are attended with a good deal of 
noise and boasting, but, being neither deep nor gen- 
uine, disappear as rapidly as they were made. 

Verse 22. The third class that received seed 
among the thorns, differs widely from the two pre- 
ceding classes; on the first class the Word made no 
impression whatever; on the second it produced 
transient, superficial effects; but the third class re- 
ceive the Word understandingly into their hearts, 
where it finds a deep ground and strikes deep roots, 
so that neither the birds of the air can devour it nor 
the heat of the sun scorch it. A genuine conversion 
has taken place, and yet there is an evident falling 
away. Though the seed springs up beautifully and 
grows for a while, this growth after a while ceases, the 
life and power of godliness gradually disappears, 
while its outward profession, the name to live, still 
remains. They are, in the end, like the former 
classes, inasmuch as they bear no fruit. The cause 
of this final unfruitfulness is, because they suffer the 
thorns to grow up in their hearts simultaneously 
with the good seed. The latent roots of these thorns 
are in every human heart, just as thorns and thistles 
grow spontaneously in the fields in consequence of 
the fall; Satan need not sow it; as long as man suf- 
fers it to grow in his heart with the good seed, Satan 
may stand by in idleness and yet be sure of final 
success. — And the care op this world and the 
deceitfulness op riches choke the Word and he 
becomes unfruitful. Mark adds: And the lusts of 
other things entering in. The care of this ivorld 
represents the burdensome side of human life, call- 
ing man's attention away from his God ; in the case 
of the poor man's solicitude and anxiety, how he is 
to procure a livelihood for himself and his family. 
Riches represent the other, the alluring, side of 
human life, promising to satisfy the wants of the 
immortal mind by the pleasures and enjoyments of 
this world. Riches are deceitful in many ways: 
they promise to their possessor happiness, which they 
can not impart; in this way they become the object 
of an intense desire, which, while it assumes the ap- 
pearance of a sacred duty to work for one's daily 
bread and to make provision for one's family, en- 
grosses all the faculties of the mind so exclusively 
that every other interest is banished from the soul, 



or receives so little attention that it can not live; 
but even here the delusion does not end; when a 
man sees that his efforts to acquire riches unqualify 
him absolutely for attending to his eternal interests, 
he acquiesces, vainly expecting that riches, when 
once possessed, will afford him the very best chances 
and means to secure his soul's salvation, and to do 
the more good to others. — "Unless the soil of the 
heart be diligently watched, the thorns and briers 
will again grow up apace, and choke the good seed. 
While that which God promises is felt to be good, and 
that which the world promises is felt to be good also, 
and a good of the same kind, instead of a good 
merely and altogether subordinate to the other, there 
will be an attempt made to combine the service of 
the two, to serve God and mammon ; but the attempt 
will be in vain — they who make it will bring no fruit 
to perfection, will fail to bring forth those perfect 
fruits of the Spirit, which it was the purpose of the 
Word of God to produce in them. The Savior warns 
us against the danger which proves fatal to those in 
this third condition of heart and mind, when he says, 
'Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your 
hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunken- 
ness, and cares of this life, and so that day come 
upon you unawares,' (Luke xxi, 34;) and Paul, 
when he writes, 'They that will be rich, fall into 
temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and 
hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and 
perdition.' (1 Tim. vi, 9; see Matt, vi, 25-34.)" 
(Trench.) — That these three phases of the seed 
sown — either not springing up at all, or springing up 
without growing, or growing without bearing fruit — 
represent three phases of the inner life, that of car- 
nal security, of transient awakening, and unfruitful 
conversion, is self-evident. These three classes, how- 
ever, do not exclude each other. A man may belong 
alternately to one or the other of them; he may' 
advance from the first to the third, and fall back 
from the third to the first. If the thorns are suf- 
fered to grow, every new word of God which thou 
hearest will find in thy heart a stony soil, and when 
it has come to this it will not last long till thy heart 
has become a hard beaten way. These three states 
of the heart may also be considered as correspond- 
ing to the three faculties of the mind, intellect, emo- 
tion, and icill, constituting a whole, yet so that in 
different individuals the one or the other of these 
faculties acts as the sole organ of receiving the 
Divine Word ; the first class do not understand the 
Word at all, although they hear it; the second do un- 
derstand it and give their consent, but they do not 
experience in their hearts its renewing power; the 
third both understand it and experience its power, 
but their will does not remain in subjection to it. 
From this point of view the three states of heart 
may be applied to the three principal periods of hu- 
man life; namely, careless, inattentive childhood, 
ardent but inconsistent youth, and ivorldhj-minded, 
selfish manhood,. 



366 



MATTHEW XIII, 1-23. 



Verse 23. But he that received seed into the 
good ground is he that heareth the word and 
tjnderstandeth it, which also beareth fruit. Ac- 
cording to Mark: "Such as hear the Word and re- 
ceive it, and bring forth fruit;" according to Luke: 
" Which in an honest and good heart, having heard 
the Word, keep it and bring forth fruit with patience." 
The right kind of hearing involves, accordingly, un- 
derstanding or receiving; that is, faith, which brings 
forth fruit. What the good ground is we can plainly 
gather from the three kinds of bad soil. The good 
ground is, first, loose, to receive the seed; then deep, 
to protect it against the heat, and lastly, free from 
the roots of thorns, thistles, etc. The honest and 
good heart is thus open for reception, capable of re- 
tention, and pure; that is, sincerely disposed to hold 
the seed sown in patience and self-denial. "But 
how can any heart be called good, before the Word 
and Spirit have made it so? and yet here the seed 
finds a good soil, does not make it. The same ques- 
tion recurs, when the Lord says, 'He that is of God, 
heareth God's words,' (John viii, 41;) and again, 
'Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice.' 
(John xviii, 37.) But who in this sinful world can 
be called 'of the truth;' for is it not the universal 
doctrine of the Bible that men become 'of the truth' 
through hearing Christ's words, not that they hear 
his words because they are of the truth — that the 
heart is good, through receiving the Word, not that 
it receives the Word because it is good? This is 
certainly the Scriptural doctrine, but at the same 
time those passages from John, as well as this pres- 
ent parable, and much more also in the Scripture, 
bear witness to the fact that there are conditions of 
heart in which the truth finds readier entrance than 
in others. 'Being of the truth' — 'doing truth'- — ■ 
having the soil of 'an honest and good heart' — all 
signify the same thing. Inasmuch as they are an- 
terior to hearing God's words — coming to the light — 
bringing forth fruit — they can not signify a state of 
mind and heart in which the truth is positive and 
realized, but they indicate one in which there is a 
receptivity for the truth. No heart can be said to be 
absolutely a good soil, as none is good save God 
only. And yet the Scripture speaks often of good 
men; even so comparatively it may be said of some 
hearts, that they are a soil fitter for receiving the 
seed of everlasting life than others. Thus the ' Son 
of peace ' will alone receive the message of peace, 
(Luke x, 6,) while yet not any thing except the re- 
ception of that message will make him truly a son 
of peace. He was before indeed a latent son of 
peace, but it is the Gospel which first makes actual 
that which was hitherto only potential. So that the 
preaching of the Gospel may be likened to the scat- 
tering of sparks — where they find tinder, there they 
fasten, and kindle into a flame; or to a lodestone 
thrust in among the world's rubbish, attracting to 
itself all particles of true metal, which yet but for 
this would never and could never have extricated 



themselves from the surrounding heap. Not other- 
wise among those to whom the Word of Christ, as 
actually preached by himself, came, there were two 
divisions of men, and the same will always subsist in 
the world. There were first the false-hearted, who 
called evil good and good evil — who loved their dark- 
ness and hated the light that would make that dark- 
ness manifest, and refused to walk in that light of 
the Lord even when it shone round about them, 
drawing back further into their own darkness — self- 
excusers and self-justifiers, such as were for the most 
part the scribes and the Pharisees, with whom Christ 
came in contact. But there were also others, sin- 
ners as well, often, as regards actual transgression of 
positive law, much greater sinners than those first, 
but who yet acknowledged their evil — -had no wish 
to alter the everlasting relations between right and 
wrong — who, when the light appeared, did not refuse 
to be drawn to it, even though they knew that it 
would condemn their darkness — that it would require 
an entire remodeling of their lives and hearts: such 
were the Matthews and the Zaccheuses, all who con- 
fessed their deeds justifying God. Not that I would 
prefer to instance these as examples of the good and 
honest heart, except in so far as it is needful to 
guard against a Pelagian abuse of the phrase, and 
to show how the Lord's language here does not con- 
demn even great and grievous sinners to an inca- 
pacity for receiving the Word of life. Nathanael 
would be a yet more perfect specimen of the class 
here alluded to — ' the Israelite indeed, in whom was 
no guile' — which was saying, in other words, the man 
with the soil of an honest and good heart, fitted for 
i receiving and nourishing the AVord of everlasting 
life, and bringing forth fruit with patience; one of a 
simple, truthful, and earnest nature; who had been 
faithful to the light which he had, diligent in the per- 
formance of the duties which he knew; who had not 
been resisting God's preparation for imparting to 
him his last and best gift, even the knowledge of his 
Son. For we must keep ever in mind that the good 
soil comes as much from God, as the seed which is 
to find there its home. The law and the preaching 
of repentance, God's secret and preventing grace, 
run before the preaching of the Word of the king- 
dom; and thus when that Word comes, it finds some 
with greater readiness for receiving it, as a Word of 
eternal life, than others." Again : " The words 
v/hich Luke records, (v. 18,) ' Take heed therefore 
how ye hear, for whosoever hath to him shall be 
given, and whosoever hath not from Mm shall be 
taken even that which he seemelh to have,' (see also 
Mark iv, 23,) are' very important for the avoiding a 
misunderstanding of our parable, which else might 
easily have arisen. The disciples might have been 
in danger of supposing that these four conditions of 
heart, in which the Word ibund its hearers, were per- 
manent, immutable, and definitively fixed; and there- 
fore that in one heart the Word must flourish, in 
another that it could never germinate at all, in others 



THE PARABLE OF THE TARES AMONG THE WHEAT. 



367 



that it could only prosper for a little while. Now the 
warning, ' Take heed how ye hear,' obviates the pos- 
sibility of such a mistake, for it tells us that, accord- 
ing as the Word is heard and received, will its suc- 
cess be — that while it is indeed true, that all which 
has gone before in a man's life will greatly influence 
the manner of his reception of that Word, for every 
event will have tended either to the improving or de- 
teriorating the soil of his heart, and will therefore 
render it more or less probable that the seed of God's 
Word will prosper there, yet it lies in him now to 
take heed how he hears, and through this taking 
heed to insure, with God's blessing, that it shall come 
to a successful issue. (Com p. Jam. i, 21.) For 
while this is true, and the thought is a solemn one, 
that there is such a thing as laying waste the very 
soil in which the seed of eternal life should have 
taken root — that every act of sin, of unfaithfulness 
to the light within us, is, as it were, a treading of the 
ground into more hardness, so that the seed shall not 
sink in it, or a wasting of the soil, so that the seed 
shall find no nutriment there, or a fitting it to nour- 
ish thorns and briers more kindly than the good 
seed; yet on the other hand, even for those who have 
brought themselves into these evil conditions, a re- 
covery is still, through the grace of God, possible — ■ 
the hard soil may again become soft — the shallow 
soil may become rich and deep — and the soil beset 
with thorns open and clear. For the heavenly seed 



in this differs from the earthly, that the latter as it 
finds its soil, so it must use it, for it can not alter its 
nature. But the heavenly seed, if it be acted upon 
by the soil where it is cast, also reacts more mightily 
upon it, softening it where it is hard, (Jer. xxiii, 29,) 
deepening it where it is shallow, cutting up and ex- 
tirpating the roots of evil where -it is incumbered 
with these, and wherever it is allowed free course, 
transforming and ennobling each of these inferior 
soils, till it has become that which man's heart was 
at first, good ground, fit to afford nourishment to that 
Divine Word, that seed of eternal life." (Trench.) — 
We may add to the above a word from Stier: "The 
sowing on the part of man must correspond to the 
sowing on the part of God. (See Gal. vi, 7; Jer. iv, 
3; Hos. x, 12.) Whoever does not hinder the Heav- 
enly Sower in his work, becomes good ground, that 
bringeth forth its fruit." — Some an hundredfold, 
some sixty, some thirtt. Mark inverts the order, 
and Luke has only "an hundredfold," intimating 
thereby, as Stier thinks, that when ground brings 
forth as much as in its nature it can, this very meas- 
ure, whatever it may be, is counted the highest 
Here, however, we have evidently not the truth pre- 
sented, as in the parable of the talents, that God 
deals out his gifts in various measures to men, but 
the fact stated, that the quantity of the final harvest 
depends on man's faithfulness and active zeal. All 
Christians are not equally fruitful. 



B. THE PARABLE OF THE TARES AMONG THE WHEAT. 
■Verses 24- 30 and 37-43. 

(24) Another parable put lie forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven 
is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field : (25) But while men 
slept, his enemy came and sowed tares : among 2 the wheat, and went his way. 
(26) But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared 
the tares also. (27) So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, 
Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field ? from whence then hath it tares? 
(28) He said unto them, An enemy 3 hath done this. The servants said unto him, 
"Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? 4 (29) But he said, Nay; lest 
while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. (30) Let both 
grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the 
reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them : 
but gather the wheat into my barn. 

(37) He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son 
of man ; (38) the field is the world ; the good seed are the children of the king- 



1 The original of tares is iiiiviov • Latin, lolium ; Ger- 
man, lolch; English, darnel ; a weed growing among 
wheat and other kinds of grain, and at first having a 
close resemblance to them. When ripe it is easily dis- 
tinguished from wheat, the grain being blackish and 
bearded. It is very hurtful both for the brain and the 
stomach. 2 Literally, in the midst of the wheat, mean- 



ing all through. 3 This is an act of malice still practiced 
in India, against which the Roman law also provided. 
Alford says: "The practice is not unknown even in 
England at present. A field belonging to me was mali- 
ciously sown with charlock over the wheat." * To 
gather up for the purpose of burning. This, of course, 
implies that it had to be pulled up first. 



368 



MATTHEW XIII, 24-30; 37-43. 



dom ; but the tares are the children of the wicked one ; (39) the enemy that sowed 
them is the devil ; the harvest is the end of the world ; and the reapers are the 
angels. (40) As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire ; so shall it 
be in the end of this world. (41) The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and 
they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do 
iniquity; (42) and shall cast them into a furnace of fire : there shall be wailing and 
gnashing of teeth. (43) Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the 
kingdom of their Father. "Who hath ears to hear, let him hear. 



Verse 24. The kingdom of heaven is likened 
unto. The kingdom of heaven, by which we have 
here to understand the visible Church, that has for 
its object the reunion of sinful man with God, 
offers the same phenomena as a field. Some deny 
that the Church is to be understood by the field, in- 
asmuch as our Lord himself, in his interpretation, 
says : The field is the world. " But it must be evi- 
dent," says Trench, " to every one who is not warped 
by a dogmatic interest, that the parable is, as the 
Lord announces at its first utterance, concerning the 
kingdom of heaven, or the Church. It required no 
special teaching to acquaint the disciples that in the 
world there would ever be a mixture of good and 
bad, though they must have been so little prepared 
to expect the same in the Church that it was very 
needful to warn them beforehand, both that they 
might not be offended and think the promises of 
God had failed when the evil should appear; and 
also that they might know how to behave themselves 
when that mystery of iniquity, now foretold, should 
begin manifestly to work. Nor need the term world 
here used perplex us in the least. It was the world, 
and therefore was rightly called so, till this seed was 
sown in it, but thenceforth was the world no longer. 
No narrower word would have sufficed for him, in 
whose prophetic eye the Word of the Gospel was con- 
templated as going forth into all lands, and sown in 
every part of the great outfield of the nations." — 
Unto a man. In this parable the sower is exclu- 
sively Christ himself, (v. 37,) who is ever present in 
his field. — Good seed. " At first there might seem 
a slight disagreement between this parable and the 
preceding, as though the same symbol were used in 
the two places to signify very different things; for 
here it is explained, ' The good seed are the children 
of the kingdom,' there, ' The seed is the Word of 
God;' yet in reality there is none, but only a prog- 
ress from that parable to this. In that the Word 
of God is the instrument by which men are born 
anew and become children of the kingdom, (James 
i, 18 ; 1 Pet. i, 23;) the Word there is considered 
more absolutely in and by itself, while here it is con- 
sidered after it has been received into the heart, in- 
corporated with the man, as that which has brought 
him into the position of a child of the kingdom, and 
which is now so vitally united with him that the two 
can not any more be considered asunder. (Compare 



Jer. xxxi, 27; Hos. ii, 23; Zech. x, 9.)" (Trench.) 
By the sowing of this good seed Christ slowly and 
patiently builds up his kingdom. Wherever the 
Word has found its receptive soil and brought forth 
its fruit, the kingdom has its members, exists as a 
society, exists in the world as a Divine institution, as 
the visible Church of Christ. 

Verse 25. But while men slept. " Many have 
made the sleeping of men significant, and suppose 
that it indicates the negligence and lack of watch- 
fulness on the part of rulers in the Church, whereby 
ungodly men should creep in unawares, introducing 
errors in doctrine and in practice. (Acts xx, 29, 30 ; 
Jude, 4; 2 Pet. ii, 1, 2, 19.) But seeing it is thus 
indefinitely put, and the servants, who should have 
watched, if any should have done so, are first desig- 
nated at a later stage of the history, and then with- 
out any thing to mark a past omission on their part, 
it would seem that the men who slept are not such 
as should have done otherwise, but the phrase is 
equivalent to 'at night,' and means nothing further. 
(Job xxiii, 15.) This enemy seized his opportu- 
nity, when all eyes were closed in sleep, and wrought 
the secret mischief upon which he was intent, and, 
having wrought it undetected, withdrew." (Trench.) 
— His enemy came. This enemy, as our Lord tells 
us, (v. 39,) is the devil. These words have justly 
been appealed to as incontrovertibly proving that 
our Lord did not use a figurative speech when he 
spoke of a personal devil; for the devil is mentioned 
not in the parable itself, but in the explanation, 
where the language must be taken in a literal sense. 
"We behold Satan here, not as he works beyond the 
limits of the Church, deceiving the world, but in his 
far deeper skill and malignity, as he at once mimics 
and counterworks the work of Christ : in the words 
of Chrysostom, ' After the prophets, the false proph- 
ets ; ' after the apostles, the false apostles ; after 
Christ, antichrist.' We may further notice with 
what distinctness the doctrine concerning Satan and 
his agency, his active hostility to the blessedness of 
man, of which there is so little in the Old Testa- 
ment, comes out in our Lord's teaching in the New. 
As the lights become brighter the shadows become 
deeper; but till the mightier power of good was re- 
vealed, we were in mercy not suffered to know how 
mighty was the power of evil; and even here it is in 
each case only to the innermost circle of the disci- 



THE PARABLE OP THE TARES AMONG THE WHEAT. 



369 



pies that the explanation concerning Satan is given. 
So it was not till the Son of man actually appeared 
on the stage of the world that Satan came distinctly 
forward upon it also; but the instant that Christ 
opens his ministry for the setting up of the kingdom 
of God, at the same instant Satan starts forward as 
the hinderer and adversary of it, the tempter of him 
who is the Head and Prince of this kingdom. And 
instead of hearing less of Satan, as the mystery of 
the kingdom of God proceeds to unfold itself, in the 
last book of Scripture, that which details the fortune 
of the Church till the end of time, we hear more of 
him, and he is brought in more evidently and openly 
working than in any other. It is very observable, 
too, that Satan is spoken of as Ms enemy, the 
enemy of the Son of man ; for here, as in so many 
other places, the great conflict is spoken of as 
rather between Satan and the Son of man than 
between Satan and God. It was part of the great 
scheme of redemption that the victory over evil 
should be a moral triumph, not a triumph obtained 
by a mere putting forth of superior strength. We 
can see how important for this end it was, that man, 
who lost the battle, should also win it, (1 Cor. xv, 21,) 
and therefore as by and through man the kingdom 
of darkness was to be overthrown, so the enmity of 
the serpent was specially directed against the seed 
of the woman, the Son of man. The title given him 
is ' the wicked one ;' the article is emphatic, and 
points him out as the absolutely evil, of whom the 
ground of his being is evil. For as God is light, 
and in him is no darkness at all, (1 John i, 5; Jam. 
i, 17,) so Satan is darkness, and in him is no light; 
there is no truth in him. Man is in a middle posi- 
tion; he detains the truth in unrighteousness; light 
and darkness in him are struggling; but, whichever 
may predominate, the other is there, kept down, in- 
deed, but still with the possibility of manifesting 
itself. Herein lies the possibility of a redemption 
for man, that his will is only perverted; but Satan's 
will is inverted, for he has said what it is never pos- 
sible for a man to say, or at least fully to act upon, 
'Evil, be thou my good;' and, therefore, as far as we 
can see, a redemption and restoration are impossible 
for him." (Trench.) — And sowed tares among 
the wheat. This attempt of the enemy to frus- 
trate the success of the kingdom of God is neither 
an open one nor is violence employed. He lacks 
the power to pull out the good seed, and for this 
reason he endeavors to ruin the wheat by sowing 
over and above it his darnel. (See foot-note 1.) — 
And went his way. Clandestinely coming to scat- 
ter his seed and clandestinely going away, Satan 
takes especial delight in having his existence de- 
nied. " The words," says Alexander, " would also 
suggest the idea that the work was done, the mis- 
chief was accomplished, and required no further care 
or labor, as the wheat did." 

Verse 26. But when the blade was sprung up, 
and brought forth fruit. The good seed had been 



24 



sown earlier, had struck deep roots, and was so far 
advanced in growth that the tares could not choke it 
any more. This is a consoling feature, from which 
the disciples of all times should learn never to de- 
spair of the Church when they see tares growing up 
with the wheat. — Then appeared the tares also. 
How often in the Church have the beginnings of evil 
been scarcely discernible ! How often has that 
which bore the worst fruit in after times looked at 
first like a higher form of good ! The seed sown by 
Satan, properly and originally, is error. But as 
the seed of the Divine Word, the truth is repre- 
sented as having assimilated those that had received 
it so completely to its own nature that they them- 
selves are called the good seed, the children of God, 
so those also who have received the evil seed of 
Satan are called his children. 

Verse 27. So the servants of the householder 
came ; that is, to the proprietor of the field. The 
superintending servants are the ministers in the 
house of God. They find out what had been done 
without betraying a consciousness of having neg- 
lected their duty. (See v. 25; comp. Luke xvii, 1.) 
— Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? 
from whence then has it tares ? This conversa- 
tion between the master and his servants imparts 
vivacity and increased interest to the whole parable. 
To the first question they do not expect a reply. 
Questions like this are the strongest possible affirma- 
tion ; the second question is that of surprise. They 
are amazed at the presence of the tares in the field. 
"A holy Gospel," says Dr. Kirk, in his lecture on 
this parable, "must produce a holy Church, we 
should naturally infer. The kingdom of God brought 
on earth must at least keep its own territory sepa- 
rate from the domain of darkness. But history in- 
forms us that it is not so; and prophecy announced 
that this was not to be the case. This parable is a 
prophetic declaration that the Church of Christ on 
earth should be an imperfect body. The visible 
Church, or the Church as a body organized on earth, 
has two kinds of imperfection — -the personal defects 
of the regenerated and the membership of unregen- 
erated persons. These imperfections have, in every 
ag , awakened a sincere zeal, and caused also an 
unenlightened and even an impure zeal to engage in 
the work of purification. The design of this parable 
is to enlighten and modify the former, and to strip 
the latter of its plausible argument." 

Verse 28. An enemy has done this. This is the 
uniform answer of the Holy Scriptures. Beyond 
this the Word of God does not go. The origin of 
moral evil, of sin, lies, according to the Scriptures, 
neither with God nor with man, but with the devil. 
This is a decided, solemn protest, on the part of a 
holy God, against having any share in the existence 
of moral evil. Nor lies the origin of moral evil 
with man. Before he abused his free moral agency, 
it had been done by another personality. After the 
first origin of sin the servants do not inquire; be- 



370 



MATTHEW XIII, 24-30; 37-43. 



yond the satanic causality they do not go ; they do 
not ask: Whence is this enemy himself ? hast thou 
not created him? how has he become the devil? To 
these and similar questions the Scriptures return no 
answer. Possibly the angels know more about the 
subject. However, if the origin of sin could be sat- 
isfactorily accounted for, there would be a cause, a 
reason for it. Sin would not be self-originated un- 
reason and causeless perversity. For us it must be 
a source of great consolation that sin did not orig- 
inate with man. — Wilt thou then that we go and 
gather them up? This question of the servants 
expresses their willingness to serve their Master. 
As the tares are in the field without his will and con- 
sent, they are ready to destroy them at once. It is 
well, however, that they consult the Master first; for 
in the kingdom of the Lord nothing must be done 
without the expressly-declared will of the Head. On 
the application of the idea contained in the gather- 
ing up, see below. Here we would say only so much, 
that the word implies the application of force and 
violence in order to destroy the tares at once and 
forever, (see foot-note,) meaning that zeal in religion 
against which the Lord warns his disciples so em- 
phatically. (Luke ix, 54, 55.) 

Verse 29. Nay, lest while te gather up the 
tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. 
Though the Lord, in explaining the parable, does 
not tell us whom we have to understand by the serv- 
ants and by the gathering up, it is obvious that the 
gathering up is one important ingredient in the par- 
able, and it is not difficult to determine what the 
Lord forbids and what he does not forbid, by prohib- 
iting his servants from gathering up the tares. Most 
of the Protestant German commentators infer from 
this prohibition that the Christian Church is not in- 
tended — at least not before the beginning of the mil- 
lennium — to be a community distinguished from the 
world and keeping out wicked and unbelieving per- 
sons; on the contrary, that it is intended to form, as 
all State-Churches do, a commonwealth with the 
world, in order to save the world. In defense of this 
view they contend, 1. As Augustine did against the 
Donatists, " That despite all appearances to the con- 
trary, the Church is a holy body, for they only are 
its members who are in true and living fellowship 
with Christ, therefore partakers of his sanctifying 
Spirit. All others, however they may have the out- 
ward notes of belonging to it, are in it, but not of it: 
they press upon Christ, as that thronging multitude; 
they do not touch him, as that believing woman. 
And they who are thus in it but not of it, whether 
hypocrites lying hid, or open offenders, who from 
their numbers may not without greater evils ensuing 
be expelled, do not defile the true members, so long 
as these share not in their spirit, nor communicate 
with their evil deeds. They are like the unclean 
animals in the same ark as the clean, goats in the 
same pastures with the sheep, chaff on the same barn- 
floor as the grain, tares growing in the same field 



with the wheat, endured for a while, but in the end 
to be separated off, the evil from the good." 2. There 
is danger of rooting up the wheat by gathering up 
the tares, because what are now tares may hereafter 
become wheat, the children of the wicked one may 
become, by repentance and faith, children of the 
kingdom, or because the servants, with the best in- 
tentions, may fail to distinguish between the tares 
and the wheat, leaving the former and uprooting the 
latter. It is only the Lord himself, the searcher of 
hearts, who with absolute certainty knoweth them 
that are his. 3. The intimate connections of men 
with each other by the manifold ties of consanguinity, 
nationality, citizenship, etc., make it impossible to 
make a separation between the wicked and righteous 
on earth without great injury. 4. While many that 
might yet be saved by being permitted to stay in the 
Church, would inevitably be lost by being expelled 
from it, they argue that, on the other hand, the con- 
stant intercourse of the good with the evil affords to 
the former the best opportunity to practice a patient 
love toward offenders, and to prove themselves in this 
way as the true children of God; the discipline which 
this intercourse with the world entails upon them, 
being an excellent means of growth in grace. To 
look upon one's self, they say, as belonging to a society 
or communion consisting exclusivey of saints, is 
calculated to beget uncharitableness and haughtiness, 
while the true Christian by his intercourse with the 
wicked in the visible Church is constantly admon- 
ished to make himself and others better. And 5, 
they maintain, that even if unbelievers and the noto- 
riously wicked were expelled from the Church, the 
congregation of the faithful would thereby not be 
purged from hypocrites, and there would, therefore, 
still be a mixture of good and evil in the Church. — 
This last-named argument contains, indeed, an in- 
controvertible truth, and the preceding ones have 
their weight, in so far as they are directed against 
the palpably-erroneous views of those who wish to 
make the Church in its visible form and historic 
manifestation, identical and coextensive with the 
true Church which the Lord knoweth and not man. 
But if the exclusion of notoriously-wicked persons 
from out of the Church were interdicted by the pro- 
hibition in the parable, it would be in direct contra- 
diction with the express command of the Lord, 
(Matt, xviii, 15-18,) as well as with the practice and 
teaching of the apostles in their epistles. (See 1 
Cor. v, 11, 13; Tit. iii, 10; 2 John x.) All these 
passages teach plainly that those who hold funda- 
mental errors or lead unholy lives, are to be excom- 
municated till they renounce their errors and give 
unmistakable signs of genuine repentance and refor- 
mation of life. (2 Tim. ii, 25, 26.) This is a solemn 
duty of every evangelical Church that wishes to stand 
on the basis of the apostles. This excommunica- 
tion, for which we contend, does not debar the of- 
fender from heaven nor from the use of all means 
of grace on earth. He may, yea, he is desired 



THE PARABLE OF THE TARES AMONG THE WHEAT. 



371 



to come regularly to Church, to listen to the preach- 
ing of God's Word, to attend all the means of grace, 
that he may be reawakened and return to his Sav- 
ior — he is merely debarred from the communion 
table and the exercise of the privileges of a Church 
member, till he seeks and obtains readmission into 
the communion of the faithful. Such exercise of 
Church discipline can extend only to errors in doc- 
trine and an outwardly-wicked life ; the decision 
whether others that do not fall under either of 
these categories are true children of God, must be 
left with the Lord, the Searcher of the heart. (Comp. 
Matt, xxii, 1-14.) From all this it is evident that 
our parable justifies by no means the view that the 
Church of Christ is not intended to be a community 
separate from the world and carefully keeping out 
of its pale all wicked and unbelieving persons, and 
we must, accordingly, seek another solution of the 
prohibition in question. We have to understand by 
the " gathering up" proposed by the servants, a rooting 
up, a destruction, not of the principle of evil, but of 
persons, a judicial sentence passed upon the offender, 
involving capital punishment as denounced in the 
Old Testament against false prophets and blasphem- 
ers, or at least a total and final exclusion from the 
pale of the Church; in short, every sentence of con- 
demnation that encroaches upon the final decision 
reserved by Christ to himself. Against every such 
abuse of Church power the Lord warns here, while 
he beholds with prophetic ken the Church of all cen- 
turies up to the end of time. But, alas! the Church 
has disregarded the Master's warning, and has "gath- 
ered up," though forbidden by the Lord. Even 
Protestants, even those that are entitled to the ap- 
pellation of servants of the householder, have advo- 
cated the use of civil force in matters of religion, 
and have claimed for magistrates the right to destroy 
with fire and sword the offenders against Church 
doctrine or discipline. But it is above all others the 
Church of Rome that has daringly set at naught this 
prohibition of the Lord, yea, in order to fill the cup 
of her wickedness this apostate Church has even ap- 
pealed to this very prohibition as a sanction of her 
bloody persecutions, as if heretics might be punished 
in any way perfectly consistent with this prohibition, 
provided only that it is done in such a manner as 
not to hurt "the faithful;" that is, the members of 
her own communion. In this sense, says Thomas 
Aquinas, "This prohibition is only binding when 
there is danger of pulling up wheat with the tares." 
And Maldonatus adds, "That in each particular case 
the Pope, the representative of the householder, is 
to judge whether there be such danger or not." But 
what a fearful judgment is in store for those that 
iave defied the Master's command, either shedding 
innocent blood or shortening the time of probation 
of actual unbelievers! (Comp. Rev. vi, 9, 10.) In 
every attempt to gather up the tares, in the sense 
described, the servants are not commissioned by the 
Lord, but by Satan, and there is in this case no 



danger for the tares. "It is," as Bengel remarks, 
"not wheat making war on tares, but tares seeking 
to root out wheat." The spirit of persecution is 
never from the Lord. — Of the principle embodied 
in this verse Owen makes the following general and 
practical application: "The tares were injurious to 
the wheat, but not so much so as the loosening of 
the roots occasioned by pulling up the tares. Here 
were two evils, one which was to be endured for a 
season, lest the other and greater should take place. 
This was the decision of the householder, who, in 
this similitude, represents Jesus Christ. This prin- 
ciple, that of two evils the less is to be preferred — 
not for its own sake, but relatively — is in accordance 
with the teachings of Christ, as well as with common- 
sense, and is of frequent application in reforming 
the abuses of society. The hot-headed and intem- 
perate zeal of some would lead them to the imme- 
diate eradication of social evils, without any thought 
as to the consequences. But a wise reformer will 
always consider well the effect of every measure 
upon the prosperity and perpetuity of organizations 
that are to be left untouched, as essential to the well- 
being of the community." 

Verse 30. Let both grow together until the 
harvest. " In these words," says Trench, " the true 
doctrine concerning antichrist, not indeed the per- 
sonal antichrist, but the antichristian power, is im- 
plicitly declared. We learn that evil is not, as so 
many dream, gradually to wane and to disappear be- 
fore good, the world before the Church, but is ever 
to develop itself more fully, even as, on the other 
side, good is to unfold itself more and more mightily 
also. Thus it will go on, till at last they stand face 
to face, each in its highest manifestation, in the per- 
sons of Christ and of antichrist; on the one hand, 
an incarnate God; on the other, the man in whom 
the fullness of all satanic power will dwell bodily. 
Both are to grow, evil and good, till they come to a 
head, till they are ripe, one for destruction, arid the 
other for full salvation." This is the basis on which 
Premillenarians build their views. They contend 
that the simultaneous and equal development of evil 
and good, represented by the growing together of the 
tares and wheat unto the harvest, can not be assumed 
to go on during the millennium, and that, there- 
fore, the millennium will be ushered in by the gath- 
ering up of the tares, typical of and introductory to 
the final judgment after the millennium. Against 
the premillenarian theory Dr. Whedon draws the 
following inferences from our text: "1. We have 
here a very clear contradiction of the millenarian 
theory that there are two resurrections, one of the 
righteous, another of the wicked, a thousand years 
apart. 2. We have also a very express condemna- 
tion of the doctrine that God will first destroy the 
wicked, and allow the saints to reign on the earth 
a thousand years before the final judgment. The 
wicked and the righteous will both continue unde- 
stroyed during the time of probation. This belongs 



372 



MATTHEW XIII, 24-30; 37-43. 



to the very nature of probation. 3. Nor does this 
parable contradict the doctrine that men will be gen- 
erally converted for ages before the judgment. It is 
destruction, not conversion, that the parable intends 
to deny. Men will be permitted to be wicked even 
in the millennium. They will be of the same de- 
praved nature as now. Only the main mass will be 
saints by conversion and sanctification." To these 
inferences the premillenarians would reply that their 
theory implies only the impotency, not the impos- 
sibility of moral evil during the millennium, and 
that unless Satan be bound, and the growth of the 
tares in the midst of the wheat be thereby prevented 
a considerable length of time before the final judg- 
ment, nothing like the millennium will precede this 
final catastrophe. 

Verse 39. The harvest is the end of the 
world. The word rendered world is not koct/zoc — 
the universe or planetary system — -but ali>v — a period 
or age of the world, "a state or order of things." 
The premillenarians understand here by the term 
ike world that period or dispensation which termin- 
ates with the visible coming of Christ to establish his 
millennial reign on earth, with which event they con- 
nect the resurrection of the righteous. (Matt, xxiv, 
29; Luke xxi, 24.) That the phrase the end of the 
world may mean the end of a certain limited period 
we do not deny. But it can not be denied, ou the 
other hand, that it may as legitimately designate the 
end of the whole period allotted to the world's his- 
tory up to the final judgment. The question whether 
the second coming of Christ will take place before 
the millennium, for the purpose of establishing his 
reign on earth, or after the millennium, for the pur- 
pose of the final judgment, the reader will find dis- 
cussed in chap, xxiv, and other passages which di- 
rectly refer to this subject. — And the reapers are 
[the] angels. The definite article is not in the 
original. Angels, as spirits of a higher order than 
man, are not subject to frailties and errors. 

Verse 40. As the tares are gathered and 

BURNED IN THE FIRE, SO SHALL IT BE IN THE END OF 

this world. The gathered tares shall be burned 
with fire. Yet by this burning— in the original 
xaieiv, and the stronger Karaica'ieiv, (vs. 30 and 40) — 
we have not to understand annihilation, but burn- 
ing, suffering pain from fire in hell. (John xv, 6; 
Matt, xxv, 46.) The same is said also of the land 
that beareth briers and thorns, (see Heb. vi, 8,) and 
David says, (2 Sam. xxiii, 6, 7 :) "The sons of Belial 
shall be all of them as thorns thrust away, and shall 
be utterly burned with fire in the same place." 

Verse 41. The Son of man shall send forth 
his angels. Though then in a state of humiliation, 
our Lord does not hesitate to call angels his serv- 
ant _All things that offend, and them which 
DO iniquity. (Compare Job xxxviii, 13; Zeph. 
i, 3.) Those that were above called the children 
of the wicked one and have remained such, are 



now divided into two classes: 1. ~ZK.avSa.la. ren- 
dered " things that offend," may be applied to per- 
sons, as in Matt, xvi, 23. By this term the Lord des- 
ignates all false doctrines and pernicious principles 
and their abettors and propagators. 2. Workers of 
iniquity, all that have disgraced the Church by 
wicked lives. 

Verse 42. And shall cast them into a furnace 
of fire ; there shall be wailing and gnashing of 
teeth. The term furnace of fire must be here un- 
derstood literally; it means not hades, but gehenna, 
the lake of fire, (Matt, xxv, 41; Rev. xix, 20; xx, 
15,) the place of punishment for those on whom the 
second death has power. (Rev. xx, 6 ; xxi, 8. ) The 
punishment of hell is here represented under the 
similitude of the most fearful punishment which can 
possibly be inflicted; it was in use among the Chal- 
deans. "The furnace of fire," says Lange, "into 
which the wicked are cast, forms a contrast to that 
one into which the servants of Jehovah were cast. 
(Dan. iii.) Out of this fiery furnace resounded the 
loud song of praise; from out of that one will be 
heard the wail of anguish and despair, the gnashing 
of teeth from impotent rage." No words could pos- 
sibly express the nature of these intense sufferings 
more forcibly than those used here. 

Verse 43. Then shall the righteous shine forth 
as the sun, in the kingdom of their father. " as 
fire was the element of the dark and cruel kingdom 
of hell, so is light of the pure heavenly kingdom. 
Then, when the dark hindering element is removed, 
shall this element of light which was before strug- 
gling with and obstructed by it, come forth in its full 
brightness. (See Col. iii, 3; Rom. viii, 18; Prov. 
xxv, 4, 5.) A glory shall be revealed in the saints: 
it shall not merely be brought to them, and added 
from without; but rather a glory which they before 
had, but which did not before evidently appear, shall 
burst forth and show itself openly, as did the Lord's 
hidden glory once in the days of his flesh, at the 
moment of his transfiguration. That shall be the 
day of the manifestation of the sons of God; they 
shall shine forth as the sun when the clouds are 
rolled away, (Dan. xii, 3:) they shall evidently ap- 
pear and be acknowledged by all as the children of 
light, of that God who is 'the Father of Lights.' 
(Jam. i, 17 ) And then, but not till then, shall be 
accomplished those glorious prophecies which are so 
often repeated in the Old Testament — -'Henceforth 
there shall no more come into thee the uncircum- 
cised and the unclean.' (Isa. Iii, 1.) 'In that day 
there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of 
the Lord of Hosts.' (Zech. xiv, 21.) 'Thy people 
also shall be all righteous.' (Isa. Ix, 21; comp. 
Isa. xxxv, 8; Joel iii, 17; Ezek. xxxvii, 21-27; 
Zeph. iii, 13.)" (Trench.) — Who has ears to hear 
let him hear. A most appropriate warning at the 
close of such an announcement on the future state 
of the righteous and the wicked. 



THE PAKABLE OF THE MUSTARD-SEED. 



373 



C. THE PARABLE OP THE MUSTARD-SEED. 
"Verses 31, 33. (Compare Mark it, 30-34; Luke xiii, 18, 19.) 

(31) Another parable put lie forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven 
is like to a grain of mustard-seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field :' 
(32) which indeed is the least of all seeds : but when it is grown, it is the greatest 
among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in 
the branches thereof. 



Verse 31. The close internal connection between 
this and the preceding parables is evident. In the 
parable of the sower the disciples had heard that 
three parts of the seed sown perished, and only a 
fourth part prospered; in that of the tares, that even 
the seed fallen on good ground had to encounter new 
hinderances. Lest they should be tempted quite to 
lose heart and to despair, the Lord spoke this parable 
and the one that follows, as if saying to them: My 
kingdom will survive these losses and surmount these 
hinderances, till, small as its first beginnings may 
appear, it will, like a mighty tree, fill the earth with 
its branches, and, like potent leaven, diffuse its influ- 
ence through all the world. Thus this parable belongs 
to those prophecies of Christ that have already found 
in part a glorious fulfillment, and are in part being 
daily fulfilled in the progressive evangelization of 
the heathen world. " The comparison which he uses, 
likening the growth of his kingdom to that of a tree, 
was one with which many of his hearers may have 
been already familiar from the Scriptures of the Old 
Testament. The growth of a worldly kingdom had 
been set forth under this image, (Dan. iv, 10-12; 
Ezek. xxxi, 3-9;) that also of the kingdom of God. 
(Ezek. xvii, 22-24; Ps. lxxx, 8.) But why, it may 
be asked, is a mustard tree here chosen as that with 
which the comparison shall be made ? Many nobler 
plants, as the vine, or taller trees, as the cedar, 
might have been named. But this is chosen, not 
with reference to its ultimate greatness, but with 
reference to the proportion between the smallness of 
the seed and the greatness of the plant which unfolds 
itself from thence. For this is the point to which 
the Lord calls especial attention — not its greatness 
in itself, but its greatness when compared with the 
seed from whence it springs; since what he desired 
to set before his disciples was, not merely that his 
kingdom should be glorious, but that it should be 
glorious, despite its weak and slight and despised be- 
ginnings. Nor can I, with a modern interpreter, 
find any thing so very ridiculous in the supposition, 
that the Savior chose this seed on account of further 
qualities which it possessed, that gave it a peculiar 
aptness to illustrate the truth which he had in hand. 
Its heat, its fiery vigor, the fact that only through 
being bruised it gives out its best virtues, and all this 
under so insignificant an appearance, and in so small 



a compass, may well have moved him to select this 
image under which to set forth the destinies of the 
Word of the kingdom — of the doctrine of a crucified 
Redeemer, which, though to the Greeks foolishness, 
and to the Jews a stumbling-block, should prove to 
them that believed the power of God unto salvation." 
(Trench.) — The kingdom of heaven is like to a 
grain of mustard-seed. The planting and expan- 
sion of the kingdom of heaven offer the same phe- 
nomena as the growth of a grain of mustard-seed. 
"It is not Christ's doctrine merely, nor yet even the 
Church which he planted upon earth, that is signified 
by this grain of mustard-seed. He is himself the 
grain of mustard-seed. For the kingdom of heaven, 
or the Church, was originally inclosed in him, and 
from him unfolded itself, having as much oneness of 
life with him as the tree with the seed in which it 
was originally shut up, and out of which it grew. 
He is at once the sower and the seed sown ; for by a 
free act of his own will, he gave himself to that 
death, whereby he became the author of life unto 
many; as he himself had said, 'Except a corn of 
wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone ; 
but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.' (John 
xii, 24.)" (Trench, j 

Verse 32. Which is the least of all seeds. 
" These words have often perplexed interpreters, as 
there are many seeds, as of poppy or rue, that are 
smaller ; yet difficulties of this kind are not worth mak- 
ing; it is sufficient to know that — Small as a grain of 
mustard-seed, was a proverbial expression among the 
Jews for something exceedingly minute. (See Luke 
xvii, 6.) The Lord, in his popular teaching, adhered 
to the popular language. — To pass on then to the 
thing signified; what, to the eye of flesh, could be 
less magnificent, what could have less of promise 
than the commencements of the kingdom of God in 
the person of the Son of man? He grew up in a 
distant and despised province; till his thirtieth year 
did not emerge from the bosom of his family — then 
taught for two or three years in the neighboring 
towns and villages, and occasionally at Jerusalem; 
made a few converts, chiefly among the poor and un- 
learned; and then falling into the hands of his ene- 
mies, without an attempt on his own part or his 
followers to release him, died the shameful death of 
the cross : such, and so slight, was the commencement 



374 



MATTHEW XIII, 33-36. 



of the universal kingdom of God. For in this the 
kingdom of God differs from the great schemes of 
this world; these last have a proud beginning, a 
shameful and a miserable end — towers of Babel, 
which at first threaten to be as high as heaven, but 
end in being a deserted and formless heap of slime 
*ind bricks; but the works of God, and most of all 
his great work, his Church, have a slight and unob- 
served beginning, with gradual increase and a glo- 
rious consummation. So is it with his kingdom in 
the world; so is it with his kingdom in every single 
heart. The Word of Christ falls there too, like a 
slight mustard-seed, promising little, but issuing, if 
allowed to grow, in great and marvelous results." 
(Trench.) — But when it is grown, it is the great- 
est among herbs. "It is well known that in hot 
countries, as in Judea, the mustard-tree attains a 
size which it is never known to reach in our colder 
latitudes, sometimes so great as to allow a man to 
climb up into its branches, though this, indeed, is 
mentioned as a remarkable thing; or to ride on 
horseback under them, as a traveler in Chili men- 
tions that he has done." (Trench.) — And becom- 

ETH A TREE, SO THAT THE BIRDS OF THE AIR COME 
AND LODGE IN THE BRANCHES THEREOF. " MaldonatUS 

remarks, that birds are exceedingly partial to the 
seed, so that when it is advancing to ripeness, he has 



often seen them lighting in very great numbers on 
its boughs, which, however, were strong enough to 
sustain the weight without being broken. This fact 
of the fondness of birds for the seeds, and the man- 
ner in which, therefore, they congregated in the 
branches, was probably familiar to our Lord's hear- 
ers also. They, too, had beheld them lodging in the 
branches of the tree, whose seed thus served them 
for meat, so that there must have been a singular 
liveliness in the image which the parable presented 
to their minds. Neither need we suppose this last 
circumstance introduced merely for the purpose of 
completing the picture, and presenting it in a more 
lively manner to the eye; but rather in the birds 
flocking to the boughs of the mustard-tree when it 
had grown great, and there finding shelter and food, 
(Ezek. xvii, 23, 'under it shall dwell all fowl of every 
wing,') we are to recognize a prophecy of the refuge 
and defense that should be for all men in the Church : 
how that multitudes should thither make their resort, 
finding their protection from worldly oppression, as 
well as the satisfaction for all the needs and wants 
of their souls." (Trench.) — The Lord has called 
forth in the heathen world a longing after salvation, 
which admonishes all professors of the religion of 
Jesus to fulfill the last solemn command of Jesus 
Christ. (Matt, xxviii, 18-20; Luke xxiv, 47.) 



D. THE PARABLE OP THE LEAVEN. 



Verses 33-36. (Compare Luke xiii, 20, 21.) 



(33) Another parable spake he unto them : The kingdom of heaven is like unto 
leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures 1 of meal, till the whole 
was leavened. (34) All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables ; 
and without a parable spake he not unto them; (35) that it might be fulfilled 
which was spoken by the prophet, 2 saying, I will open my mouth in parables ; I 
will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundations of the world. 
(36) Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house: and his disci- 
ples came unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field. 



Verse 33. " This parable," says Trench, "relates 
also to the marvelous increase of the kingdom of 
God; but while the preceding one sets forth its out- 
ward, visible manifestation, this declares its hidden, 
mysterious working, and not merely its development 
from within itself, but its influence on the world 
which it touches upon all sides. The mustard-seed 
does not for some while attract observation, nor, till 
it has grown to a considerable size, do the birds of 
the air light upon its branches; but the active work- 
ing of the leaven has been from the very beginning, 
from the moment that it was hidden in the lump." 



While the parable of the mustard-seed describes the 
small beginnings and the external enlargement of 
the visible Church by the spread of the Gospel, that 
of the leaven sets forth the power which the Gospel 
of the grace of God has to penetrate, to transform 
or assimilate the heart of man individually, and hu- 
man society as a whole. We must, however, not 
overlook that when the renewing power of the Gos- 
pel is represented as complete in its effects, this can 
be understood only relatively with regard to those 
who do not resist its influence — a fact of which the 
parable of the sower treats. On the nature of the 



1 This is the quantity that was generally mixed at 
once. (Gen. xviii, 6; Judges vi, 19; 1 Sam. i, 24.) The 
measure was the Roman modius, the third part of an 



epha. 2 The Psalms are reckoned with the writings of 
the prophets, and the Psalm referred to (Ps. lxxviii, 2) 
is by Asaph, the "seer." (2 Chron. xxix, 30.) 



THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 



375 



regenerating influence, which the Gospel exerts on 
the heart of man, symbolized by the leavening, Dr. 
Kirk in his Lectures on the Parables (pp. 64— 66) 
makes the following remarks, which seem to us to 
point out the way how the Calvinistic and Arminian 
differences on regeneration may be reconciled: "The 
human heart needs a change to fit it for the service 
of God and the blessedness of heaven as really and 
as completely as the mass of meal requires the 
change to make it into bread, and the power to pro- 
duce that great change is foreign to the heart itself. 
But the change needed, radical as it is, is not a lit- 
eral creation. The analogy may not be pressed as a 
theological argument ; yet it holds strictly true that 
it was not the creation of meal that the leaven 
should accomplish, but simply its transformation. 
If it were a literal re-creation, then personal identity 
would be destroyed. But the regenerated man is 
conscious that he is a new man, not in the sense of 
being another man, but a radically-altered man. 
There is not a new faculty, but a radical change in 
the employment of his faculties. At every step of 
the process he is conscious that it is he himself that 
is undergoing a change. He has not a new con- 
science, but the old one awakened. Dormant sensi- 
bilities are aroused. New thoughts, new feelings, 
new purposes occupy the soul ; but they are all in 
his soul, the very same he always had. A believer is 
not an animal made into a man, but a man morally 
changed." — With regard to the application of the 
parable to the penetrating of the whole mass of hu- 
manity Alford remarks : " It is witnessed in the ear- 
lier ages by the dropping of heathen customs and 
worship. In modern times it is more gradually and 
secretly advancing, but still to be plainly seen in the 
various abandonments of criminal and unholy prac- 
tices — as, e. g., of slavery and dueling and the in- 
creasing abhorrence of war among Christian men — 
and, without doubt, in the end, to be signally and 
universally manifested. But this effect is not to be 
traced in the establishment or history of so-called 
Churches, but in the hidden advancement, without 
observation, of that deep leavening power which 
works irrespective of human forms and systems." — 
The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven ; that 
is, its effects are like those produced by leaven. 
Leaven is frequently used in the New Testament as 
an emblem of an efficient force in a bad sense. The 
Lord warns his disciples against the injurious leaven 
of the Pharisees. In Gal. v, 9, leaven signifies false 
doctrines; in 1 Cor. v, 6, it is compared with the 
pernicious influences of bad examples. Some have, 
therefore, interpreted the parable as a prophecy of 
the heresies and corruptions which should mingle 
with and adulterate the pure doctrine of the Gospel. 
But this interpretation deserves no serious refuta- 
tion. We are fully authorized to use the same thing, 
in one respect, as an emblem of something good, in 
another as that of something bad. Examples of 
this kind are frequent in the Scriptures. Thus the 



lion is (1 Pet. v, 8) an emblem of Satan and (Rev. 
v, 5) an emblem of Christ. The serpent is likewise 
an emblem of Satan and an emblem of apostolic 
wisdom. Birds are the emblem of firm trust in God 
and emblems of the wicked one, who snatches up 
the seed sown on the wayside. By the leaven we 
have to understand the Word of the kingdom, which 
Word, in its highest sense, Christ himself was. The 
leading point of comparison is the assimilating 
power of leaven, and that rests on the affinity which 
leaven has to meal. We are reminded, by this trait, 
of the incarnation of the Son of God, on which the 
renewal of the human race fundamentally rests, and 
of the fact that each portion of the leavened meal 
becomes leaven in turn, which accounts for the leav- 
ening of the whole lump. Christ imparted his own 
life and spirit to his apostles, and so the power of 
the Gospel passed over from them to others, pro- 
ducing in individuals and in the race that salutary 
ferment which results in a new, radically-changed 
life, every new convert being a leaven for others. 
On the other hand, though the leaven has an affinity 
to the meal, it is a foreign agent brought to supply a 
want, in the material needing to be changed. The 
woman does not find the leaven in the meal, but 
takes it from elsewhere to mingle it therein. " Thus 
the Gospel is not the unfolding of any powers which 
already existed in the world — a kingdom not rising, 
as those other kingdoms, out of the earth, (Dan. 
vii, 17,) but a new power brought into the world 
from above; not a philosophy, but a revelation. 
The Gospel of Christ was a new and quickening 
power cast in the midst of an old and dying world, 
a center of life round which all the energies which 
survived and all which itself should awaken might 
form and gather, by the help of which the world 
might be renewed." (Trench.) — Which a woman 
took. The making up of dough being generally 
attended to by women, it is very natural that the 
parable speaks of a woman. Yet without unwar- 
rantably allegorizing, we may see in the woman the 
emblem of the Church. " The organ of the Spirit's 
working is the Church, which evidently would be 
most fitly represented under this image. In and 
through the Church the Spirit's work proceeds; 
only as he dwells in the Church is it able to mingle 
a nobler element in the mass of humanity, to leaven 
the world." (Trench.) — And hid. "It is observ- 
able that this leaven is said not merely to have been 
mingled with but hidden in the mass, on which its 
influence was to be exerted. The true renovation, 
that which God effects, is ever thus from the inward 
to the outward; it begins in the invisible spiritual 
world, though it ends not there; for beginning there, 
it yet fails not to bring about, in good time, a mighty 
change also in the outward and visible world. This 
was wonderfully exemplified in the early history of 
Christianity. The leaven was effectually hidden. A 
remarkable evidence of this is the entire ignorance 
which heathen writers betray of all that was going 



376 



MATTHEW XIII, 44. 



forward a little below the surface of society — the 
manner in which they overlooked the mighty change 
which was preparing, and this not merely at the first, 
when the mustard-tree might well escape notice, but, 
with slight exceptions, even up to the very moment 
when the triumph of Christianity was at hand. The 
leaven was hidden, yet, by degrees, it made itself 
felt, till at length the whole Roman world was, more 
or less, leavened by it." (Trench.) — -In three 
measures of meal. Some expositors refer the 
number three to the spread of the Gospel in the 
three then known parts of the world, Europe, Asia, 
and Africa; others to the three ancestors of the whole 
postdiluvian race, which is to be regenerated by the 
power of the Gospel. Whatever is human can be 
reached by the Gospel. Distinctions in the human 
family, which time, climate, customs, or any other 
causes have introduced, give way before the Gospel. 
It is the power of God unto salvation to the white 
and the black, to the Greek and the barbarian, the 
learned and the unlearned, the rich and the poor. 
Whatever condition or relation of man Christianity 
lays hold of, it transforms. — In the case of the indi- 
vidual man the number three very naturally suggests 
the three constituent parts of man, soul, spirit, and 
body, or the three principal faculties of man, the in- 
tellect, the will, and the emotions. The Gospel is 
destined to lay hold of and transform the whole 
man. — Till the whole was leavened implies, 
under the condition of the cooperation on the part 
of man, a twofold promise — first, that the Gospel 
will diffuse its purifying power through all nations ; 
secondly, that whoever will welcome the offer of spir- 
itual life admits, by such consent, into his soul an 
element all divine, of sufficient virtue to make him 
a partaker of the Divine nature and save him to the 
uttermost. (1 Thess. v, 23, 24; 2 Thess. iii, 3.) 

Verse 34. And without a parable spake he not 
unto them. This seemingly-unqualified phrase of 



the Evangelist some commentators explain by giving 
to the imperfect tense the meaning of repeated ac- 
tion, which it has in Greek — translating, "he was 
accustomed to speak, spoke usually." But it can 
hardly be said that our Lord's teaching was usually 
parabolic in the proper sense. Alexander says, the 
Evangelist meant to say that our Lord confined him- 
self to parables on this "particular occasion. It is 
better to take the term " parable " here in a wider 
sense, as Trench remarks: " He gave no doctrine in 
an abstract form, no skeletons of truth, but all 
clothed, as it were, with flesh and blood. He acted 
himself as he declared to his apostles they must act, 
if they would be scribes instructed unto the kingdom, 
and able to instruct others; he brought forth out of 
his treasure things new and old : by the help of the 
old he made intelligible the new; by the aid of the 
familiar he introduced them to that which was 
strange; from the known he passed more easily to 
the unknown. And in his manner of teaching he 
has given us the secret of all effectual teaching — of 
all speaking which shall leave behind it, as was said 
of one man's eloquence, stings in the minds and 
memories of the hearers. Had our Lord spoken 
naked spiritual truth, how many of his words, partly 
from his hearers' lack of interest in them, partly from 
their lack of insight, would have passed away from 
their hearts and memories, leaving scarcely a trace 
behind them!" 

Verse 35. The words which are quoted by the 
Evangelist from Ps. lxxviii, contain no direct proph- 
ecy, but refer to a fact, which was intimately con- 
nected with the functions of the prophetic office, and 
thus indicated that which could not be wanting in 
the person of Him, in whom all the prophetic gifts 
were to be revealed most fully. The use, therefore, 
of such parabolic language indicating the possession 
of the prophetic gift was a typical prophecy, which 
Christ fulfilled. 



E. THE PARABLE OP THE TREASURE HID IN A FIELD. 
"Verse 44. 

(44) Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field ; l the 
which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth 
all that he hath, and buyeth that field. 



The relation which the parables of the hidden 
treasure and the pearl of great price bear to the 
preceding parables, is thus described by Trench: 
"The kingdom of God is not merely a general, it is 
also an individual thing; it is not merely a tree over- 
shadowing the earth, leaven leavening this world, 
but each man must have it for himself, and make it 



his own by a distinct act of his own will. He can 
not be a Christian without knowing it. He may 
come under the shadow of this great tree, and par- 
take of many blessings of its shelter. He may dwell 
in a Christendom which has been leavened, and so 
in a manner himself share in the universal leaven- 
ing. But more than this is needed. There must be 



1 In the old countries, which were subject to so fre- 
quent invasions, revolutions, and calamities of various 
kinds, treasures were often buried in the earth for safe- 



keeping. This practice is still common in the East. 
Treasures are also found under the ruins of cities buried 
by earthquakes. 



THE PARABLE OF THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 



377 



a personal appropriation of the benefit, and we have 
the history of this in the two parables." Both were 
snoken to the disciples alone. These are addressed 
as the happy persons who found the highest treasure, 
and are reminded that for its sake every thing else 
is to be joyfully renounced. 

"A man, laboring perchance for another, or by 
accident in passing, finds a treasure which has been 
hidden in a field; from joy at having found it he 
goes, and selling all he has, buys the field, thus, by 
the Jewish law, becoming the possessor also of the 
treasure. This sets before us the case of a man who 
unexpectedly, without earnest seeking, finds, in some 
part of the outward Church, the treasure of true faith 
and hope and communion with God; and having 
found this, for joy of it he becomes possessor, not of 
the treasure without the field — for that the case sup- 
poses impossible — but of the field at all hazards, to 
secure the treasure which is in it; that is, he pos- 
sesses himself of the means of grace provided in 
that branch of the Church, where, to use a common 
expression, he has 'gotten his goods;' he makes that 
field his own." (Alford.) 

In a field. The field in this parable does not 
mean the whole world, but only that portion of it 
where the Christian religion is established, conse- 
quently the visible Church with her outward means 
of grace. German commentators understand by the 
field nominal, lifeless Christendom, which hides true, 
genuine Christianity under the incumbrances of an 
outward profession, superstition, traditions, and un- 
meaning ceremonies. But this view is certainly in- 
admissible, because the field itself had to be bought. 
The treasure is not on the surface, it remains con- 
cealed from the carnal eye. The world finds no 
treasure in either Church or Bible. 

The which when a man has found. The treas- 
ure is found; of a previous seeking nothing is said, 
as the object of the parable is not to set forth the 
duty of man in this respect. God in his unmerited 
mercy and grace often finds us when and where we 
have not sought him. (Is. lxv, 1.) How frequently 
is it the case that a man's eyes are opened to see 



the preciousness of religion, by an instrumentality 
entirely unexpected and apparently inadequate ! 

He hideth. This hiding of the treasure merely 
indicates an apprehension on the part of the finder 
to lose it again, and in order not to lose it, he hides 
or conceals it. 

And for joy thereof, etc. The finder of the 
treasure has every thing, for he has Christ, and in 
Christ righteousness, life, and supreme happiness. 
How natural is, therefore, the joy that is necessarily 
connected with the possession of the kingdom of 
God in the heart! (Comp. Rom. xiv, 17.) Express 
mention is made here of "joy," by virtue of which 
the finder is enabled to go and sell every thing that 
he has. All that was dear to him before, he now 
surrenders cheerfully; as, for instance, the avaricious 
man his avarice, the sluggard his laziness, the volup- 
tuary his pleasures, the philosopher his self-reliance, 
etc. The same principle is laid down in Matt, x, 
37-39; xvi, 24; Mark ix, 43-48; Luke xiv, 33; 
Phil, iii, 8. The choice is not difficult — the best is 
retained. In the storm the mariner throws all his 
goods overboard, in order to save his life. Self- 
denial, in this case, is neither a heavy yoke nor bitter 
cup. Where new buds and blossoms issue forth, the 
faded leaves drop of their own accord. 

And buteth that field. As this finder of the 
treasure saw at first in the field only the property of 
another, something not his 0"wn, and took, therefore, 
no special interest in it, but makes up his mind as 
soon as he discovers the treasure, to purchase the 
field for any price; so the man that has found the 
hidden treasure, the grace of God in Christ, sees at 
once that he has no claims on the treasure hidden in 
the Church, without being a member of it and a 
participant of all its means of grace. The treasure 
and the field, Christ and the means of grace in his 
Church, belong together. A man can not have 
Christ in the heart, and at the same time cast, his lot 
with the world. The public confession of Christ in- 
volved in many countries and at various times the 
loss of property, liberty, and even life itself, espe- 
cially in the apostolic age. 



F. THE PARABLE OF THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 
"Verses 4-3, 46. 

(45) Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchantman, seeking goodly 
pearls : (46) who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all 
that he had, and bought it. 



Verse 45. On the relation which this parable 
bears to the preceding, Trench remarks: "The two 
are each the complement of the other; so that under 
one or the other, as finders either of the pearl or hid 
treasure, may be ranged all who become partakers 
of the rich treasures of the Gospel of Christ. There 
are those who do not discover that there is an aim 
and a purpose for man's life — that there is a truth 



for him at all, till the truth as it is in Jesus is re- 
vealed to them. Such are likened to the finder of 
the hid treasure, who stumbled upon it anawares, 
neither expecting nor looking for it. There are 
others who feel that there must be some absolute 
good for man, in the possession of which he shall be 
blessed, and find the satisfaction of all his longings, 
and who are, therefore, seeking every-where and 



378 



MATTHEW XIII, 47-52. 



inquiring for this good. Such are likened to the mer- 
chant that has distinctly set before himself the pur- 
pose of seeking goodly pearls. To that he is bending 
all his energies; his search is, therefore, determinate, 
discriminative, unremitting." We may also remark 
that there is a gradation in the image used to set 
forth the surpassing value of the kingdom of God. 
Pearls have always been considered as articles of 
the very highest value; almost incredible sums of 
money have been given for a single pearl. But it 
requires great care and skill to distinguish genuine 
and perfect pearls from defective ones. In both 
respects there is peculiar fitness in representing the 
value of religion by a pearl. — Seeking goodly 
pearls. Setting out on his search he does not know 
that there is one pearl surpassing all others. But 
he is seeking pearls, not husks. He is not living for 
sensual objects, carnal pleasure, worldly fame, acqui- 
sition of money. He has nobler and worthier aims. 
He is conscious that he has an immortal soul which 
needs spiritual food; his understanding longs for 
truth, his heart for peace, and for power to overcome 
sin. He may be " a philosopher, a philanthropist, or 
a worshiper of the beautiful in nature or art, hoping 
to find his soul's satisfaction in those higher posses- 
sions and enjoyments." Knox understands by the 
seekers of precious pearls such as have been trained 
in religion from their infancy. — Richter in his 
" .funis bi be!" applies this parable to "times and cir- 
cumstances, when religion attracts general attention 
from friends and foes, and appears in various forms, 
for which reason great care is necessary in order to 



make the best selection, and a willingness to give up 
every thing that comes into conflict with seeking or 
possessing the precious pearl." — Stier says : "The 
nearer we come to the end of the present dispensa- 
tion, the more need there is of care and circum- 
spection ; not only is true Christianity, as it were, 
covered by the general apostasy, but it requires also 
a keen and single eye to discover it amid the many 
conflicting and contradictory creeds, confessions, and 
opinions, in that wild confusion and clamor, preced- 
ing the second coming of the Lord, boasting that 
Christ is here or there, in this chamber, or in that 
desert, amid those many phases of Christianity, each 
of which extols its books, its efforts and zeal, its con- 
fessions and societies." Such applications of the 
parable may be edifying and interesting, but they 
were, certainly, not intended by the Lord. 

Verse 46. When he had pound one pearl of 
great price. By this one pearl we can understand 
nothing else than our blessed Lord himself and our 
personal appropriation of him, by his living in U3 
and we in him. (Gal. ii, 20.) "There is but one 
such pearl — though every one may have that one — 
since the truth is one, even as God is one, and the 
truth possessed brings that unity into the heart of 
man, which sin had destroyed. It is God alone 
in whom any intelligent creature can find its center 
and true repose; only when man has found Mm, 
does the great Eureka break forth from his lips; in 
Augustine's beautiful and often quoted words, 'Lord, 
thou hast made us for thee, and our heart is dis- 
quieted till it reacheth to thee." (Trench.) 



G. THE PARABLE OP THE DRAW-NET. 



"Verses 47'— 5£ 



(47) Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, 1 that was east into the 
sea, and gathered of every kind : (48) which, when it was full, they drew to shore, 
and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away. (49) So 
shall it be at the end of the world : the angels shall come forth,, and sever the 
wicked from among the just, (50) and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there 
shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. (51) Jesus saith unto them, Have ye un- 
derstood all these things ? They say unto him, Yea, Lord. (52) Then said he unto 
them, Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven, is 
like unto a man that is a householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure 
things new and old. 



Verse 47. At the first view this parable seems to 
be identical with that of the " wheat and the tares " — 
yet on a closer examination we find that this is not 
the case ; for the leading idea of the parable of the 
tares is the present mixture of the good and the 



bad — in that of the draw-net their future separation; 
according to the former men are forbidden to make 
this separation, while according to the latter, God 
himself makes it. One shows the gradual develop- 
ment of the Church, the other its final perfection, 



1 The word in the original means a draw-net of great | having been carried oat so as to inclose a large space of 
length. It is leaded below, that it may sweep the bot- sea, the ends are then brought together, and it is drawn 
torn of the sea, and supported with corks above, and ' up upon the beach with all that it contains. 



THE PARABLE OF THE DRAW-NET. 



379 



the gathering of the Church being represented as 
coming to a close, and the final decision forming the 
central idea. We are admonished in this parable, 
that we must not be satisfied with merely being 
caught in the net, but that every member of the 
visible Church ought to strive "to be a vessel unto 
honor, meet for the Master's use, and prepared unto 
every good work." (2 Tim. ii, 20, 21.) The Lord 
knows those that are his. There will be a final sep- 
aration of the righteous and the unrighteous, of the 
holy and the wicked in the Christian Church. (Comp. 
Ps. cxix, 119; Mai. iii, 18.) — The kingdom of 
heaven is like unto a net. The nature of the 
" draw-net," which suffers nothing to escape, is neither 
accidental nor unimportant, but a prophecy on the 
wide spread of the Gospel and the power exerted by 
it. The Church of the New Testament is not con- 
fined to a single nation, as was the Old Testament 
Church, but is intended for all nations of the earth, 
to gather some out of every kindred, and tongue, and 
people, and nation. — And gathered or every kind. 
All men, the wise and the foolish, the learned and 
the unlearned, the rich and the poor, the old and the 
young, masters and servants, men and women, all 
without any distinction or exception, are to be in- 
vited to come into the kingdom of God. (Comp. 
Matt, xxii, 10 ; Acts x, 38, 39.) 

Verse 48. Which when it was full; that is, 
when the work of the Church on earth is completed, 
when the net has been dragged over the whole sea. 
(Comp. Matt, xxiv, 14.) The ocean of the history 
of the world and of the Church has its shores also, 
and there it will become manifest, what has been 
caught and what must be cast away. Since not all 
are transformed by their connection with the visible 
Church, such a separation is absolutely necessary; 
it will take place on the day of the final judgment, 
when the time of probation shall end forever. — 
And gathered the good into vessels, but cast the 
bad away. The gathering is done through human 
instrumentalities. By the fishermen we must under- 
stand the apostles and all the preachers of the Gospel, 
(see Ez. xlvii, 10; Jer. xxvi, 16; Matt, iv, 19; Luke 
v, 10 ;) but the separation is effected by angels. The 
Church, it is true, judges and separates also in the 
onward course of her development, (see 1 Cor. v, 4, 
5 ; Jude, vs. 22, 23,) but the final and complete sep- 
aration is not intrusted into her hands. This sepa- 
ration must come from above; it is accomplished 
and carried out by the angels, (comp. Matt, xiii, 
41 ; xxiv, 31; xxv, 31; Rev. xiv, 18, 19,) so that at 
last the idea of perfect purity, one of the marks of 
the Church, is fully realized: "without are the dogs." 
(Comp. Rev. xxii, 15.) The place of the good is 
here designated "vessels," identical with the "barn," 
(v. 30,) with the "many mansions," (John xiv, 2;) 
the "everlasting habitations," (Luke xvi, 9,) and 
"the city, which has foundations." (Heb. xi, 10.) 

Verse 49. So shall it be at the end of the 
world ; that is, at the close of the Gospel dispensa- 



tion, which is fixed by God, but unknown to created 
intelligences. — - The angels shall come forth. 
When that decisive moment arrives, the angels, hith- 
erto hidden before the eyes of men, shall come forth 
from the throne and the presence of God, and act as 
the executors of God's righteous judgments. 

Verses 51, 52. Yea, Lord. Though the disciples 
did not understand the mysteries of the kingdom at 
that time, as well as afterward, when they received 
the Spirit of promise, (John xvi, 13,) our Lord ac- 
cepts graciously their declaration, because they were 
on the right way of understanding, and he knew that 
their knowledge would be progressive. And in view 
of this he adds, Therefore ; that is, because you 
will understand these things, you will be well-in- 
structed scribes, being able to bring forth things new 
and old. — Every scribe. The Lord contrasts here 
his apostles with the Jewish scribes. (See foot-note 
to chap, ii, 4.) — Which is instructed unto the 
kingdom of heaven — fia-&7}Tev$ei(, enrolled as a dis- 
ciple and taught as such. This implies that no one 
can be a scribe — that is, an official expounder of the 
Scriptures in the kingdom of heaven, namely, the 
Church — without having been disciplined in the 
school of Christ. Only such a one is like unto a 
man that is a householder, or head of the family, 
who has daily to provide the whole family with food 
and the other necessaries of life from his storehouse. 
To the spiritual householder, the New Testament 
scribe, the Scripture is the storehouse, the treasury 
from which he has to draw. The preacher unskilled 
in the Scripture is a shallow babbler; but a mere 
acquaintance with the letter of the Scripture is like- 
wise insufficient; the preacher must have appropri- 
ated to himself the Word of God by a living faith, 
so that what he preaches he bringeth forth out of the 
treasure of his own heart. — Things new and old. 
The new things are significantly placed first. The 
old things must continually become new by new and 
proper applications, and this is invariably the case 
where the truth has become the vital principle in the 
heart. Jesus had just given his disciples an example 
of teaching by his parables. He had given them 
new ideas under old, well-known similitudes, purpos- 
ing, no doubt, to impress them with the importance 
of adapting themselves in their future career, as in- 
structors, to the capacities and wants of their hearers, 
and to connect constantly with the old the charm of 
the new, in order to avoid tedious monotony Just 
as the householder supplies the wants of his family 
with the things laid up in his storehouse, so the min- 
ister of the Gospel must turn to account, use for the 
best interests of others, what knowledge in Divine 
things he has acquired by study and experience. 
(See 2 Tim. ii, 15.) By obeying this injunction a 
preacher of the Gospel will never be in danger of 
exhausting the stock of his knowledge. Whoever 
conscientiously uses for himself and others what he 
has, and diligently gathers in order to give again, 
progresses continually in knowledge. 



380 MATTHEW XIII, 53-58. 



§28. JESUS IS REJECTED AT NAZARETH THE SECOND TIME. 

We meet in this section the question whether we have to understand by the brothers 
and sisters of Jesus, younger children of Mary by Joseph, or not. On this question ex- 
positors will probably never agree. It is, as Andrews observes, affirmatively answered 
by the following modern writers : Neander, Greswell, Wieseler, Alford, Stier, Schaff, 
Meyer, Winer, Ewald,* Lechler, Owen ; negatively by Lange, Olshausen, Lichtenstein, 
Friedlieb, Norton, Sepp, Hug, Thiersch, Alexander, Mill, Ellicott. The expression " the 
brethren of the Lord," or "his brothers and sisters," occurs in Matt, xii, 46-50; xiii, 55, 
56; Mark iii, 31 ; vi, 3 ; Luke viii, 19; John ii, 12; vii, 3, 5, 10; and in Acts i, 14. In all 
these passages, except in John vii, they are in connection with his mother. Paul refers 
to "the brethren of the Lord," (1 Cor. ix, 5,) and calls James "the Lord's brother," 
(Gal. i, 19.) The Lord himself uses the words " my brethren " in Matt, xxviii, 10, and in 
John xx, 17, but evidently in a wider sense, including at least the eleven apostles in 
the term. 

In our comment on Matt, i, 25, we remarked that neither that passage nor the fre- 
quent mention of Jesus' brethren necessarily requires us to infer Mary had children by 
Joseph. There is, indeed, in this inference nothing that would reflect in the least on the 
character of Mary or the dignity of Jesus; but Lange makes the following ingenious 
objection: "A personality, such as Jesus was, generally exerts a controlling influence on 
the younger members of the family. If, therefore, Jesus had younger brothers, we might 
expect that they would espouse his cause enthusiastically. But the very reverse is the 
case. The brothers of Jesus appear, at a very early period, to hold an antagonistic Jew- 
ish position to whatever was above Judaism in Jesus. In this sense their unbelief, men- 
tioned by John, is to be understood. They were, in all probability, unbelievers in the 
same sense as those Jews that desired to make him their king. (John vi, 15.) Not 
entering into the spirit of his teaching, they wanted him to realize their Messianic ideas. 
That younger brothers would have dared thus to interfere with him in the discharge of 
his official duties appears to us highly improbable." 

On the supposition, then, that these brothers and sisters of Jesus were not the chil- 
dren of his mother, they must have been the children of Joseph, either by a former mar- 
riage or by adoption ; for if they were merely cousins or kinsmen, we would expect them 
to have been called avi<ftu>i or auyysvsi.^, not, as they are always called, adeA<poc or adeXipat. 
That Joseph was a widower when he was espoused to Mary is asserted in the Apocryphal 
Gospels, and this tradition was prevalent during the second and third centuries ; but it is 
not probable that the children of Joseph by a former wife would have remained so long 
with their step-mother ; and, what is a more weighty objection, Jesus, being in this case 
the youngest son of Joseph, could not have been registered in the Jewish genealogies as 
the legal heir of David's throne. That they were the adopted children of Joseph, Lange 
makes very plausible from the following considerations : 

1. There were standing under the cross, according to Matt, xxvii, 56, and Mark 
xv, 40, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome, 
the mother of Zebedee's children. According to John xix, 25, " There stood by the cross 
of Jesus his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleopas, and Mary Magda- 
lene." There can be no doubt that John meant, by his mother's sister, Salome. That he 
does not mention her by name may be easily accounted for by the same modesty with 
which he designates himself "as the disciple whom Jesus loved." The fact that Salome 
was the sister of Jesus' mother throws also light upon her prayer to give to her two sons 
the first places of honor in his kingdom, and upon the dying Savior's commending his 
mother to the charge of John. Nor does it scarcely admit of a doubt that " Mary the wife 
of Cleopas" is the same Mary which Matthew and Mark call "the mother of James the 



JESUS TS REJECTED AT NAZARETH THE SECOND TIME. 381 

less and of Joses." For James the less is called, in the lists of the apostles, the son of 
Alpheus, and Cleopas is the Hebrew for Alpheus. Thus we see that two sons of Alpheus 
bear the same names as two of the brothers of Jesus, and we can trace the two others to 
the same origin. We find in Luke's list of the apostles a Judas, brother of James, and 
the author of the short Epistle of Jude calls himself " the servant of Jesus Christ and 
brother of James." Add to this that, according to Hegesippus, as quoted by Eusebius, 
Simeon, Bishop of Jerusalem, who succeeded James the less, the brother of the Lord, was 
a son of Cleopas, (Alpheus.) It appears, then, that James, Joses, Judas, and Simon, 
called the brothers of Jesus, bear the same names as the four sons of Cleopas or Alpheus. 

2. According to Hegesippus, Joseph had a brother named Cleopas or Alpheus. 

3. Upon the preceding data we may base the hypothesis that this Cleopas, the father 
of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon, died while they were yet young, (the Cleopas men- 
tioned in Luke xxiv, 18, may safely be considered as a different person,) and that his 
brother Joseph took the widow to his house, and adopted the children, but that he him- 
self died also before Jesus entered upon his public ministry — a very reasonable supposi- 
tion, inasmuch as he is mentioned no more in the Gospel history after Jesus went up to 
Jerusalem in his twelfth year. These adopted children, the legal brothers of Jesus, then, 
formed one family with Mary and Jesus. These young Jews may have maintained for a 
time their independence of their younger brother, with whom they were only united by 
legal ties. As the older members of the family, it is by no means unlikely that they de- 
sired to control Jesus, although they rejoiced, with Jewish pride, in his Messianic repu- 
tation. They may thus have formed a family opposition to the manner in which Jesus 
laid claim to the Messiahship. It is no serious objection to this view that two of them — 
James and Judas— became apostles; for Peter manifested a similar opposition, (Matt, 
xvi, 22,) and the words of Jesus, "Behold my mother and my brethren," implying a 
rebuke of their act, as an untimely family interference, may well be compared with that 
severer one administered to Peter. The leading spirit of this Nazarene family circle 
seems to have been Judas, the author of the Epistle, surnamed, perhaps for this reason, 
Lebbeus or Thaddeus, tliat is, the Bold. 

Plausible, however, as this theory of Lange is, some weighty objections can be 
brought against it. 

1. It is remarkable that these brothers of Jesus, if they were the sons of Alpheus, 
never appear in connection with their own mother, but always with the mother of Jesus. 

2. It is difficult to believe that James and Judas, who were at that time apostles, and 
so the constant attendants of Jesus, could have been meant by his brethren, who came 
with his mother desiring to speak with him. (Matt, xii, 46 ; Luke viii, 19.) 

3. If Judas and Simon were brothers of James the less, it is strange that their mother 
is designated only as the mother of James and of the less-known Joses. 

4. A line of distinction between the apostles and the Lord's brethren is kept up in 
the evangelical narratives from the beginning of his ministry till its close, and no where 
appears more marked than after his ascension. For we read in Acts i, 13, 14 : " When 
they were come in, they went into an upper room, where abode both Peter, and James, 
and John, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James, the son 
of Alpheus, and Simon Zelotes, and Judas the brother of James. These all continued with 
one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and 
with his brethren." Here the brethren of our Lord are distinguished from the eleven. 
Paul also distinguishes James, the Lord's brother, from the twelve in 1 Cor. xv, 5. 

5. Singular as the coincidence between the names of the brothers of Jesus and those 
of the sons of Alpheus is, the inference, drawn from it, that the persons who bore these 
names were identical, is, by no means, a necessary one, because the children of different 
families have often the same name. This is even the more probable, if Alpheus was 
a brother of Joseph. 



382 



MATTHEW XIII, 53-58. 



6. The argument that James, the Lord's brother, is reckoned among the apostles in 
Gal. i, 19, and must, consequently, be identified with James, the son of Alpheus, is incon- 
clusive, for the term "apostle" is not always used in the restricted sense of the "twelve." 

For further reasons in support of the view that the brothers and sisters of Jesus were 
younger children of Mary by Joseph, see Eev. Dr. C. W. Fitch's treatise, " James, the 
Lord's Brother," in which the author gives an elaborate argument that he was not James 
the apostle, the son of Alpheus, but that, having been long an unbeliever, and being des- 
tined to great prominence in the Church, as the first Bishop of Jerusalem, he was favored 
by a special revelation of the Lord after his resurrection. On this point we refer the 
reader to the notes on 1 Cor. xv, 5, and Gal. i, 18. 

"Verses 53-58. (Compare Mark vi, 1-6.) 

(53) And it came to pass, that when Jesus had finished these parables, he de- 
parted thence. (54) And when he was come into his own country, 1 he taught 2 
them in their synagogue, 3 insomuch that they were astonished, and said, "Whence 
hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works ? (55) Is not this the carpen- 
ter's i son ? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and 
Simon, and Judas? (56) And his sisters, are they not all with us ? "Whence then 
hath this man all these things? (57) And they were offended in him. But Jesus 
said unto them, A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in 
his own house. (58) And he did not many mighty works there, because of their 
unbelief. 



Verse 53. When Jesus had finished these par- 
ables. "This verse affords a final proof that the 
preceding parables were actually uttered upon one 
occasion, by saying that he finished them, the Aorist, 
which is used, referring to some one time; and by 
adding that he then departed thence, implying unity 
of place also. Here the chapter should have ended, 
but by some inexplicable error of judgment, the 
divider of the text destroyed its unity of subject by 
subjoining an occurrence, which has no direct con- 
nection with what goes before." (Alexander.) The 
departure thence was not to Nazareth, but across the 
sea to Gergesa. (Mark iv, 35.) (See Synoptical 
Table, No. 69.) 

Verse 54. The strictly-chronological order would 
lead the reader back to chapter ix, 34 We must 
place between verses 53 and 54 the calming of the 
storm, the healing of the demoniacs, of Jairus' 
daughter, of the woman with issue of blood, of the 
two blind men, and of the dumb possessed. (See 
Synoptical Table from 10-11.) " The and at the be- 
ginning of verse 54 is the particle used even in the 
opening of books in the Old Testament, and, there- 
fore, can prove nothing as to the connection here. 
And coming, as in many other cases, means no more 



than coming once, or at a certain time not specified. 
There is, therefore, no discrepancy between this nar- 
rative and Mark's, (vi, 1-6,) which gives the following 
occurrence in immediate succession to the raising of 
the daughter of Jairus, which Matthew has recorded 
long before. The truth is, that neither of the two 
Evangelists asserts an immediate consecution of 
events, but only, at the most, that one happened after 
the other, without saying that no other event inter- 
vened. It is only by neglecting this distinction that 
most charges of discrepancy between the Gospels 
can be rendered even plausible." (Alexander.) — 
Olshausen and other German commentators consider 
the visit here spoken of as identical with that related 
by Luke, (iv, 31,) simply on account of the similarity 
of the treatment which our Lord met on both occa- 
sions. But this supposition has no weight whatever. 
Matthew positively speaks of two visits ; the previous 
one took place before our Lord settled at Capernaum 
and entered upon his Galilean ministry, (ch. iv, 12, 
13,) and is identical with the one related by Luke, 
who likewise says, that leaving Nazareth Jesus went 
to Capernaum. This first visit is not mentioned by 
Mark, and Matthew notices it only in reference to 
our Lord's removal to Capernaum. Of the second 



1 Nazareth was called the country of Jesus, (n-aTpi;,) I if called upon to do so. 3 See foot-note on chap, iv, 23. 
because Jesus spent his childhood and youth there. 2 It I * The Greek word, rendered carpenter, (riKTcav,) means an 
was the Lord's custom to teach in the synagogues. Any | artificer, craftsman, and the material in which he worked, 
Israelite had the privilege to address the people there, | wood, stone, metal, is generally added. 



JOHN THE BAPTIST BEHEADED. 



383 



visit, not mentioned' by Luke, Matthew gives here a 
particular account, and so does Mark. The points 
of difference between the first and second visit are 
plainly marked. In the former our Lord is alone; 
in the latter he is accompanied by his disciples. 
(Mark vi, 1.) In the former he is violently driven 
from the town; in the latter he continues for some 
time to heal a few sick folks. (Mark vi, 5.) Leav- 
ing Nazareth he goes after the first visit to Caper- 
naum, after the second "he went round about the 
villages teaching." (Mark vi, 6.) Moreover, "it 
would have been strange," as Alexander remarks, 
" and out of keeping with the whole tenor of the 
Savior's conduct, if in the course of his perpetual 
circuits throughout all Galilee, he never had revisited 
his old home and renewed the invitations which the 
people there had once rejected." Finally, there was 
evidently a change in the bearing of his townsmen 
toward him. Their rage had cooled down since his 
first visit, and his fame had greatly increased, so that 
they make no open, violent attack upon him ; never- 
theless, they had remained in the same state of mind, 
taking offense at his humble parentage and condition 
of life. — Whence has this man this wisdom and 
these mighty works ? This sneering question shows 
that they ciiuld not deny his supernatural wisdom 



and works, but that they were determined not to be 
convinced by any thing he could do. It is probable 
that they had heard of the blasphemous charge 
which the Pharisees had preferred against him of 
being in league with Satan ; if so, they meant to say 
by their question, his wisdom and mighty works come 
surely from no good source. 

Verse 55. Is not this the carpenter's son ? 
How is it possible that the man whom we have 
known from infancy should all at once be in posses- 
sion of the power and dignity which he claims? 
Mark (vi, 3) adds: "Is not this the carpenter?" By 
the Jewish law all parents were obliged to let. their 
children learn a trade. On the Greek word for "car- 
penter" see foot-note; from this passage we may infer 
that Jesus followed his foster-father's trade, before he 
entered upon his public ministry. — Is not his 
mother called Mary ? This question implies that 
his mother also belonged to a family in low and hum- 
ble circumstances. 

Verse 58. It was not unwillingness on the part 
of our Lord that prevented him to work many mira- 
cles. But it would have answered no purpose. 
Moreover, their obstinate unbelief prevented most 
of them from bringing their sick to Jesus, that he 
might heal them. 



OHAPTEE XIV. 
§29. JOHN THE BAPTIST IS BEHEADED. 

"Verses 1—13. (Compare Mark vi, 14-29.) 

(1) At that time Herod the tetrarch 1 heard of the fame of Jesus, (2) and said 
unto his servants, This is John the Baptist ; he is risen from the dead ; and there- 
fore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him. (3) For Herod had laid hold 
on John, and bound him, and put him in prison for Herodias' sake, his brother 
Philip's wife. (4) For John said unto him, It is not lawful for thee to have her. 



1 This was Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, 
who is mentioned in the second chapter. His father had 
once, by will, named him as his successor in Judea; but 
he afterward changed his mind, and making his son Ar- 
chelaus King of Judea, appointed Antipas to the infe- 
rior dignity of tetrarch of Galilee and Perea. The title 
of tetrarch was originally given to the ruler of the fourth 
part of a district or province. In later usage it became, 
among the Romans, a common title for those who gov- 
erned any part of a province or kingdom, subject only 
to the Roman Emperor. His usual place of residence 
was at Tiberias, a name which, in honor of the Roman 
Emperor Tiberius, he had given to a town on the 
south-western border of the Lake of Galilee. In the 
other extremity of his domain, only a few miles east- 
wardly from the place where the Jordan empties into the 



Dead Sea, he had a castle called Machaerus, which had 
been enlarged and fortified by his father, and in which, 
as we may infer from the narrative of the feast, he some- 
times resided. In this castle, according to Josephus, 
(Ant. xviii, 5, 2,) John was imprisoned. Herod Antipas 
had married the daughter of the Arabian King Aretas; 
but during a visit to his half-brother Philip, (a private 
citizen, and not to be confounded with Philip, the te- 
trarch of Iturea and Trachonitis, mentioned in Luke 
iii, 1,) he became enamored of his wife Herodias, who 
was a daughter of another brother, Aristobulus, and 
prevailed on her to leave her husband, and live with 
him. This step involved him in a war with his father- 
in-law, which, however, did not break out till a year be- 
fore the death of Tiberius, and in which he was totally 
defeated and his army destroyed by Aretas. He and 



384 



MATTHEW XIV, 1-13. 



(5) And when he would have put him to death, he feared the multitude, 2 because 
they counted him as a prophet. (6) But when Herod's birthday was kept, the 
daughter of Herodias 3 danced before them, and pleased Herod. (7) "Whereupon 
he promised with an oath to give her whatsoever she would ask. (8) And she, 
being before instructed 4 of her mother, said, Give me here John the Baptist's head 
in a charger. 5 (9) And the king was sorry : nevertheless for the oath's sake, and 
them which sat with him at meat, he commanded it to be given her. (10) And he 
sent, and beheaded John in the prison. (11) And his head was brought in a charger, 
and given to the damsel : and she brought it to her mother. (12) And his disci- 
ples came, and took up the body, and buried it, and went and told Jesus. (13) 
When Jesus heard of it, he departed thence by ship into a desert place apart : and 
when the people had heard thereof, they followed him on foot out of the cities. 



Verse 1. At that time ; that is, while the twelve 
apostles were absent on their first missionary tour, 
(Mark vi, 13, 14; Luke ix, G, 7,) and Jesus was con- 
tinuing his own personal labors, accompanied proba- 
bly by other disciples, some of those seventy, who 
were afterward sent out, and perhaps also by the 
women, who had before been with him. (See Synop- 
tical Table, No. 79.) The imprisonment of the Bap- 
tist took place in March, 781. (See introductory re- 
marks to ch. iv, 12.) His death Mr. Andrews places 
at the latter part of March or the beginning of April, 
782, on the following ground: "The chief datum is 
the statement of John, (vi, 4,) that a Passover took 
place a little after the feeding of the five thousand. 
This Passover, the third of our Lord's ministry, was 
that of 782, and fell on the 1 7th of April. The death 
of John was then a few days before this. The exact 
date we can not tell, as we do not know how long 
it preceded the feeding of the five thousand, nor how 
long this feeding preceded the Passover. If John 
was beheaded at Machaerus, on the southern border 
of Perea, some days must have elapsed ere his dis- 
ciples could bury his body, and come to inform 
Jesus." — Herod the tetrarch heard of the 
fame of Jesus. It appears that the mighty works of 
Christ, though wrought in the vicinity of Herod, did 
not attract his attention before he had put the Bap- 
tist to death. This may be easily accounted for by 
his religious indifference. He would not have inter- 
fered with John but on personal grounds. Besides, 
he may have been on a visit to Borne, or engaged in 
hostilities with Aretas. 



Verse 2. And said unto his servants. In Luke 
ix, 7, we read : " He was perplexed, because it was 
said of some that John was risen from the dead." 
This is not in contradiction with what is said here. 
For the reports circulating among the people about 
Jesus might well make the conscience-smitten Herod 
believe that John had risen from the dead. The 
evidence which Herod received of our Lord's mira- 
cles must have been incontestable, or' l Jfe would not 
have imagined a greater miracle as the most reason- 
able way of accounting for them. The reports con- 
cerning Jesus may have reached Herod through some 
of his own household; for Luke (viii, 3) tells us that 
one of the women that ministered unto Jesus was 
Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward; and in 
Acts xiii, 1, we read that one of the prophets and 
teachers at Antioch was Manaen, which had been 
brought up with Herod the tetrarch. Though Herod 
seems to have belonged to the sect of the Sadducees, 
(Mark viii, 15,) he was by his guilty conscience fright- 
ened into a superstitious belief of an instance of 
resurrection, altogether incredible in itself. Skepti- 
cism and superstition are near akin. Many skeptics 
believe the most incredible things. — Therefore 
mighty works do shew forth themselves in him. 
Literally, the powers (ai dwd/ieit;, miraculous powers) 
are active in him. John had wrought no miracles in 
his lifetime; but one who had risen from the dead, 
Herod inferred, would be possessed of supernatural 
powers. 

Verse 3. This took place shortly before the sec- 
ond Passover our Lord attended after his baptism. 



Herodias afterward went to Rome, at the beginning of 
Caligula's reign, to complain of the assumption of the 
title of king by Agrippa I, brother of Herodias ; but 
Caligula, having heard the claims of both, banished 
Antipas and Herodias to Lyons, in Gaul, whence he was 
afterward removed to Spain, and there he died. Herod 
Antipas is referred to in Luke xiii, 31, 32, and xxiii, 8. 
The Herod who appears in the thirteenth chapter of Acts 
is Herod Agrippa I, the brother of Herodias. 2 The 
Galileans were very restless and apt to rebel against 



any officer that acted under Roman authority. 3 Accord- 
ing to Joscphus, it was Salome, daughter of Herodias 
by her former husband. She afterward married her 
uncle Philip, tetrarch of Iturea and Trachonitis. 4 The 
Greek word rendered " being before instructed," means 
urged on or instigated, which agrees perfectly with Mark's 
account, that there had been no previous agreement be- 
tween them. 5 An old English word for a large dish. 
The Greek word, originally, means a board for any 
purpose. 



JOHN' THE BAPTIST BEHEADED. 



385 



The Evangelist, (see eh. iv, 12,) in marking the com- j dignitaries in the tetrarehy. — This dance of the 
mencement of our Lord's public ministry, had sim- > daughter of Herodias was a gross violation of all 
ply alluded to the imprisonment of John the Baptist j rules of decency and modesty; for in every country 
without mentioning the cause, or any of its attending I of the Orient women are confined to separate apart- 
ments, called Harem, which they are forbidden to 
leave, except they are thickly vailed. Unvailed they 
are absolutely forbidden to appear before strangers. 
No chaste woman would thus have appeared before 
the assembled court, and we have thus in this dance 
an illustration of the demoralizing influence of He- 
rodias. It is, moreover, likely that the dance of the 
damsel was the well-known, immoral dance of the 
Ionians. Possibly Herodias calculated on surprising 
the guests, in order to carry out her bloody design in 
the favorable moment of universal applause. 

Verse 7. He promised to give her whatsoever 
she would asc. Mark adds, (vi, 23:) "Unto the 
half of my kingdom." What a vain, boastful prom- 
ise of a vassal of the Roman emperor, who was ruler 
of but two provinces of Judea ! 

Verse 9. And the king was sorry. These words 
are not in contradiction with verse 5 ; for the fear of 
the people and the bloody hatred of Herodias had 
kept the weak man in a state of irresoluteness. 
(Comp. Mark vi, 19.) — -Nevertheless for the 
oath's sake. Herod's scrupulous respect for his 
impious oaths — the original has the plural — was not 
the fear of God, but his "word of honor," which he 
had pledged. An oath which promises the perpetra- 
tion of a crime can not be obligatory in the sight of 
God. It is "the point of honor" which is at the 
bottom of duels and of all those sins, where the 
allurements of sin are not firmly resisted and, under 
the false plea of manliness and courage, the laws 
of God and parental exhortations are unhesitatingly 
trampled under foot. 

Verse 10. On the death of the Baptist and its 
relations to the ministry of our Lord, Judge Jones, 
in his Notes on Scripture, makes the following in- 
teresting remarks, which confirm the view of Mr. 
Andrews, referred to in our introduction to chapter 
iv, 12: "The death of John the Baptist was the 
crisis of the nation's trial. While John lived it was, 
in one sense, in the power of the nation to receive 
him. Now it was too late, unless God would raise 
him from the dead, as Herod imagined he had, and 
send him to them again. (Acts iii, 20.) Having 
rejected John they could not nationally receive Jesus. 
The personal ministry of each was inseparably con- 
nected with the personal ministry of the other, so far 
as the nation, as such, was concerned. Hence our 
Lord had joined his ministry with John's. (Matt, iii, 
15; Mark ix, 12, 13.) Each bore the strongest testi- 
mony to the other, to prevent, if possible, the rejection 
of either by the nation. But the time allowed for 
their change of mind, in respect to John, expired at 
his death; and from that time onward we observe an 
important change in our Lord's public and private 
discourses. With regard to our Lord's instructions 
to his disciples, it was not till after the death of John 



circumstances. This he does now, having to s 
of his death. — "According to Luke iii, 19," says 
Lange. "John had reproved Herod not only for his 
adulterous intercourse with Herodias, but also for all 
the evils which Herod had done. This additional 
remark of Luke is very important, because it helps 
to solve an apparent contradiction between the Evan- 
gelists and the historian Josephus. The latter re- 
lates that Herod had John imprisoned and executed, 
because he apprehended that he might excite popular 
tumult, etc. According to Luke, John fearlessly re- 
proved the tetrarch for his public scandals, etc., 
wherefore he may have appeared unto the despot as 
a dangerous demagogue or revolutionist. And as 
John was subsequently executed in prison, it is quite 
natural that the political historian should record only 
the political motive of the murder. But the Evan- 
gelists having a more thorough knowledge of the real 
motive of Herod's deed, and viewing the acts of men 
from the moral stand-point, correctly represent the 
reproof administered by John to the despot as the 
real cause of his imprisonment and death." 

Verse 4. For John said unto him. From this 
we may infer that the Baptist reproved Herod to his 
face. Of the particular circumstances, under which 
this took place, we are not informed. It may have 
been that Herod had sent for the Baptist either to 
get his sanction, or to call him to an account for 
having publicly denounced his profligacy. John was 
not afraid to attack sin in rulers. — It is not lawful. 
It was unlawful for the three following reasons: 
1. Philip, the lawful husband of Herodias, was still 
living, as Josephus expressly states. 2. The lawful 
wife of Herod was still living, and had, according to 
the same historian, fled to her father Aretas, when 
she learned the intentions of Herod. 3. Antipas 
and Herodias were themselves related to one another, 
within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity. 

Verse 5. We learn from Mark (vi, 20) that it 
was Herodias who would have killed him immedi- 
ately, but was prevented for a time by the awe 
Herod felt for John, as well as by his fear of the mul- 
titude. There is not the least inconsistency between 
the two statements. Mark simply adds some par- 
ticulars, and what he says seems to refer to the time 
intervening between the imprisonment and execution 
of John. When the first rage subsided and Herod 
became better acquainted with John, the austere and 
holy man gained some influence over the weak, un- 
principled prince; he liked to hear him, esteemed 
him, and obeyed here and there his words ; but any 
permanent impressions were frustrated by his love 
of pleasure and worldly-mindedness, and the over- 
powering influence of a daring, revengeful woman. 

Verse 6. According to Mark (vi, 22) the guests 
invited on the occasion were the higher officers and 



25 



386 



MATTHEW XIV, 14-21. 



that he spoke plainly of his sufferings, death, and res- 
urrection. (Matt, xvi, 21.) As examples of his pub- 
lic instruction of the people before the death of John, 
the reader' may be referred to the Sermon on the 
Mount, to those parables in Matt, xiii which were 
spoken in public, and to the discourse at Jerusalem 
in John v. As an example of his public teaching 
after the death of the Baptist, we may refer to the 
discourse in John vi, 26-52, in which he does not 
appear as a preacher of the kingdom, urging it upon 
the people in their national character, but as the 
Son of man, having power to save and give eternal 
life to as many as would individually receive him. 
Taking the miracle he had just performed as his 
theme, he discourses about himself as the true bread. 
The bread of God is the Son of man, who came 
down from heaven to give 7ms life for the world — a 
plain allusion to his death, which presupposed his 
rejection as Messiah by the nation. We notice, also, 
that the appeal to his hearers is personal throughout, 
to individuals, not to the nation collectively. This 
change of address was a consequence of the new 
posture which the nation took at the death of John. 
Though the kingdom was not actually taken away 
from the Jews till the close of our Lord's ministry, 
yet it was no longer preached, as at its beginning, 
and urged upon the people for national acceptance. 
The Savior's public instructions from that time on- 
ward were designed to impress upon his hearers that 
he had power to save, individually, all who would re- 



ceive him with the obedience of faith. Hence, also, 
at his final entry upon Jerusalem, and at his final 
departure from the Temple, he spoke of the nation's 
visitation and trial as already past, although he was 
yet in their midst, and the formal act of rejecting 
him before Pilate was yet to be performed." 

Verse 11. And his head was brought. From 
the maiden's request, "give me here," in verse 8, and 
from this verse it is evident that the feast was held 
either at Machasrus, or at no great distance from it, 
probably at Julias, or Livias, where Herod had a 
palace ; for the head was brought while the feast was 
still going on. According to Mark vi, 27, the king 
sent an executioner immediately and the bloody 
command was forthwith executed, probably by night. 

Verse 13. When Jesus heard of it. The mes- 
sage of John's disciples included both the report of 
their master's death and of Herod having his atten- 
tion drawn to Jesus. His departure into a desert 
place was occasioned not only by this report, but had 
also, as we learn from Mark, (vi, 31,) the object that 
he might be alone for some time with his disciples, 
who had just returned from their missionary tour. 
Our Lord was, then, not at Nazareth, but on the 
shore of the Galilean lake, most probably at Caper- 
naum. According to John (vi, 1) he crossed over 
to the other, north-east, side of the lake, to a town 
called Bethsaida, (Luke ix, 10,) in the immediate 
vicinity of which the desert place was. This was out 
of the dominion of Herod Antipas. 



&0. THE FIRST MIRACULOUS FEEDING. 



Not only Matthew, but also Mark and Luke, connect this event with the report of 
the Baptist's death. The apparently-unintentional remark of John, (vi, 4,) "that the 
Passover was nigh," furnishes a safe chronological date, from which we infer that this 
miraculous feeding took place shortly before the third Passover of Christ's public min- 
istry. The vast multitudes of people which the Evangelists report seem to have been 
on their way to Jerusalem; but, attracted by the many miracles which the Lord per- 
formed on the sick, (John vi, 2,) they discontinued their journey for a while, and followed 
Jesus. Christ improved their presence to preach to them. This first miraculous feeding, 
and the subsequent walking of Jesus upon the sea, are intimately connected with the 
preaching of our Lord as recorded by John, for which reason we shall consider the import- 
ance and object of this manifestation of the power of Jesus over inorganic nature in our 
introductory remarks to the sixth chapter of John's Gospel. Here we will make but one 
general remark. To the miraculous feeding applies, in a peculiarly-emphatic sense, what 
John says of the miracle of turning water into wine : " He manifested forth his glory." 
Being creative acts, they may be called miracles of a higher order than the miraculous 
cures. Of the power effecting the latter some conception may possibly be formed by the 
human mind. "But how is it possible," says Trench, "in our thoughts to bridge over 
the gulf between not being and being, which yet is bridged over in every creative act? 
Such miracles demand the same faith which believes that the worlds were formed by the 
word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. 
(Heb. xi, 3.)" German rationalism has labored hard to do away with this miracle par 



THE FIRST MIRACULOUS FEEDING. 



387 



excellence in one way or another. The sober, discriminating Meyer, though not free from 
rationalistic tendencies, remarks : " The explaining away of the miracle — as is done by 
Paulus, who says that Jesus, by the example of his hospitality, induced all jiresent to 
give of their stock of provisions to their hungry neighbors — is inconsistent with the facts 
recorded by the Evangelists. The denial of the historical character of the whole narra- 
tive—by deducing it from an original parable, or converting it into a mythus based on 
Old Testament precedents, (Exod. xvi, 1 ; 2 Kings iv, 42, etc.,) and on popular Messianic 
notions, (John vi, 30,) as is done by Strauss, or by taking it in a symbolical sense, as De 
Wette and Hase do — is the j)roduct of an a priori assumption that matter, under any form 
or shape, can not be operated upon by creative power. Nor does Olshausen's idea of an 
accelerated natural process throw much light on the nature of this miracle. The his- 
torical character of the narrative is so firmly established by the concurrent testimony 
of the four Evangelists, .that we must believe it, although we can not comprehend it." 
Nevertheless, a new attempt to render the miracle comprehensible is made by Lange, 
who thinks we need not assume the loaves and fishes to have been increased quantita- 
tively, but only with regard to their nutritious power ! In the twelve baskets being filled 
with the remains he sees a miracle of love; namely, that the men fed gave to the apos- 
tles, out of gratitude, their own provisions! This hypothesis is not worthy of the serious 
refutation with which Ebrard honors it. 

"Verses 14—31. (Compare Mark vi, 30-44; Luke ix, 10-17; John ti, 1-13.) 

(14) And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with 
compassion toward them, and he healed their sick. (15) And when it was even- 
ing, his disciples came to him, saying, This is a desert place, 1 and the time is now 
past; send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages, and buy them- 
selves victuals. (16) But Jesus said unto them, They need not depart; give ye 
them to eat. (17) And they say unto him, We have here but five loaves, and two 
fishes. (18) He said, Bring them hither to me. (19) And he commanded the 
multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, 2 and the two fishes, 
and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disci- 
ples, and the disciples to the multitude. (20) And they did all eat, and were filled : 
and they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets 3 full. (21) And 
they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children. 



Verse 14. And Jesus went forth, may simply 
mean, from out of the ship on which he had crossed 
the lake. Trench, Alford, and most of the German 
commentators supply: "From his place of retire- 
ment." From Mark (vi, 33) we learn that the peo- 
ple who went afoot around the lake, arrived before 
Jesus at the place of landing. " From this we might 
infer that when Jesus came out from the boat he 
saw the multitudes and fed them. But considering 



the circumstances of the case, and the rapid, sketch- 
ing manner in which the Evangelists group events 
that were separated in point of time, it is more 
probable that Jesus had spent some time there, per- 
haps a day or more, healing and instructing them, 
but seeking also for himself and his disciples seasons 
of retirement; and that once, when he came out 
from his retirement and saw the people who had 
been there so long, weary, scattered, and hungry — - 



1 Dr. Thomson identifies this desert with an unculti- 
vated plain, a short distance south-east of the influx of 
Jordan into the lake, on which many thousand persons 
could sit down. Back of this plain there rises a mount- 
ain, which, at its south-eastorn end, runs far out into 
the lake. The coast along this desert forms an excellent 
bay. From the locality, Dr. Thomson says, it is easy 
to see how the people from the northern cities could by 



land get ahead of the disciples by water. 2 The loaves 
were shaped like cakes, of a thumb's thickness, and 
round, measuring in diameter about nine or ten inches. 
Such bread was broken, not cut, as with us. 3 By the 
word bosket we have to understand the traveling-bag in 
which the Jews, when on a journey, carried their provi- 
sions, lest they might be contaminated by coming into 
contact with heathens. 



388 



MATTHEW XIV, 14-21. 



like sheep without a shepherd — his compassion for 
them was excited and he fed them." (John H. Mor- 
rison's Notes on Matthew.) 

Verse 15. And when it was evening. The first 
evening is meant here, which lasted from the ninth 
to the twelfth hour of the day, that is, from three to 
six, P. M. ; while "the evening" of verse 23 means 
the second evening, that is, the time from six o'clock 
till midnight, —r His disciples came to him. Pre- 
viously to this the Lord, according to John, had 
asked Philip, in order to prove him: " Whence shall 
toe buy bread that these may eat ?" Philip, having no 
thought of any other supplies, except such as natural 
means could procure, says: "Two hundred penny- 
worth of bread is not sufficient." Having drawn 
this confession of inability to meet the present need 
from the lips of Philip, he left it to work, till some- 
what later in the day the disciples came to him with 
the proposal that he should dismiss the crowds. The 
Lord replies: "They need not depart; give ye them 
to eat." And when they, according to Mark, ask if 
they shall spend two hundred pence on the food re- 
quired, he bids them go and see what supplies they 
have actually on hand. 

Verse 16. Give ye them to eat. By these words 
the Lord intended to call forth in his disciples the 
expectation of a miraculous act on his part. We 
are reminded by this of a general truth, that while 
what is required of us appears often as strangely 
transcending our abilities, the Lord has provided for 
every emergency beforehand ; what he requires man 
to do, he enables him to do. 

Verse 18. As these provisions were to be aug- 
mented in a miraculous manner, it was quite proper 
that they should first be brought to Jesus, that the 
exercise of his creative power might become more 
manifest, and its effect on the multitude more gen- 
eral and lasting. 

Verse 19. And he commanded the multitude to 
sit down. Mark and Luke add that they sat down 
in ranks by hundreds and by fifties. In this way all 
confusion was avoided, as the apostles could easily 
go through the ranks and wait upon all. — On the 
grass. The place was a very proper one, because 
there was much grass there. (John vi, 10.) The 
desert place, in which Jesus was, appears to have 
been rich pasture-ground. — And took the five 
loaves and two fishes, and looking up to heaven. 
Jesus, in all probability, raised his eyes toward heaven 
before the multitude, while he implored the Divine 
blessing upon the elements before him. — He blessed, 
and brake. Luke says, (ix, 16,) he blessed them; 
that is, the loaves and fishes. In pronouncing the 
prayer the Lord acted as the head, or father of the 
family; according to the term employed by John, 
(evxaptari/oac:,) it was a thanksgiving, while, according 
to the term employed by Luke (evX6yr/GEv,) the idea 
of a consecrating prayer, similar to the words of the 
institution of the Supper, is the prominent one. By 
giving thanks to God a blessing is conveyed on the 



meal. — And gave the loaves to his disciples, 

AND THE DISCIPLES TO THE MULTITUDE. The question 

has been asked, whether the loaves and fishes in- 
creased in the hands of Jesus, or in those of his 
disciples. Ebrard thinks that Jesus broke off with- 
out intermission from the loaves, and what he broke 
off was replaced at once. Meyer, on the other hand, 
says: "If every morsel which the people received 
had come from out of the hands of Jesus, the time 
spent in giving to each of over five thousand men a 
piece of bread and a portion of fish, would have been 
much longer than Jesus actually did spend in the 
transaction, and the whole miracle would assume a 
monstrous appearance." Most commentators are of 
the opinion that the result of the miraculous power 
exercised by the Lord became visible in the hands of 
the disciples, and they, accordingly, conceive of the 
whole transaction thus: the Lord blessed and gave 
the loaves and fishes to the disciples as they were ; 
and then, during their distribution of them, the 
miraculous increase took place, so that they broke 
and distributed enough for all. This was, at the 
same time, for the disciples a prelude to their future 
ministry, (Acts iv, 35,) and not only they, but all who 
received at their hands were witnesses of the miracu- 
lous increase. No miracle could possibly be wrought 
under circumstances more favorable to the discovery 
of every attempt to deceive, if such an attempt had 
been made. 

Verses 20, 21. And they did eat all and were 
filled. The additional remark of John, that each 
received as much of the loaves and fishes as he de- 
sired, forbids the idea that they were filled only ap- 
parently. Each ate as much as he desired to eat. 
A faint type of this miracle is presented to us by 
that which Elisha wrought, when with twenty loaves 
of barley he satisfied a hundred men. (2 Kings iv, 
42-44.) Some remoter analogies may be found in 
1 Kings xvii, 16 ; 2 Kings iv, 1-7. — And they took 
up the fragments that remained; that is, they 
gathered them on the ground where the people sat 
Mark says that the same was done with the fishes, 
(vi, 43.) The apostles gathered these fragments at 
the Lord's bidding, "that nothing be lost." (John 
vi, 12.) As in nature, so here the greatest abundance 
and true economy are to go hand in hand. While 
the fragments left fully demonstrated that all were 
actually filled, and thus placed the reality of the mir- 
acle beyond any reasonable doubt, the Lord ordering 
his disciples to gather them teaches them not only 
the duty of practicing economy, but also, as Alex- 
ander remarks, " that the miraculous effect was to 
be instantly succeeded by the usual condition and 
the operation of all ordinary laws." — Twelve bas- 
kets full. The number of the baskets corresponds 
to that of the apostles; each filled his traveling 
basket. The gathered fragments amounted to much 
more than was there at first; we have in this an 
admirable symbol of the workings of charity, which 
by giving does not become poorer, but much richer 



CHRIST WALKS UPON THE LAKE. 



389 



than it would have been otherwise. (Comp. 2 Kings 
iv, 1-7; Prov. xi, 24.) 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 

1. Christ makes provision for the bodily, as well 
as the spiritual, wants of his people. There is no 
need of going away from him. He can create bread 
even in a desert place. The Lord can help both 
with much and with little. (Ps. lxxviii, 19; cvii, 
36.) In his kingdom he gives every thing freely 
without money- or price. (I.) He cures the sick; 
(2.) Teaches the ignorant; (3.) Feeds the hungry. 

2. To this multitude Christ's promise (Matt, vi, 
33) was literally verified. They had followed him 
without making provision for even three days ahead, 
what they were to eat and drink, and Christ bestowed 
upon them the inferior blessing, the daily bread. If 
he thus provided for those who had come to him in a 
momentary excitement, much less will he leave or 
forsake those who faithfully serve him I 



3. As the Lord gave thanks to his Heavenly 
Father for the loaves and fishes before he had them 
distributed, so ought all his disciples to do before 
every meal, calling to mind that it is God who opens 
his hands, and satisfies the desire of every living 
thing. Prayer before every meal is a sacred duty 
of every father, as the priest in the family, which he 
can not neglect without being guilty in the sight of 
God. 

4. God makes use of human instrumentalities in 
dispensing his blessings. To be such an instrument- 
ality as were the disciples on the occasion in ques- 
tion, is a great privilege. 

5. As the famishing multitude in the wilderness is 
an emblem of mankind at large, so their miraculous 
feeding is a symbol of the sufficiency of the Gospel 
to satisfy all the wants of man. Christ is the bread, 
which alone can still the hunger of the soul, though 
he seems to the natural man as insufficient, as the 
five loaves and two fishes seemed to the disciples for 
the feeding of so large a multitude. 



§31. CHRIST WALKS UPON THE LAKE. 

The miraculous walking of Jesus takes place forthwith after the feeding of the mul- 
titude. Luke omits it. The incident with Peter is peculiar to Matthew, whose report is, 
on the whole, the fullest and most graphic. John, in his short report, (vi, 15,) states the 
reason why Jesus dismissed the multitude, and sent his disciples away. The miraculous 
feeding had affected the multitude so much that they desired to make him their king ; 
that is, to proclaim him as the Messiah. " That Jesus ordered his disciples away," Lange 
remarks, "was undoubtedly owing to their sympathy with the enthusiasm of the people. 
The news of John's violent death had disheartened them the more, the greater their ex- 
pectations had been at their return from their first missionary tour. (See Mark vi, 
30, 31 ; Luke ix, 10.) Having sent his disciples away first, the Lord endeavors to allay 
the excitement of the multitude, and then withdraw to a mountain-top by himself in 
order to close the eventful day in undisturbed intercourse with his Father." How the 
multitude, notwithstanding his withdrawal from them, followed him to the western shore 
of the lake, is stated by John, (vi, 22-24.) 

The miracle recorded here belongs to the same class as the preceding one. Both show 
Christ's absolute control over physical nature. This is not inconsistent with his true hu- 
manity; for even to the first Adam the words of the Psalmist are applicable: "Thou 
madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things 
under his feet." In the second Adam, the Lord from heaven, this was verified to the 
fullest extent, so that the miraculous power over nature in him was but the natural out- 
flow of his divine humanity. (See § 30 in the General Introduction.) Yet these exhibi- 
tions of his divine humanity were exceptions to the habitual restraint or constraint to 
which he had voluntarily submitted, and which he threw off after his resurrection. In 
our conceptions of our Lord's walking on the sea, we must, as Trench remarks, avoid 
two erroneous views, "the one which conceives of his body as permanently exempt from 
the laws of gravity, the other which makes the seat of the miracle to have been in the 
waters rendered solid under his feet. The miracle, according to its true idea, is not the 
violation nor yet the suspension of law, but the incoming of a higher law, as of a spirit- 
ual in the midst of natural laws, and the momentary asserting, for that higher law, the 



390 



MATTHEW XIV, 22-36. 



pi-edominance which it was intended to have, and but for man's fall it would always have 
had, over the lower, and with this a prophecy of the prevalence which it shall one day 
recover. So was there here a sign of the lordship of man's will, when that will is in 
absolute harmony with God's will, over external nature." Essentially the same views are 
expressed by Olshausen, who remarks: "The process of the glorification of the Lord's 
body is generally considered as originating with the resurrection or ascension; but it is 
better to view the process as one extending over the whole life of the Eedeemer, his 
Spirit gaining by degrees full power over the body, and thereby transforming it into its 
OAvn nature, yet so that, on a few peculiar occasions, the spiritual predominates over the 
bodily. Thus, much of the difficulty that grows out of the general view disappears. A 
body exclusively earthly, chained to the earth with invisible bonds, can not break this 
connection; but that a body of a higher nature, impregnated with powers of a higher 
world, should be able to rise above the earth, can not appear strange. This phenomenon 
of Christ's walking upon the sea, must not, therefore, be conceived as a magical change 
taking place for the time being with the body of Christ, as if a power from without had 
seized and borne it along, but as a personal act of Christ, calling forth and applying his 
inherent miraculous powers. That he used these powers so rarely rests upon ethical 
grounds. While the Savior never wrought a miracle for a show, but only to benefit men 
thereby, the transient manifestation of his hidden glory was calculated to advance the 
faith of his disciples. They saw more clearly from day to day that their Master was the 
manifestation of the invisible Father. (Matt, xvi, 16.) Their carnal, Jewish Messianic 
ideas became more and more spiritualized. They saw in the life of Jesus ocular exhibi- 
tions of the Old Testament descriptions of the glory of Jehovah. ' He alone spreadeth 
out the heavens, and treadeth uj)on the waves of the sea.' (Job ix, 8.) " Coinciding with 
Olshausen, Lange adds: " That the case in question presents such a momentary breaking 
foi'th of a hitherto-concealed spiritual power of Christ's body, appears from the fact that 
Peter, by faith, becomes also a partaker of this power. It exists in Peter, as in human 
nature in general, as the resurrection germ; but it is burdened and chained in him 
through the weight of natural depravity, can be called forth only by Peter's faith in his 
Master's miraculous word, and is lost as soon as faith gives way to doubt. Thus this mir- 
acle of Christ falls in the same category as his miraculous conception, his glorification on 
the banks of Jordan, his transfiguration on the mount, his resurrection and ascension; 
and, standing in the midst of these phenomena, it points both back and forward. From 
this his miraculous personality proceeds his miraculous activity." 

Verses 22-36. (Compare Mark vi, 45-56; John vi, 14-21.) 

(22) And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to 
go before him unto the other side, while he sent the multitudes away. (23) And 
when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray : 
and when the evening was come, he was there alone. (24) But the ship was now 
in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves : for the wind was contrary. (25) And 
in the fourth watch 1 of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea. 
(26) And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, 
saying, It is a spirit; 2 and they cried out for fear. (27) But straightway Jesus 
spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid. (28) And Peter 



1 The Romans divided the night into four equal parts, 
differing according to the length of the night, and at 
the close of each part the guards were released. When 
Judea became a Roman province, the Jews also adopted 



this division, dropping their own division of the night 
into three parts of four hours each. The fourth 
watch, therefore, commenced toward three o'clock, A. M. 
2 Greek, (jtavrao-pa, a phantom, apparition, specter, ghost. 



CHRIST WALKS UPON THE LAKE. 



391 



answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water. 
(29) And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he 
walked on the water, to go to Jesus. (30) But when he saw the wind boisterous, 
he was afraid ; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me. (31) And 
immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O 
thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? (32) And when they were come 
into the ship, the wind ceased. (33) Then they that were in the ship came and 
worshiped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the Son of God. (34) And when they 
were gone over, they came into the land of Gennesaret. 3 (35) And when the 
men of that place had knowledge of him, they sent out into all that country 
round about, and brought unto him all that were diseased ; (36) and besought him 
that they might only touch the hem of his garment : and as many as touched were 
made perfectly whole. 



Verse 22. To go before him unto the other 
side. Mark says : " To go to the other side before unto 
Betlisaida." John: "They went over the sea toward 
Capernaum." Inasmuch as Betlisaida Julias, near 
which, according to Luke, the miraculous feeding 
took place, lies not on the opposite, that is, west- 
ern, but on the north-eastern coast of the lake, 
sacred geographers, in order to meet the difficulty in 
this passage, have supposed the Bethsaida which 
Mark mentions to be a different town from Bethsaida 
Julias, and have placed it on the western coast, south 
of Capernaum. But there is no need for this sup- 
position. It is highly improbable that two different 
towns on the shores of this small lake should have 
been called by the same name, but very probable 
that Bethsaida lay on both banks of Jordan, at its in- 
flux into the lake. There was, as Dr. Thomson in his 
"The Land and the Book" suggests, an East and 
West Bethsaida, the eastern part being raised by the 
tetrarch Philip to the rank of a city, and called 
Julias after the name of Augustus's daughter, while 
the so-called Galilean Bethsaida, the native place of 
Philip, Peter, and Andrew, lay on the western bank 
of Jordan, just opposite Bethsaida Julias. The dif- 
ference between John and Mark, as to the locality to 
which the disciples were directed to sail, may then 
be thus explained. Our Lord instructed his disciples 
to go over to Capernaum, " while he sent the multi- 
tude away." At the same time he may have told 
them that he would join them during the night at 
Bethsaida. The disciples, accordingly, left, sailing 
in the direction of Bethsaida, along the shore, and 
expecting to take the Lord on board at the latter 
place. But by the storm they were driven into the 
midst of the lake, so that they reached neither Beth- 
saida nor Capernaum, but landed south of the latter 
place. 



Verse 23. He went up into a mountain — liter- 
ally, into the mountain; the mountain chain around 
the lake. — Apart to pray. John connects his 
going up into the mountain to pray, very properly, 
with the popular movement to make him a king by 
force, inasmuch as this very movement may have 
been the special burden of his prayer. As the Son 
of man, he sought in .this emergency the needed 
strength of mind by communion with his Heavenly 
Father. Out of the many imposing scenes which 
the public ministry of our Lord presents, none is 
more affectingly sublime than when he is engaged 
on a solitary mountain-top and in the stillness of 
the night in prayer — wrestling with his Father for 
those that believed in him and for the multitudes 
that attended his ministry. 

Verse 24. According to Mark the disciples were 
already in the midst of the lake when it grew dark; 
that is, about one hour after they had set sail. At 
this time the storm arose, and they made so little 
progress, that after six or seven hours' sailing they 
had advanced, according to John, only from twenty- 
five to thirty stadia; that is, from three to four miles. 
The reason was: the wind was contrary. The 
storm was not only extremely severe, but blew di- 
rectly from the place whither they were sailing. 
(Comp. Mark vi, 48; John vi, 19.) 

Verse 25. The words rendered, "walking upon 
the sea," (rrepiTraTuv k-rrl rf)v ddTiaoaav) rationalistic in- 
terpreters — Paulus, Gfrcerer, and others — have trans- 
lated, "walking upon the bank of the sea," contend- 
ing that the Greek preposition sirl has sometimes 
this meaning. It is scarcely necessary to remark 
that the preposition t~l has never that meaning when 
governing an accusative; for, apart from this con- 
sideration, the absurdity of such a transaction is 
self-evident. If Jesus had been walking along the 



8 A small district, a little south of Capernaum, extend- I half miles in breadth. Josephus gives a glowing de- 
iug some four miles along the western shore of the lake, seription of the beauty and fertility of this plain, call- 
whieh took from it one of its names, and two and a I ing it the garden of the whole land. 



392 



MATTHEW XIV, 22-36. 



coast, it is not conceivable why the disciples should 
have taken him for a ghost, nor could a conversation 
have been carried on between Jesus on the coast and 
the disciples who were at least two miles from the 
coast in the midst of a raging and storm-tossed sea ! 
Verse 26. And when his disciples saw him walk- 
ing on the sea. He was close by them, for, accord- 
ing to Mark, " He cometh unto them, walking upon 
the sea, and would have passed by them." "This 
apparent passing by," remarks Trench, "on the 
Lord'o part, of his disciples, was that by which their 
prayer was to be called out, that he would not pass 
them by, that he would not forsake them. Exactly 
in the same way, walking with his two disciples to 
Emmaus, after his resurrection, 'he made as though 
he would have gone further,' thus drawing out from 
them the entreaty that he would abide. And at the 
root of what a multitude of God's other dealings 
does something of the same kind lie : so that this is 
not an insulated circumstance, but one which finds 
its analogies every-where in the Scripture, and in the 
Christian life. "What part does Christ sustain here 
different from that which in the parable of the unjust 
judge, (Luke xviii, 2,) or the churlish friend, (Luke 
xi, 5,) he makes God to sustain? or different from 
that which he himself sustained when he came not 
to the help of the sisters of Bethany when their need 
seemed the highest ? And are not all such cries of 
the faithful in the Psalms as this, ' Lord, why hidest 
thou thy face ?' confessions that he does so deal with 
his servants, that by delaying and seeming to pass by, 
he calls out their faith, and their prayers that he 
would come to them soon and abide with them 
always?" — They were troubled, saying, It is a 
spirit. Such was the darkness and so strange the 
whole phenomenon, that the disciples did not recog- 
nize Jesus, but fancied they saw some specter. This is 
an incidental proof, that the Jews in general believed 
in a world of spirits and the self-conscious existence 
of the soul in a disembodied state. The fear of the 
disciples was natural, and under similar circum- 
stances any crew would have manifested the same 
terror. The ungarnished description of the whole 
occurrence, the fright and crying out of the disci- 
ples, are also strong incidental evidence, that the 
whole statement is from an eye-witness. — It is 
worthy of note, that Jesus did not improve the occa- 
sion to rebuke the disciples' fear of ghosts; on 
another occasion he speaks (Luke xxiv, 39) of 
spirits as realities, not as being the product of an 
excited imagination. Although superstition has been 
extremely fertile in inventing ghost and specter 
stories, yet we are not warranted to affirm the abso- 
lute impossibility of such phenomena, since the Bible 
does not affirm it in places like ours— where it ought 
to have been done, if the popular belief was an un- 
qualified illusion — while in others their reality is at 
once implied, as, e. g., in the history of Samuel, 
where though the woman intended only a fraud upon 
Saul and would have had no power to call the spirit 



of Samuel, yet that spirit did appear contrary to her 
expectation, and to her own dismay. (1 Sam. xxviii, 
15.) The real and only difficulty lies in this: how 
can a disembodied spirit make himself known to, or 
hold converse with, a spirit that is still in the body, 
whose intercourse with the world around is carried 
on through the senses exclusively? Formerly the 
answer to this question was, that the disembodied 
spirit assumes for the time being an ethereal, yet 
visible body. But modern psychology says that the 
soul or spirit out of the body is not unqualifiedly 
bodiless, and can, through sympathetic influences, 
under certain conditions, commune with the spirit in 
the body. It must, therefore, not be deemed an im- 
possibility that the spirits of the dead should at times 
make themselves visible. Against the superstition 
and imposition connected with necromancy, which is 
so positively forbidden in the "Word of God, but has 
of late become so popular again, we are not pro- 
tected by a general skepticism respecting manifesta- 
tions from the spirit-world, but by faith in the Father 
of spirits, who allows his established order to be 
broken but rarely, and only for wise purposes, as in 
the case of Samuel. 

Verse 27. But straightway Jesus spake unto 
them. The Savior does not leave his disciples long 
in this state of extreme fear and sore distress. He 
addresses them forthwith in his well-known voice, 
with the cheering words: "Be of good cheer; it is I; 
be not afraid." John omits the words, "Be of good 
cheer," as recorded by Matthew and Mark, and gives 
only the significant words, "It is I," literally I am. 
"The coincidence," remarks Alexander, "of this 
phrase with the Divine name / am (Ex. iii, 14) is 
extremely striking, even if fortuitous." What a 
fountain of consolation is opened in these words to 
evcsry believer to the end of time! He is anxious 
to give us rest and peace amid all storms from with- 
out and within, and his very presence secures these 
blessings as soon as he reveals himself to us. But 
just as the disciples in the case before us mistook 
Jesus and were frightened by his sight, so it happens 
often to us, that we are frightened and distressed by 
those very things that are intended to save us from 
impending ruin. 

Verse 28. The incident about Peter is peculiar 
to Matthew, and sets forth very truthfully the apos- 
tle's character, his fiery temperament and self-reli- 
ance. The words, "Lord, if it be thou," must not 
be understood as implying on the part of Peter a 
doubt as to the identity of the Savior; the meaning 
is, on the contrary, "Since it is thou, Lord, bid me," 
etc., which meaning the conjunction ei, (if,) has some- 
times. (Ch. vi, 30; John xiii, 17.) He does not 
venture without his Master's permission, who alone 
could save him from sinking. This was a noble ex- 
hibition of his confidence in Christ; yet there was 
an impure ingredient in it, as appears from that Bid 
me. He desired to distinguish himself before his 
fellow-apostles, as he did on a later occasion, when 



CHRIST WALKS UPON THE LAKE. 



393 



he said: "Although all shall be offended, yet will 
not I." 

Verse 29. And he said, Come. "We should not 
fail to observe, and with reverence to admire, the 
wisdom and love of the Lord's answer. Peter had 
said, 'Bid me,' but he does not reply, 'I bid thee.' 
Peter had said ' to come to thee,' but he does not reply, 
' Come to me' — only ' Come;' that is, 'Come, if thou 
wilt ; make the experiment if thou desirest.' In that 
' Come,' an assurance is indeed involved that Peter 
should not be wholly swallowed up by the waves, but 
no pledge for the successful issue of the feat, which 
would have been involved had his words been the 
entire echo of his disciple's. This successful issue 
depended upon Peter himself — whether he should 
keep the beginning of his confidence firm unto the 
end. And the Lord, who knew what was in him, 
knew that he would not; that this was not the pure 
courage of faith; that what of carnal overboldness 
there was in it would infallibly be exchanged, when 
the stress of the trial came, for fear and unbelief." 
(Trench.) — He walked on the water to go to 
Jesus. These words evidently imply, that Peter 
walked some distance on the water. Faith was here, 
as in all other miracles of the Savior, the indis- 
pensable condition on the part of the recipient to 
call forth the exercise of the miraculous powers rest- 
ing in the Savior. As long as Peter's eye of faith 
was immovably fixed on the person of the Lord, he 
was enabled to do what Jesus did. What a rich em- 
blem is this of that faith which laughs at impossibili- 
ties! Through Christ strengthening us we can do all 
things. 

Verse 30. But when he saw the wind boister- 
ous; when he saw something else besides Jesus. — 
He was afraid — literally, frightened. " This alarm 
is perfectly in keeping with the character of Peter, 
which was more distinguished by impulsive ardor 
than by steady courage, whether physical or moral." 
(Alexander.)' — And beginning to sink; that is, to 
be submerged. "In this his peril his swimmer's art 
(John xxi, 1) profits him nothing; for there is no 
mingling of nature and grace in this way. He who 
has entered the wonder-world of grace must not 
suppose that he may fall out of it at any moment, 
and betake himself to his old resources of nature ; 
he has foregone these and must carry out what he has 
begun, or fail at his peril." (Trench.) — He cried, 
saying, Lord, save me ! In this moment of extreme 
danger, with no other feeling than that of utter help- 
lessness, he puts his whole trust in Christ. This 
" Lord, save me !" is the language of genuine prayer, 
expressive of our own total inability, as well as of 
the Savior's nearness to help. Let every soul in her 
sorest distress throw herself unhesitatingly into the 
hands of Jesus. 

Verse 31. And immediately Jesus stretched 
forth his hand and caught him. This shows that 
Peter was close by Jesus, when his faith failed and 
he began to sink. ■ — ■ thou of little faith, 



wherefore didst thou doubt ? The Lord does not 
say, Why didst thou come? He does not find fault 
with him for having undertaken too much, but for 
not having persevered in the exercise of his faith. 
The greater our faith is in setting out, the greater is 
the folly of the least subsequent doubt. Trench re- 
marks: "Not till by his sustaining hand he has re- 
stored confidence to the fearful one, and made him 
feel that he can indeed tread under foot those waves 
of the unquiet sea, does the Lord speak even this 
word of a gentle rebuke. The courage of the dis- 
ciple has returned, so that the Master speaks of his 
doubt as of something which is already past : Where- 
fore didst thou doubt? Before the doubt arose in 
thy heart thou didst walk on these waves, and now 
that thy faith has returned thou dost walk on them 
again; thou seest that it is not impossible, that it 
lies but in thy faithful will ; that all things are possi- 
ble to him that believeth." 

Verse 32. The wind ceased. John adds: "And 
immediately the ship was at the land, whither they 
went." 

Verse 33. Then they that were in the ship. 
It is not probable that any other than the disciples 
are meant, because none but the disciples are spoken 
of in verse 22. Four of them were accustomed as 
fishermen to navigate the lake, and the definite arti- 
ticle before "ship" in verse 22 indicates also that it 
was the boat commonly used by the disciples. Be- 
sides, the nature of the miracle was such, that it is 
not likely others than the disciples would be per- 
mitted to witness it in this period of our Lord's min- 
istry. — Of a truth, thou art the Son of God. 
On this passage Judge Jones remarks in his Notes : 
"The article, though it appears in our translation, is 
not in the original. The expression is different in 
this respect from Peter's in Matt, xvi, 16. On the 
occasion of Peter's confession the Savior blessed 
him, adding that he had declared a truth which flesh 
and blood had not revealed to him, but the Father. 
He pronounced no such blessing on this occasion. 
There must be a difference in the two expressions, 
or in the sense in which they were uttered. Not- 
withstanding all that Bishop Middleton, or any one 
else, has written concerning the use or omission of 
the Greek article in the New Testament, we can not 
understand the expression of the disciples on this 
occasion as a confession of the Deity of the Lord 
Jesus. It appears to be much of the same nature 
as the centurion's, who watched the crucifixion 
They regarded him as a man highly favored of God, 
endowed with most extraordinary powers, but with- 
out any conception of his Divine nature and at- 
tributes, as the Son of God and the Creator of all 
things. This view of the passage detracts nothing 
from the proofs of the doctrine of our Lord's Divine 
nature, and his equality in that nature with God the 
Father. For this great truth is to be proved by his 
own words and works, not by the confessions of his 
disciples, made before they were inspired, and when 



394 



MATTHEW XV, 1-20. 



they were imperfectly instructed in the mysteries of 
redemption." On the foregoing we would remark, 
that the omission of the article is of no importance in 
determining the sense of the term. '' Son of God." 
Immediately afterward, (John vi, 69,) and prior to 
his confession in Matt, xvi, 16, Simon Peter says: 
"We believe and are sure that thou art the Christ, 
the Son of the living God," or as the best readings 
have it, " the Holy One of God." Yet — whether the 
reading "the Son of God" in that passage is gen- 
uine or not — it seems from Matt, xvi, 15-17, that, 
though the disciples had called their Master '•' Son of 
God" before, they had not attached that sense to the 
term which Peter then attached to it by Divine Reve- 
lation. This much is certain, that our text speaks 
of the first time they called their Master " Son of 
God" prior to the solemn confession of Peter in 
chapter xvi, 16. 

Verses 34, 35. Matthew and Mark relate that 
immediately after his landing many sick persons 
thronged to him. Jesus commences the new day 
again with dispensing blessings to suffering humanity, 
notwithstanding the labors of the preceding day and 
the loss of sleep during the whole night. — And 

WHEN THE MEN OF THAT PLACE HAD KNOWLEDGE OF 

HIM. They were in all probability working in the 
fields, since it had become daylight meanwhile. They 
knew Jesus, because he stopped often in that neigh- 
borhood, and, moreover, because the people had seen 
many of his miracles. Rejoicing in his return, they 
sent out messengers in all directions in order to have 
the sick brought to him. (See Mark vi, 55.) 
Verse 36. And they sought him, that they might 

ONLY TOUCH THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT. This may 

indicate both the strong faith of the people, and the 
haste with which Jesus passed through the country. — 
At the close of this chapter Dr. Alexander remarks: 
"We are here brought back to the main theme of 
the history, to-wit: the itinerant ministry of Christ 
in Galilee, to which the Evangelist repeatedly reverts, 



as soon as he has finished any of the special topics 
comprehended in the plan of his Gospel. We have 
such a description after the preliminaries in the first 
four chapters, (iv, 24;) after the Sermon on the 
Mount and the series of miracles which follows it, 
(ix, 35;) after the organization and commission of 
the apostolic body, (xi, 1;) and now again after the 
formation of a systematic opposition, the exemplifi- 
cation of our Savior's parabolic teaching, the death 
of John the Baptist, the great creative miracle of 
feeding the five thousand, and the threefold miracle 
of walking on the water, saving Peter, and deliver- 
ing the ship from danger." 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 

1. As that bark was upon those stormy seas, such 
is oftentimes the Church. It seems as though it had 
not its Lord with it, such little way does it make; so 
baffled is it and tormented by the opposing storms 
of the world. But his eye is on it still; he is in the 
mountain apart praying; ever living, an ascended 
Savior, to make intercession for his people. And 
when at length the time of urgent need has arrived, 
he is suddenly with it, and that in marvelous ways 
past finding out — and then all that before was labori- 
ous is easy, and the toiling rowers are anon at the 
haven where they would be. 

2. Peter is here the image of all the faithful in 
the seasons of their weakness and their fear. Sn 
long as they are strong in faith, they are able to 
tread under foot all the most turbulent agitations of 
an unquiet world ; but when they lose heart, and fear; 
when, instead of "looking unto Jesus," they look at 
the stormy winds and waters, then these prevail 
against them, and they begin to sink, and were it 
not for Christ's sustaining hand, which is stretched 
out in answer to their cry, they would be wholly over- 
whelmed and swallowed up. 



OHAPTEE XT, 



32. A DISCUSSION WITH 



THE PHARISEES 
TIONS OF MEN. 



CONCERNING THE TRADI- 



Between this conversation with the scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem, and the 
events related in the preceding chapter, falls the discourse of our Lord at Capernaum. 
(John vi, 22-71.) (See Synoptical Table, JSTos. 83-86.) The conversation took place, if 
not before, immediately after the third Passover, (John vi, 47,) which Christ seems not to 
have attended. (John vii, 1.) Lange remarks: "As the Gospel history progresses, the 
gulf between the believing and the unbelieving portion of the nation widens. The 
former desire but to touch the hem of his garment in order to be healed, the latter look 
upon him as unclean and excommunicated, because his disciples had transgressed one of 






A DISCUSSION ON THE TRADITIONS OF MEN. 



395 



the traditions of the elders. In the same way the enmity of the Pharisees is on the 
increase. At first the Pharisees of Judea had declared against him, then those of Galilee; 
now they are in league with each other. Since the Pharisees charge now Jesus and his 
disciples before all the people with contempt of the national traditions, Jesus deems this 
the proper time to set forth before all the people the contrast and absolute contradiction 
between a self-righteous traditionary system and the eternal laws of God, condemning 
every form of ecclesiasticism that has set aside the fundamental laws of humanity, or of 
God, and of the moral nature of man." 

"Verses 1— SO. (Compare Mark tii, 1-23.) 

(1) Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, say- 
ing, (2) Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders ? for they wash 
not their hands when they eat bread. (3) But he answered and said unto them, 
Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? (4) For 
God commanded, saying, Honor thy father and mother: and, He that curseth 
father or mother, let him die the death. (5) But ye say, Whosoever shall say to 
his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by 
me ; (6) and honor not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye 
made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. (7) Ye hypo- 
crites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, (8) This people draweth nigh unto 
me with their mouth, and honoreth me with their lips; but their heart is far from 
me. (9) But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the command- 
ments of men. (10) And he called the multitude, and said unto them, Hear, and 
undei^stand: (11) Kot that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that 
which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man. (12) Then came his disciples, 
and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, after they 
heard this saying? (13) But he answered and said, Every plant, which my 
Heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. (14) Let them alone : they 
be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into 
the ditch. (15) Then answered Peter and said unto him, Declare unto us this 
parable. (16) And Jesus said, Are ye also yet without understanding? (17) Bo 
not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the 
belly, and is cast out into the draught? (18) But those things which proceed out 
of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. (19) For out 
of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false 
witness, blasphemies : (20) These are the things which defile a man : but to eat with 
unwashen hands defileth not a man. 



Verse 1. Lange understands by the scribes and 
Pharisees a deputation from the synagogue, repre- 
senting all the scribes and Pharisees, on account 
of the definite article standing in Greek before 
"scribes" — the scribes. But Stier thinks that the 
Lord's answer to an official deputation would have 
been more respectful. They were, at all events, 
"men of influence from the capital, who acted in 
the present instance as if invested with special au- 



thority, and who had probably followed Jesus in 
order to watch him." 

Verse 2. Why do thy disciples transgress the 
tradition of the elders? Dr. Clarke says on this 
passage : " The Jews feign that, when God gave 
Moses the written law, he gave him also the oral law, 
which is the interpretation of the former. This law 
Moses at first delivered to Aaron; then to his sons 
Eleazer and Ishamar; and after these to the seventy- 



396 



MATTHEW XV, 1-20. 



two elders, who were six of the most eminent men 
chosen out of each of the twelve tribes. These sev- 
enty-two, with Moses and Aaron, delivered it again 
to all the heads of the people, and afterward to all 
the congregation at large. They say also, that be- 
fore Moses died he delivered this oral law, or system 
of traditions, to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, 
which succeeded him — they to the prophets, and the 
prophets to each other, till it came to Jeremiah, who 
delivered it to Baruch, his scribe, who repeated it to 
Ezra, who delivered it to the men of the great syna- 
gogue, the last of whom was Simon the Just. Thence 
it was delivered through the Rabbins to Rabbi Judah 
Hakkodesh, [in the second century of the Christian 
era,] who compiled and digested it into the book, 
which is called the Mishna; to explain which the two 
Talmuds, called the Jerusalem and the Babylonish 
Talmud, were compiled, which are also called the 
Gemara, or complement, because by these the oral 
law, or Mishna, is fully explained. The Jerusalem 
Talmud was completed about A. D. 300 ; and the 
Babylonish Talmud about the beginning of the sixth 
century. This Talmud was printed at Amsterdam 
in twelve volumes folio." — The traditions of the 
elders bear the same relation to Judaism which the 
traditionary system of the Romish Church bears to 
the religion of Christ. Lightfoot has shown that the 
Jewish Talmudists attached greater weight to the 
rabbinical traditions than to the law. " The words 
of the scribes," say they, " are lovely, above the words 
of the law; for the words of the law are weighty and 
light; but the words of the scribes are all weighty." 
Alford says: "The Jews attached more importance 
to the traditionary exposition than to the Scripture 
text itself. They compared the written word to 
water; the traditionary exposition to the wine which 
must be mingled with it." — For they wash not 

THEIR HANDS WHEN THEY EAT BREAD J that is, before 

taking their meals. The Old Testament contains no 
command about washing one's hands before meals, 
although it prescribes a number of washings for un- 
clean persons. (Lev. xv.) It was, consequently; a 
traditionary law, which the Lord would be likely to 
observe at the proper time and place as a sanitary 
regulation, but did not recognize as an inviolable or 
religious duty. Jewish tradition says that Rabbi 
Akiba preferred dying of thirst in the prison, where 
but little water was furnished him, to eating with un- 
washed hands. 

Verse 3. Why do ye also transgress the com- 
mandment of God? The Lord charges in turn the 
Pharisees with transgressing the Divine law under 
sanctimonious pretenses, showing by an example 
how the hypocrisy of the Pharisees set a Divine 
commandment aside by a tradition based exclusively 
on self-interest. — By your tradition. The Greek 
preposition 6ia may be translated for the sake of 
which would give the same sense as the parallel 
passage in Mark vii, 9: "That ye may keep your 
own tradition." 



Verse 4. God commanded. Mark has : " Moses 
said." This is, as Alford remarks, a remarkable 
testimony from our Lord to the Divine origin of the 
Mosaic law — not merely the Decalogue as such, for 
the second clause, He that curseth, etc., is not in the 
Decalogue. — Our Lord selected the fourth com- 
mandment in the Decalogue, probably, because it is 
so universally recognized, and comprises the fear of 
God and the love to our fellow-men, the germs of all 
piety and morality in Church and State. He that 
breaks this commandment violates the moral law of 
God in its very essence. To honor one's parents 
implies not only an outward respect and reverence, 
but an attention to all their wants, especially in their 
declining years, (v. 5.) The Greek word, rendered 
by cursing, includes all kinds of disobedience to par- 
ents, to think, speak, and to do evil to them, to curse 
them and wish them harm. 

Verse 5. But ye say. by your tradition, which is 
here in direct opposition to God's law. — It is a 
gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited 
by me. These words are quoted as addressed to the 
parents. The meaning is : " Any thing I have, by 
which thou mightest be supported, is set aside as a- 
consecrated gift, and therefore not to be applied to 
your benefit." Mark (vii, 11) uses for gift the He- 
brew word corban, that is, something consecrated to 
the Temple worship or to the altar. The Jews were 
in the habit of making such consecrations or dedica- 
tions. From Matt, xxiii, 18, we see that such a gift 
consecrated to the altar was an object of religious 
veneration, and was often sworn by in preference to 
the altar. The Divine law required that what was 
so dedicated or vowed to God should also be applied 
to the purposes specified. " Offer unto God thanks- 
giving, and pay thy vows unto the Most High." 
(Ps. 1, 14; Deut. xxiii, 21.) This command was 
perverted by the Rabbins into the monstrous tenet 
that the mere word corban pronounced over what- 
ever one might possess is sufficient to absolve a man 
from the duty of caring for his parents, even if he 
did afterward not actually consecrate his property to 
religious purposes. If, therefore, indigent parents 
applied to their children for support, and the latter 
said, "Corban, let it be consecrated to God," this 
dedication was irrevocable, and the parents were 
deprived of what they needed. 

Verse 6. And honor not ; that is, neglects to 
honor them by giving them their due support. — He 
shall be free, from blame. These words are not in 
the text. They form the logical conclusion called 
by grammarians apodosis, which is frequently left to 
be supplied by the reader. — Of none effect; that 
is, null and void. 

Verse 7. Ye hypocrites. See foot-note on chap. 
vi, 2. This, most probably, was the first time that 
our Lord directly addressed the scribes and Phari- 
sees by this term Hitherto he had rather contented 
himself with refuting their principles, but now, when 
they dare to attack his disciples for their non-observ- 



A DISCUSSION ON THE TRADITIONS OF MEN. 



397 



ance of the traditions of the elders, which they sub- 
stituted for the most sacred and obvious command- 
ments of God, he charges them directly with the 
crime of hypocrisy. Every religious pretense, apart 
from morality and beyond the revealed will of God, 
has its origin in that hideous crime. — Well [that 
is, appropriately] did Isaiah prophesy op you. The 
quotation, from Isaiah xxix, 13, which is nearly ac- 
cording to the LXX, is made from a section (chaps, 
xxiv-xxxv) which sets forth, in alternate threaten- 
ings and promises, the punishment of the mere nom- 
inal Israel and the salvation of the true Israel of 
God. As is so often the case in the prophetic Word, 
its threats and promises are for all ages of the 
Church — though our Lord's saying of you indicates 
that the prophecy is especially applicable to the 
times of the Messiah. It belongs, thus, to those 
prophecies which have a primary and secondary ap- 
plication. The prophet, in whose times the Phari- 
saic tradition had as yet no existence, inveighs 
against the outward observance of the law by his 
cotemporaries, while their hearts were alienated 
from God — a state of mind that forms the very 
foundation of Pharisaism. 

Verse 8. This people draweth nigh unto me 
with their mouth, and honoreth me with their 
lips ; that is, they make great professions of piety. 

BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR FROM ME. The State of 

their heart is diametrically opposed to their profes- 
sions. 

Verse 9. This part of the quotation differs ma- 
terially from the original in words, but expresses the 
same sense. The literal translation of the Hebrew 
words is : " Their fearing of me [that is, their wor- 
ship] is a precept of man, a thing taught," and 
means : Their religion rests merely on the precepts 
of human teaching. — In vain ; that is, for no pur- 
pose. — Teaching for doctrines the command- 
ments of men. The word, rendered commandments, 
ivraX/xara, is found only here, in the parallel pas- 
sage, (Mark vii, 7,) and in Col. ii, 22, where it also 
denotes the commandments of men as opposed to 
those of God. — Just like these Jewish Rabbins, the 
Church of Rome declares her tradition to be equally 
binding with the written Word of God, and thereby 
makfts.. the Word of God of no effect. Burdens are 
laid upon the consciences of men which the Lord 
has not commanded, in many instances in diamet- 
rical opposition to the spirit and letter of the Word 
of God. 

Verses 10, 11. " Having exposed the folly of the 
prevalent ceremonial superstition as to uncommand- 
ed religious washings, and its wickedness in setting 
aside moral obligations, the Savior now pursues the 
same course, in a still more public manner, with re- 
spect to the most prevalent and favorite of all 
merely-ritual distinctions, that of clean and unclean 
meats, which had then become, and still continues, 
the chief bar to social intercourse between Jews and 
Gentiles. The very object of the law upon this 



subject — as recorded in Lev. xi and Deut. xiv — -was to 
separate the chosen race from every other by restric- 
tions on their food which should render it impossible 
for them to live together, or to interchange the ordi- 
nary courtesies of life without a constant violation, 
upon one side, of religious duty. This effect had 
been abundantly secured for ages in the practice of 
all conscientious Jews, but with the necessary inci- 
dental evil of a constant disposition, even on the 
part of such, to mistake a positive and temporary reg- 
ulation for a perpetual, invariable law, and to regard 
the forbidden meats as having an intrinsic efficacy 
to defile, not only ceremonially, but morally. Against 
this groundless and pernicious error Christ propounds 
the simple truth, but in a form adapted to arrest the 
popular attention and impress itself upon the mem- 
ory." (Alexander.) — Not that which goeth into 
the mouth defileth a man. The Lord speaks here 
not of legal, but of moral defilement, as appears 
from the succeeding clause. The authority and obli- 
gation of the ceremonial law was, therefore, not 
called in question. 

Verse 12. Then came his disciples. From 
Mark vii, 17, we learn that this took place after the 
people had dispersed, and he had entered into the 
house. That the Lord placed himself here in so 
direct opposition to the Pharisees, appeared to his 
disciples strange, because their Master had, thus far, 
avoided every personal offense. 

Verse 13. At no other time has the Lord more 
fully sanctioned the unreserved and unqualified ex- 
posure of all doctrines that are opposed to the truth. 
— Fvery plant, which my Heavenly Father has 
not planted ; that is, every doctrine which is not 
of Divine origin, which God has not revealed to man 
in his Word. All human traditions are plants which 
our Father has not planted; they owe their origin to 
worldly motives, and draw their support from worldly 
interests. Not the Pharisees personally, but their 
doctrines, are in this verse the subject of our Lord's 
remarks; in the next verse he speaks of their per- 
sons. — Shall be rooted up. Some commentators 
take the future here in the sense of the imperative; 
that is, let them be rooted up. Jesus declares here, 
most distinctly and emphatically, against the tolera- 
tion of false, pernicious, and ungodly doctrines, and 
shows, by his own example, how they are to be erad- 
icated. This is not against the prohibition of rooting 
out the tares, (chap, xiii, 30,) by which we have to 
understand the violent destruction of persons. 

Verse 14. Let them alone. Leave them to 
themselves ; they will, with their dupes, run into ruin. 

Verse 15. According to Mark vii, 17, Peter acts 
here as the mouthpiece of the apostolic college. The 
word parable is here used in a general sense, mean- 
ing a moral maxim couched in figurative language. 
Though the disciples must have understood the gen- 
eral truth announced by our Lord in the preceding 
remark, they did not know how to reconcile it with 
the injunctions of the ceremonial law. 



398 



MATTHEW XV, 1-20. 



Verses 17, 18. Do not ye tet understand? 
that is, are ye also yet without understanding, after I 
have instructed you for so long a time ? Food and 
drink are digested by corporeal organs, and come 
into no contact with man's spiritual nature. In 
verse 18 the heart, or soul, is contrasted with the bod- 
ily organization, and the inference drawn that moral 
pollution can only come from within, not from 
without. 

Verse 19. There never has been drawn a more 
truthful and humiliating picture of the human heart 
than is done in this verse. We have here our Lord's 
own explicit testimony as to human depravity. — 
From the fact that Jesus describes the heart as the 
seat and fountain of sin, no inference can be drawn 
against the doctrine of the satanic origin of moral 
evil. The Pharisees said: Outward things defile a 
man; they constitute sin, or moral evil. Jesus says: 
No, it is the heart which defiles a man ; on the state 
of the heart depends every thing. Then follows a 
specification of the things which proceed from out 
of the heart. — Evil thoughts. Evil thoughts, even 
if they are not spoken or carried out. defile indeed a 
man, although sin is consummated only by putting 
the wicked thought into practice. The evil thoughts 
which are suggested by Satan can not be meant 
here, for they come from without, not from the 
heart. — Murders — not only the act of taking a 
man's life, but also anger, malice, revenge, and 
every state of the mind that is opposed to the spirit 
of the sixth commandment. (See chap, v, 21-26.) 
— Adulteries. See chap, v, 27-32, — Fornica- 
tions include all impure desires and unchaste acts. 
(See chap, v, 28.) — -Thefts. Mark adds covetous- 
ness, deceit, both of which lead to thefts. — False 
witness. " This is also put generically, not only 
for false testimony in courts of justice, but for every 
species of fraud, deception, and falsehood. One of 
the most universal sins of our race is here referred 
to. It besets childhood, and, unless judiciously and 
thoroughly eradicated, takes such deep root in the 
soul as to be the besetting sin of one's whole life. 
It makes its appearance in various forms. With 
some persons a malicious pleasure seems to be taken 
in spreading slanderous and mischievous reports. 
In others it results from a want of moral courage to 
tell the truth. It sometimes proceeds from a habit 
of exaggeration inadvertently formed. A violation 
of truth may also be found in promises carelessly 
made, but not fulfilled, conventional forms of polite 
prevarication, false impressions conveyed in lan- 
guage so adroitly formed as to imply no verbal 
falsehood, and in signs, gestures, and even silence 
itself. Against all these forms the commandment 
of God, ' Thou shalt not bear false witness,' is op- 
posed. When seen by his eye they indicate a cor- 
rupt heart, out of which proceeds that which defiles 
the soul." (Owen.) — Blasphemies. See chaps. 
ix, 3, and xii, 31. — "The sins here enumerated 
[with the exception of the last named] are all vio- 



lations of the Second Table. If to them we add the 
rebellious and evil thoughts against God, which issue 
from the heart, how overwhelming must be the con- 
viction of the deep depravity of our nature and the 
impossibility of being purified, except by the blood 
of Christ, which cleanseth from all sin." (Owen.) 
How necessary the prayer, " Create in me a clean 
heart, God, and renew a right spirit within me!" 
(Ps. li, 10.) 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 

We will take these scribes and Pharisees as they 
appear here, as the types of a large class of men 
who are found in the Churches of every age — a class 
which we call traditional religionists. The passage 
leads us to notice three things concerning them: 

I. Their miserable spirit, as displayed by 

THEMSELVES. 

1. They display a spirit of hollow punctilious- 
ness. The only thing they noticed in the conduct 
of the disciples of Christ, and the only thing about 
them in which they felt any interest, was their disre- 
gard of one little point of ceremony; namely, the 
"washing of hands." The clean heart was nothing 
to them — the clean hand was all they thought of. 
Thus it has ever been with their class: the letter is 
exalted above the spirit, punctilios above principles. 
It matters not how good a man is; he may be as 
earnest as Paul, as meek as John ; if he belong not 
to their sect, subscribe not to their tenets, respect 
not their canons and rituals, they are nothing — they 
are worse than nothing — they are heretics, deserving 
nothing but denunciation and abuse. 

2. They display a spirit of captious officiousness. 
Traditional saints, the men who live in dogmas , 
and ceremonies, have always displayed this spirit of 
caviling interference. Show me the member of a 
Church who is more taken up with the forms and 
proprieties of religion than with its spiritual import- 
ance and claims, and you will show me a man whose 
captious spirit is ever disturbing the harmony of the 
fellowship to which he belongs. It is a historical fact 
that those sections of the Christian Church which 
pay most attention to form and ceremony are the 
most censorious in their spirit, the most bitter in 
their sectarianism, and the most successful of agents 
in creating schisms in the ranks of the good. 

3. They display a spirit of impious assumption. 
Their very interference implied a feeling, on their 
part, of authority on such questions. They act as 
if they were the judges of character, the arbiters of 
destiny. Who are the men who have ever been the 
most ready to arrogate to themselves this power — 
the most ready to arraign and punish their brethren 
for heterodoxy? Have they been distinguished either 
by great spirituality of soul, liberality of thought, or 
a philosophic insight to the laws of the mind, the 
doctrines of the Gospel, and the principles of God's 



THE CANAANITISH WOMAN. 



399 



administration? No; they have been men whose 
conceptions have been narrow, superficial, material- 
men whose Gospel has been a little bundle of crude 
notions, attractive to the thoughtless, but, verily, 
repulsive to all other minds. The passage leads us 
to notice: 

II. Their arrogant assumption, as ignored by 
the disciples. The disciples were true men, and 
they practically set at naught the punctiliousness of 
these religionists. We will make two remarks on 
the conduct of the disciples here: 

1. It was justifiable. The fact that Christ, in- 
stead of intimating in the slightest degree that the 
disciples were wrong in neglecting this rite, crim- 
inates and denounces their accusers, clearly shows 
that they had done no wrong. 

2. It was natural. The more men's souls advance 
in a knowledge of spiritual principles and a sympa- 
thy with God and the universe, the more indifferent 
they naturally become to the mere letter and eti- 
quette of religion. Thus the Hebrew Christians 
left Judaism; thus the Reformers, Popery; thus the 
Puritans, and, in later times, Wesley and Whitefield, 
with their followers, left the Anglican Church ; and 
thus now there are rising spirits in every Church 
that are practically indifferent to its little points of 
ceremony and minor shades of creed. The passage 
leads us to notice: 

III. Their hideous character, as unmasked by 
their Judge. The appeal of Christ shows four 
things concerning these scribes and Pharisees: 

1. That however orthodox they appeared before 
men, they were heretics in the sight of God. These 
men prided themselves on the accuracy of their re- 
ligious opinions; they were regarded as authorities 
in such matters. Like the technical theologians of 
every age, they would have it believed that they had 
fathomed the depths of all truths essential to human 
belief and practice. But, notwithstanding this, they 
were heretics that understood not the A B C of true 
theology. Moral heresy is often associated with in- 
tellectual orthodoxy. 

2. That however socially upright they appeared 
before men, they xoere dishonest in the sight of God. 
Christ gives a case here to show their moral un- 
soundness, and to prove that by their traditions they 
did transgress the laws of God. Observe here two 
things: (1.) The divine principle of duty. This 
principle is, that it is the duty of children to honor 



their father and mother. This divine principle of 
filial obedience is congruous with the dictates of 
reason and nature. That having derived our being, 
support, protection, and all the blessings of early 
life from our parents, we should return such obliga- 
tions by ministering to their comfort, should they 
require it, is a duty unmistakably clear and abso- 
lutely binding. Observe, (2.) The violation of this 
divine principle by these traditionisls. In the 
name of religion they extorted from children the 
property that should have gone to the succor and 
support of indigent parents. Such pious frauds 
have, alas! been too common in every age. Prop- 
erty that should have gone to feed the hungry and 
clothe the naked, has, by traditional religionists, 
been employed to build costly cathedrals, to support 
ritualistic pageantry, and feed plethoric priests. 

3. That however religious they appeared before 
men, they were infidels in the sight of God. There 
is no atheism so bad as the atheism of the mere lip- 
worshipers in the Church. The mere theoretical 
infidel you may vanquish by argument, but all your 
reasoning goes for nothing with the lip-worshiping 
infidels. I believe that if there was no moral athe- 
ism in the Church, there would be no theoretical 
atheism in the world. Every worshiper would be 
such a living witness for God that bold infidelity 
would every-where turn pale, and die. 

4. That however valuable their religion appeared 
before men, it was utterly worthless in the sight of 
God. There is no heart in their devotions, and 
therefore no virtue. " God is a spirit, and they that 
worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." 

Brother, "in vain" is thy theological creed, however 
Scriptural its basis and philosophical its structure ; 
"in vain" is thy ecclesiastical polity, however it 
may accord with the principles of the New Testa- 
ment, and be adapted to Church edification and 
order; "in vain" are thy forms of devotion — thy 
hymns may breathe seraphic piety, thy liturgies may 
be inspired, thy prayers may be fashioned after the 
great model prayer; "in vain" is the punctuality 
with which thou attendest to religious services, and 
the propriety with which thou dost join in the exer- 
cises of the great congregation : in vain all, and 
forever in vain, if thy " heart is far from God." In 
all thy religious engagements thou art only sowing 
the wind, and thou wilt reap the whirlwind. (Abbre- 
viated from " The Homilist.") 



%%%, THE CANAANITISH WOMAN. 

"Verses S1-S8. (Compare Mark vii, 24-30.) 

(21) Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. 
(22) And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto 
him, saying, Have mercy on me, Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is 



400 



MATTHEW XV, 21-28. 



grievously vexed with a devil. (23) Bat he answered her not a word. And his 
disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away ; for she crieth after ns. 
(24) But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house 
of Israel. (25) Then came she and worshiped him, saying, Lord, help me. 
(26) But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to 
cast it to dogs. (27) And she said, Truth, Lord : yet the dogs eat of the crumbs 
which fall from their masters' table. (28) Then Jesus answered and said unto her, 
woman, great is thy faith : be it uuto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter 
was made whole from that very hour. 



Verse 21. " The motive of our Lord in this 
journey," Mr. Andrews remarks, " obviously was to 
find seclusion and rest, which he had sought, but in 
vain, to find on the east side of the lake, and could 
not find in Capernaum. He hoped, on the remote 
frontiers of Galilee, to escape for a time popular 
attention, and to be hid from the crowds that fol- 
lowed him. We see no evidence that any fear of 
the hostility of Herod or of the Pharisees actuated 
him. It is for the twelve that he seeks a temporary 
retirement." Alexander finds in this retirement of 
our Lord also the purpose to evince, by one act of 
his public life, that, though his personal ministry 
was to the Jews, his saving benefits were also for 
the Gentiles. Whatever may have been our Lord's 
motives, he withdrew in a north-western direction, 
through the mountain ridge of Upper Galilee, into 
the coasts of Phenicia. It is, however, not probable 
that our Lord actually passed over into a heathen 
land. Mark tells us that he only " went into the 
borders of Tyre and Sidon." That Matthew also 
meant to say that the Lord had only drawn close to 
the skirts of that profane land, is evident from his 
speaking of the woman as coming out of the same 
coasts. According to Mark, "he entered into a 
house, and would have no man know it," desiring to 
spend some time in strict privacy with his disciples. 
But the fame of his miraculous cures and of his 
Messiahship had preceded him even thither. From 
Mark iii, 8, and Luke vi, 17, we learn that his fame 
had spread also in that region. 

Verse 22. A woman of Canaan. Mark calls her 
a "Greek," in the Hellenistic sense of Gentile, and 
"a Syrophenician by nation," that is, by birth. The 
Phenicians were descendants from the ancient Ca- 
naanites. That part of Phenicia which was included 
in the Roman province of Syria was called Syrophe- 
nicia. — Lord, thou Son of David ! The Mes- 
sianic expectations of the Jews were not unknown 
to other nations. The woman must have learned, 
by some means, that the Son of David — that is, the 
Messiah — was in the neighborhood. She believed, 
yet was, according to verse 26, no proselyte of the 
gate. She had heard but little of Jesus, but the 
scanty seed that had fallen into her humble, trusting 
heart brought forth abundant fruit. — Have mercy 



on me. She does not say, " Have mercy on my 
daughter," but makes the sufferings of her daughter 
her own. The intercession of this noble woman for 
her child furnishes a beautiful example how parents 
ought to pray for their children. 

Verse 23. And he answered her not a word. 
She found the Lord very different from that which 
report had represented him to her, as never refusing 
aid to the afflicted. Chrysostom says : " The Word 
has no word ; the fountain is sealed ; the physician 
withholds his remedies." At the same time he does 
not utter a word to drive her away. The disciples 
do not understand the Master, who in all other in- 
stances had readily granted help to all applicants, 
and, therefore, intercede for her. — Send her away. 
The Greek verb cnroXvsiv does merely mean to send 
away, to dismiss, with or without granting the 
prayer. Whether the Lord would grant or refuse 
the prayer they left with him, they only desired him 
to dismiss the woman, lest by her importunity she 
might frustrate his desire to remain unknown in 
that part of the country. Yet, from the answer of 
the Lord, it would seem that the disciples desired 
him to grant the prayer. — For she crieth after 
us, and, by doing so, she calls general attention to 
thee, and makes our stay here universally known. 
(Se-fe Mark vii, 24.) 

Verse 24. I am not sent but. For wise pur- 
poses in the counsels of God, Christ's personal min- 
istry was to be confined to his own nation. Before 
the Gentiles should glorify God for his mercy he was 
first to be "a minister of the circumcision for the 
truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto 
the fathers." (Rom. xv, 8.) When, therefore, this 
heathen woman applied to him for help, he refused 
her request, not merely apparently, but in reality. 
Help for her was not possible till she had become 
a true daughter by her persevering, humble faith. 
"According to the same fundamental law," says 
Lange, " the blessings and privileges of the Gospel 
were dispensed also after the day of Pentecost. The 
common view, that before that day they were con- 
fined to the Jews, and afterward were offered to 
the Gentiles, is a superficial one, and does not reach 
the cause of the case. Only as members of the 
spiritual Israel they could share the salvation of 



"HE CANAANITISH WOMAN. 



401 



Israel, and the believing Jews could not but recognize 
them as brethren, (Acts x, xi,) having become fully 
satisfied that they themselves belonged to the true 
Israel only through faith and the circumcision of the 
heart. Thus we have in this history a type of the 
future extension of the economy of salvation ■ for 
the reception of the Gentiles." 

Verse 25. Then came she. The woman hears 
the repulse which the disciples, who had ventured to 
plead for her, receive; but she is not disheartened 
thereby. Hitherto she had been crying after the 
Lord from a distance, but now she drew nearer to 
him, and prostrated herself at his feet. — Lord, 
help me. She addresses him no longer as "the 
Son of David," in which capacity, she had learned, 
he belonged to the Jews exclusively, but as " Lord," 
mighty, powerful Lord, who was able to help all; in 
which capacity she, as a member of the human fam- 
ily, had also claims upon him. The state of this 
woman is a beautiful emblem of the state of a sin- 
ner that is deeply conscious of his wretchedness. 
How proper is this prayer for penitent souls ! It 
relies solely on God's mercy. This woman is a pat- 
tern of persevering faith and prayer. Every trial 
of our faith, where God does apparently disregard 
our prayer, must incite us to pray the more fervently. 
A really-penitent, humble heart is never impatient 
under the apparently-harsh dealing of God. 

Verse 26. According to Mark vii, 27, the words 
of our text were preceded by the words, "Let the 
children first be filled." These words contain no 
unqualified refusal, but rather some encouragement, 
leaving room for the hope that, after the children's 
wants should have been satisfied, the rest would re- 
ceive something too. For the time being, however, 
the refusal is positive. " Thy time has not yet 
come." As long as the children are not filled, oth- 
ers have no claims upon the food. — It is not meet 
to take the children's bread. The children, like 
the lost sheep, are the house of Israel — their bread, 
the blessings of the Gospel, of the Messianic king- 
dom. — And to cast it to dogs — literally, little 
dogs. Jesus uses here an expression common with 
the Jews, who applied to heathens the epithet 
"dogs," yet changes the term into "little dogs." 
whereby he designates the domesticated animal that 
is fed beneath its master's table, in contradistinction 
to the wild, homeless dog of the Orient, in allusion 
to which the Scriptures frequently speak of dogs. 
(Rev. xxii, 15 ; Matt, vii, 6 ; Phil, iii, 2 ; Ps. xxii, 
20; lix, 6.) On this distinction the woman lays hold 
to push her suit still further. 

Verse 27. She said, Truth, Lord. By this word 
truth (vai) she confirms what the Lord had said, 
that she was no member of the theocracy, and had, 
consequently, no legal claims on its blessings and 
privileges. She accepts the apparently-harsh desig- 
nation, and, instead of taking offense at it, turns it 
into a strong argument why her prayer should be 
granted. — Yet the dogs. The Greek conjunction 



26 



Kal yag is not correctly translated ; it means for in- 
deed. Her reply is paraphrased by Trench : "Didst 
thou say dogs ? It is well. I accept the title and 
the place ; for the dogs have a portion of the meal. 
not the first, not the children's portion, but a portion 
still — the crumbs which fall from the table. In this 
very statement of the case thou bringest us heathen, 
thou bringest me within the circle of the blessings 
which God, the great householder, is ever dispensing 
to his family. We also belong to his household, 
though we occupy but the lowest place in it. Ac- 
cording to thine own showing, I am not wholly an 
alien, and therefore I will abide by this name, and 
will claim from thee all its consequences." The 
woman shows not only her great humility and perse- 
vering faith, but a wonderful discernment in enter- 
ing at once into the real meaning which the Savior 
attached to the epithet " dogs," descrying his kind- 
ness and mercy notwithstanding his apparent repul- 
siveness. " Such persistency in asking, and yet such 
submissiveness ; such earnestness, and yet such rev- 
erence and delicacy, are rarely combined, and they 
furnish a beautiful type of Christian character." 
(John H. Morison.) Trench remarks further: 
" Upon these words Luther, who has dwelt on all 
the circumstances of this little history with a pecul- 
iar love, and seems never weary of extolling the 
mighty faith of this woman, exclaims, ' Was not 
that a master-stroke? She snares Christ in his own 
words.' And oftentimes he sets this Canaanitish 
woman before each troubled and fainting heart, that 
it may learn from her how to wring a yea from 
God's nay; or, rather, how to hear the deep-hidden 
yea which many times lies in his seeming nay. 
' Like her thou must give God right in all he says 
against thee, and yet must not stand off from pray- 
ing till thou overcomest, as she overcame; till thou 
hast turned the very charges made against thee into 
arguments and proof of thy need; till thou, too, 
hast taken Christ in his own words.' " Stier says : 
"In the connecting together of the humble 'Yea, 
Lord,' and the importunate 'yet,' is involved the 
whole order of salvation and prayer. Such faith 
finds the promise in the very refusal, makes the un- 
worthiness, precisely as the neediness, the plea for 
favor." 

Verse 28. " She who before heard only those 
words of a seeming contempt, now hears words of a 
most gracious commendation — words of which the 
like are recorded as spoken but to one other in all 
the Gospel history: ' leoman, great is thy faith !' 
He who at first seemed as though he would have 
denied her the smallest boon, now opens to her the 
full treasure-house of his grace, and bids her to help 
herself, to carry away what she will : ' Be it unto thee 
even as thou wilt.' He had shown to her for a while, 
like Joseph to his brethren, the aspect of severity; 
but, like Joseph, he could not maintain it long; or, 
rather, he would not maintain it an instant longer 
than it was needful, and after that word of hers, that 



402 



MATTHEW XV, 21-28. 



mighty word of an undaunted faith, it was needful 
no more: in the words of Mark, ' For this saying go 
thy way ; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.' 
Like the centurion at Capernaum, like the nobleman 
at Cana, she made proof that his word was potent, 
whether spoken far off or near. Her child, indeed, 
was at a distance; but she offered in her faith a 
channel of communication between it and Christ. 
With one hand of that faith she had held on to that 
Lord in whom all healing grace was stored, with the 
other to her suffering child — -thus herself a living 
conductor by which the power of Christ might run 
like an electric flash from him to her beloved. ' And 
when she was come to her house, she found the devil 
gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed,' weak 
and exhausted as it would appear from the paroxysms 
of the spirits going out; or, the circumstance which 
last is mentioned may indicate only that she was 
now taking that quiet rest which hitherto the evil 
spirit had not allowed. It will answer so to the 
'clothed and in his right mind,' (Luke viii, 30,) of 
another who had been tormented in the same way. — 
But the interesting question remains, Why this bit- 
terness was not spared her; why the Lord should 
have presented himself under so different an aspect 
to her, and to most other suppliants ? Sometimes he 
anticipated their needs, 'Wilt thou be made whole?' 
(John v, 6,) or if not so, he who was waiting to be 
gracious required not to be twice asked for his bless- 
ings. Why was it that in this case, to use the words 
of an old divine, Christ ' staid long, wrestling with 
her faith, and shaking and trying whether it were 
fast-rooted ' or no ? Doubtless because he knew that 
it was a faith which would stand the proof, and that 
she would come out victorious from this sore trial; 
and not only so, but with a stronger, higher, purer 
faith than if she had borne away her blessing at 
once. Now she has learned, as then she never could 
have learned, that men ought always to pray and not 
to faint; that, with God, to delay a boon is not there- 
fore to deny it. She had learned the lesson which 
Moses must have learned, when ' the Lord met him, 
and sought to kill him,' (Exod. vi, 24;) she won the 
strength which Jacob had won before, from his night- 
long struggle with the Angel. There is, indeed, a 
remarkable analogy between this history and that 
last. (Gen. xxxii, 24-32.) There, as here, there is 
the same persevering struggle on the one side, and 
the same persevering refusal on the other; there, as 
here, the stronger is at last overcome by the weaker. 
God himself yields to the might of faith and prayer; 
for a later prophet, interpreting that mysterious 
struggle, tells us the weapons which the patriarch 
wielded: 'He wept and made supplication unto him,' 
connecting with this the fact that ' he had power 
over the Angel and prevailed.' (Hos. xii, 3, 4.) The 
two histories, indeed, only stand out in their full re- 
semblance, when we keep in mind that the angel 
there, the Angel of the covenant, was no other than 
that Word, who. now incarnate, ' blessed' this woman 



at last, as he had blessed at length Jacob at Peniel — 
in each case rewarding thus a faith which had said, 
'I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.'" 
(Trench.) 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 

THE DIFFICULTIES AND TRIUMPHS OF AN EARNEST SOUL 
IN SEARCH OF DIVINE HELP. 

I. THE DIFFICULTIES OF AN EARNEST SOUL IN 

search of Divine help. The help which this noble- 
hearted woman, this brave heathen mother, sought, 
was the restoration of her child. In the effort she 
meets with three difficulties, which, it seems to me, are 
very much like the difficulties which all earnest souls 
have to encounter in their efforts to obtain that spe- 
cial help from Heaven which they require. 

1. The apparent disregard of the Great One to 
her efforts. While she was crying in an agony of 
entreaty for help, it is said that "He answered her 
not a word." This apparent disregard of God to 
the efforts of earnest seekers at the outset of their 
career has always been a difficulty deeply felt by 
them. They strive for knowledge, they aspire after 
virtue, they struggle for the right, they supplicate 
Heaven, but there is no apparent response. The 
Great One seems indifferent. Though they search 
in his Revelations for knowledge as for hid treasure, 
though they agonize to enter in at the strait gate of 
truth and virtue, though they resist unto blood, 
striving against sin, though they are importunate in 
prayer, they receive, perhaps, no indication that they 
have made any impression on God. Nature goes on 
as ever ; the heavens seem brass ; God is silent, and 
he answers not a word. What religious inquirer, 
what earnest seeker, has not felt this at the outset 
of his career ? He expected responses at once ; 
but he had them not. 

2. The apparent restrictedness of Divine grace. 
In reply to the request of the disciples Christ said : 
" I am not sent, but unto the lost sheep of the house 
of Israel." Though the words were not intended to 
convey a limitation of mediatorial mercy — falling, as 
they undoubtedly did, on the ear of the woman, and, 
probably, with the intention of Christ — they must 
have sunk as lead upon her heart. The inference 
that she would be likely to draw from these words 
would be, " Then I am excluded," and, " Can there 
be any hope for me?" This is another difficulty 
which she had to encounter. This, too, is a difficulty 
which the young inquirer meets with. He some- 
times receives a deep and distressing impression that 
Divine grace does not extend to him, that Christ was 
not sent to save him. He remembers the enormity 
and multitude of his own sins, and he seems to hear 
a voice something like that which now fell on the 
woman's heart — "I am not sent to thee." 

3. A current religious opinion. After she had 



THE CANAANITISH WOMAN. 



403 



again pressed her request, He answered and said, 
"It is not meet to take the children's bread, and 
to cast it to dogs." In this Christ manifestly ut- 
ters not his own idea, but a popular prejudice among 
the Jews. They were wont to regard themselves as 
the children of God, the special favorites of Heaven. 
They looked' on all other peoples with cold contempt. 
The most opprobrious epithets were used to desig- 
nate them. All other nations were "dogs;" they 
only were children. This moral superiority to every 
other tribe was with them a reigning religious belief. 
Jesus simply quotes it, not to express his opinion — 
far from it — but only to try her faith, and obliquely 
strike at the foolish prejudice which still existed in 
the minds of his disciples, as Jews. But though, in 
quoting it, Christ takes away the edge of the insult, 
softens the rude harshness of the language by using, 
in the original, the diminutive, little dogs, yet the 
opinion, even in the mildest form, when addressed 
to her in answer to her request, must have been felt 
as a repulse. What young inquirer has not met 
with difficulties arising from some religious ideas 
especially current in his own circle of life ? Per- 
haps reprobation is the reigning idea, or apostolic 
succession, or sacramental efficacy, or some such 
unreasonable and heart-repelling absurdities. We 
speak from experience when we say that some of 
the theological dogmas which meet the young seeker 
after God are among his greatest hinderances. Like 
thick mists upon the landscape, they hide the bright 
lights above and the living beauties below ; they 
darken the path, they distract and confound the 
traveler. Would that some breeze from the holy 
heavens would sweep through Christendom, and 
clear the atmosphere of all the vapors and fogs of 
traditional theology! — -Having noticed the difficul- 
ties, let us contemplate — 

II. The triumphs of an earnest soul in search 
of Divine help. This woman surmounted all these 
difficulties. She had that faith before which mount- 
ains flee away. Her success serves as an illustration 
of several important truths : 

1. Her triumph serves as an illustration of the 
character of genuine faith. The faith of this wo- 
man was obviously of the right type, for it both suc- 
ceeded in its object and gained the approval of 
Christ. "Great is thy faith." What is true faith? 
Here is a veritable example ; here it is drawn out in 
the livrng actions of human life. Her faith was 
marked by three things: (1.) An unbounded confi- 
dence in Christ. She addresses him as the true 
Messiah : " Have mercy on me, Lord, Master, 
thou Son of David !" There was no question in her 
mind as to who he was. She wanted mercy, and 
she knew that he was Heaven's chosen messenger 
of mercy to the earth. This is ever a feature, or 
rather the essence, of true evangelical faith. It is 
not a belief in something about Christ — in cer- 
tain views which men have propounded about him 
in treatises, creeds, and catechisms — but an un- 



bounded trust in him as the Son of David, the Sent 
of God, the Savior of the world. " He that believ- 
eth on me," etc.; this is it. (2.) Her faith was 
marked by an invincible perseverance in her course. 
This is ever a mark of true faith. Doubting souls 
spend their time in lisping about difficulties as 
a reason for their indolence and inaction. Souls 
of great faith are morally great. They are all- 
conquering and unconquerable. Difficulties only 
nurse them into the majesty of a martyr's power. 
(3.) Her faith icas marked by an entire renunci- 
ation of all self-conceit. Humility is ever associ- 
ated with true faith. All vain and proud notions 
of self-will vanish in the light of that faith which 
brings the soul into contact with the Infinite, as the 
drops of dew evaporate in the beams of the Summer 
sun. 

2. Her triumph illustrates the severe aspects which 
mercy sometimes assumes toward man. The Great 
One often deals thus with true souls. He seems 
deaf to their prayers ; he appears to them rather as 
the cold Judge than the warm-hearted Father. 
" Clouds and darkness are round about him." He 
is in the whirlwind and the storm of affliction. Still 
all is mercy. Thus it was with Abraham, thus it 
was with David, and thus it has been with the good 
in every age and clime. 

3. Her triumph illustrates Christ's regard for 
true suppliants. (1.) He commends her faith. (2.) 
He grants her request. 

Young seeker after Divine help, be not discour- 
aged, then, by the difficulties that beset thy path. 
I see not how thy soul could be saved from lethargy, 
weakness, morbid fear, and base cowardice, without 
having difficulties to stimulate thy zeal, challenge 
thy faculties, and bring out the spiritual energies of 
thy being. " Tribulation " to man has ever been, 
since the fall, and must ever be, in the path to the 
empire of spiritual majesty and bliss. Imitate, then, 
the example of this Syrophenician woman. Center 
thy faith, thy soul, not on mere theories that men 
propound about Christ, but on the Son of David. 
Though he may not for a time answer thee " a 
word," and the heavens above thee seem brass as 
thou prayest, persevere; his silence is mercy — still 
cry on to the Son of David. Though ideas about 
the restrictedness of Divine grace may ring in thy 
ears, and thou mayest fancy that thou art not in- 
cluded among "the lost sheep" for whom mercy has 
been provided, still cry on to the Son of David. 
Though a spurious theology may trouble thee with 
suggestions that thou art too worthless a creature 
for mercy, and that thou art excluded from the cov- 
enant of promise, still cry on to the Son of David. 
Let naught divert thy attention from him. Hold on 
to him with an unrelaxable tenacity amid all the 
trials of life's wilderness, in the Jordan of death, 
and thou shalt feel on the other side that he has 
made thee " more than a conqueror." (Abridged 
from "The Homilist") 



404 MATTHEW XV, 29-30. 



§14. THE SECOND MIRACULOUS FEEDING. 

As a kind of introduction to the statement of the second miraculous feeding, Matthew 
premises a comprehensive report of a number of miraculous cures, which Jesus performed 
on many that were afflicted and diseased. Finding it impossible to remain any longer 
unknown in the coasts of Tyre and Sidon after the event stated in the preceding section, 
the Lord withdrew to the sea of Gennesaret, traveling through Galilee, but making in all 
probability no stay there, but going on as far as Decapolis, (Mark vii, 31,) which was not 
under the jurisdiction of Herod. He had again chosen, as on former occasions, the open 
country for the theater of his ministry, and the report of his presence attracted all the 
afflicted and needy from the whole neighborhood. On his way already he had healed a 
man that was deaf and dumb, (Mark vii, 31-37,) — now he heals all that were brought unto 
him. Prom the manner in which the Evangelists speak of the wonder and astonishment 
expressed by the multitude in beholding the miraculous cures, we might infer that they 
saw them for the first time. Three days this great concourse of people had continued 
with the Lord, having taken their repose for two nights in the field, which could be done 
without inconvenience, as it was in the Summer, and having exhausted their temporary 
supply of food, when Jesus expressed his unwillingness to send them away hungry. His 
miraculous feeding on this occasion, related by Matthew and Mark, did not take place on 
the north-eastern coast, near Bethsaida Julias, (Luke ix, 10,) but near Decapolis in the 
south-east. Some of the German critics pretend to find in this second report of a 
miraculous feeding only a traditionary repetition of the first. If this were so, the Evan- 
gelists would be guilty of having forged the remarks of our Lord in chapter xvi, 9, 10. 
The assumption, however, is entirely gratuitous. Every circumstance that could vary, 
does vary in the two accounts. In the one case Jesus crossed from the western to the 
eastern coast and walked on the sea after the miraculous feeding; in the second, he arrived 
at the eastern shore from the North. In one case a caravan going to Jerusalem was fed 
on the evening of the first day, here a vast crowd of the people inhabiting the mountain 
ous vicinity, that had remained for three days with the Savior. Again, in the second case, 
the number of the persons fed was less, while the stock of provisions on hand was greater 
than in the first. Had the second feeding been the product of tradition, it would have 
been, as Olshausen remarks, represented as even greater than the first. "It is, moreover, 
remarkable that the four Evangelists, in narrating the first miracle, agree in using the 
term xo&lvous to describe the baskets which were filled with the remaining fragments, 
while the two that relate the second equally agree in using the term ffxvpidaz. And that 
this variation was not accidental, but that there was some difference, is clear from our 
Lord's afterwords, when alluding to the two miracles, he preserves the distinction, asking 
his disciples how many xofivow; on the first occasion they gathered up; how many anupiSaz 
on the last. (Ch. xvi, 9, 10; Mark viii, 19, 20.) " (Trench.) But against all this evidence 
of genuineness the question is raised : How is it conceivable that the disciples so soon 
after witnessing the first miracle should be perplexed at having the multitude supplied 
with bread? This question is easily answered. They had known their Master but once 
to use his miraculous power for such a purpose as that, though there had been instances 
in which they themselves were in need of bread, (ch. xii, 1 ;) they may have been fully 
persuaded that he could as easily spread a table for the multitude on this occasion, as he 
did on a former, yet they might very well have doubted whether he would choose a 
second time to put forth his creative might. We must, however, also take into considera- 
tion the disciples' slowness to believe, for which their Master had to reprove them so often. 
The same forgetfulness of the mighty interpositions of God we find in the people of 
Israel, from their departure out of Egypt till the entrance into Canaan. (Exod. xvi, 13; 



THE SECOND MIRACULOUS FEEDING. 



405 



comp. Num. xi, 21, 22; Exod. xvii, 1-7.) It is only the man of a full-formed faith, a 
faith such as the apostles themselves at this time had not, who argues from the past to 
the future, and truly derives confidence from God's former dealings of faithfulness and 
love. — Why the Lord chose to repeat this most stupendous miracle on this occasion, we 
do not know. Trench remarks: "It is at least an ingenious allegory which Augustine 
starts, that these two miracles respectively set forth Christ's communicating of himself 
to the Jew and to the Gentile; that as the first is a parable of the Jewish people finding 
in him the satisfaction in their spiritual need, so this second, in which the people came 
from far, even from the far country of idols, is a parable of the Gentile world. The 
details of his application may not be of any great value; but the perplexity of the 
apostles here concerning the supply of the new needs, notwithstanding all that they had 
already witnessed, will then exactly answer to the slowness with which they themselves, 
as the ministers of the new kingdom, did recognize that Christ was as freely given to, 
and was as truly the portion of, the Gentile as the Jew." 

Verses 29-39. (Compare Mark vii, 31-37; vin, 1-9.) 

(29) And Jesus departed from thence, and came nigh unto the sea of G-alilee ; 
and went up into a mountain, and sat down there. (30) And great multitudes 
came unto him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and 
many others, and cast them down at Jesus' feet; and he healed them: (31) Inso- 
much that the multitude wondered, when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed 
to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see : and they glorified the God of 
Israel. (32) Then Jesus called his disciples unto him, and said, I have compassion 
on the multitude, because they continue with me now three days, and have nothing 
to eat : and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way. (33) And 
his disciples say unto him, Wbence should we have so much bread in the wilder- 
ness, as to fill so great a multitude ? (34) And Jesus saith unto them, How many 
loaves have ye? And they said, Seven, and a few little fishes. (35) And hp com- 
manded the multitude to sit down on the ground. (36) And be took the seven 
loaves and the fishes, and gave thanks, and brake them, and gave to his disciples, 
and the disciples to the multitude. (37) And they did all eat, and were filled: and 
they took up of the broken meat that was left seven baskets l full. (38) And they 
that did eat were four thousand men, beside 'women and children. (39) And he 
sent away the multitude, and took ship, and came into the coasts of Magdala. 2 



Verse 30. Axd great multitudes. "To those 
who travel in that region now, it is a matter of won- 
der where such crowds could have come from. But, 
according to Josephus, (see Milman's Hist, of Chris- 
tianity, Book I, ch. iv,) the whole province of Galilee 
was at that time crowded with flourishing towns and 
cities, beyond almost any other region of the world. 
According to his statements, 'the number of towns, 
and the population of Galilee, in a district of be- 



tween fifty and sixty miles in length and between 
sixty and seventy in breadth, was no less than two 
hundred and four cities and villages, the least of 
which contained fifteen hundred souls.' This would 
make, for the whole province, a population of more 
than three millions." (John H. Morison's Notes.) — 
Maimed, {kvU.o'l ; ) that is, bent, crooked. The older 
commentators, such as Doddridge, Clarke, etc., un- 
derstood by the invalids in question persons who had 



1 The basket mentioned chapter xiv, 20, (kocjhi'os) was 
the common traveling basket of the Jews ; the basket 
mentioned here (<nrupi^) seems to have been large enough 
to contain a man. (Acts ix, 25.) They were used to 
sleep in. In the same baskets, it seems, they brought 



the lame and the maimed, and cast them down at Jesus' 
feet. (Vs. 30.) 2 Magdala lay on the western coast, and 
is, in all probability, the modern El Madschel, a small 
village, three miles north of Tiberias. Dalmanutha, 
which Mark mentions, was a village near Magdala. 



406 



MATTHEW XVI, 1-12. 



lost one or more members, which were supplied to 
them by the Lord. Against this view Olshausen re- 
marks: "It is nowhere explicitly said that Christ 
supplied missing members, and such a cure would 
not be analogous to the general process of healing. 
It is, therefore, better to take the word nvXTiog in the 
sense in which it is used by profane authors ; namely, 
bent, crooked. As the Lord did not create bread 
without a substratum, but multiplied the stock on 
hand, so we may suppose that he healed only mem- 
bers of the body that were injured, but did not sup- 
ply entirely new ones." With this view Alford agrees, 
who thinks that the cure of debilities, such as arise 
from paralysis or wounds, is meant here. — And 
cast them down at Jesus' feet. This indicates 
the haste with which the diseased were brought unto 
Jesus. Every one did his best to get first to Jesus, 
in order to have his patient or patients cured before 
the others. 

Verse 31. And they glorified the God of 



Israei,. From this expression many interpreters 
inferred that a great number of those present were 
heathens. Alexander thinks it probable that they 
might have been the inhabitants of the same tract 
where the demons took possession of the swine, and 
where our Savior was desired by the people to de- 
part on that occasion. But Owen observes : " Noth- 
ing was more common, as every reader of the Old 
Testament will see, than for the Israelites them- 
selves to speak of Jehovah as being the God of 
Israel." 

Verse 37. Seven baskets full. The seven bas- 
kets correspond to the seven loaves, the twelve bas- 
kets to the twelve apostles. Lange makes on these 
numbers the ingenious comment: "If the twelve 
baskets were prophetic that the apostles would all 
have enough to eat if they should give up every 
thing in the world, the seven baskets pointed to their 
ample compensation for what they thus surrendered, 
seven baskets for seven loaves." 



CHAPTER XVI. 

§35. THE PHARISEES AND SADDUCEES REQUIRE A SIGN FROM HEAVEN; 
CHRIST WARNETH HIS DISCIPLES AGAINST THEIR LEAVEN. 

Either immediately after he had landed on the western coasts of the sea between 
Magdala and Dalmanutha, or after he had returned to Capernaum, from which he was 
only a few miles distant, our Lord had another encounter with the Pharisees, who were 
now for the first time united with the Sadducees in an attempt to entrap him in a snare. 
From the fact that in the original the definite article "of" stands before "Pharisees," and 
" Sadducees," Lange infers that the individuals in question acted as the representatives 
of the Sanhedrim of Jerusalem. "The combined parties and authorities of the country 
call upon him to give them the Messianic sign from heaven, which implied that if he 
should fail to do so, he should be prosecuted as a false Messiah. This demand had been 
made on him in the very beginning of his ministry, (John ii, 18,) though not so directly 
and formally. The demand was repeated when he had warned his adversaries against 
the sin against the Holy Ghost. It is now made for the third time. Jesus had given 
them distinctly to understand, although not in so many words, that he was the Messiah. 
For this reason they require the sign from heaven as the legitimate proof of the Messiah- 
ship. When his adversaries pressed this their demand for the third time, he sighed 
deeply in his spirit, as Mark reports. He saw their hypocritical hardness of heart, 
pressing their demand again and again, while they were bent on his destruction. He 
saw, also, that the decisive moment had come. The Pharisees had made common cause 
with the Sadducees, who were strongly represented in Galilee by the court party, the 
Herodians, (Mark viii, 15,) and these his united enemies were now determined, by the 
categorical answer they demanded to their question, to decide his position in the estima- 
tion of the people. In Galilee he was no longer safe; still less so in Judea. Perea, the 
region on the east of Jordan, was the only place where he could find a safe retreat, till 
the appointed time for his suffering and death should come. He, therefore, departed 
thence to the other side of the lake, to Bethsaida, as we learn from Mark, (viii, 13, 22,) 
who records the cure of a blind man in its immediate vicinity. The disciples' discovery 



A SIGN FROM HEAVEN REQUIRED, BUT REFUSED. 



407 



that they had forgotten to provide themselves with bread for their further journey, gave 
occasion for Christ's remarks on the way, warning them against the leaven of the 
Pharisees and Sadducees. 

Verses 1— IS. (Compare Mark vni, 10-21.) 

(1) The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired him 
that he would shew them a sign from heaven. (2) He answered and said unto 
them, "When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. 
(3) And in the morning, It will be foul weather to-day : for the sky is red and low- 
ering. ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern 
the signs of the times ? (4) A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a 
sign ; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. 
And he left them, and departed. (5) And when his disciples were come to the 
other side, they had forgotten to take bread. (6) Then Jesus said unto them, 
Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.. 
(7) And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have taken no 
bread. (8) Which when Jesus perceived, he said unto them, O ye of little faith, 
why reason ye among yourselves, because ye have brought no bread ? (9) Do ye 
not yet understand, neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how 
many baskets ye took up? (10) Neither the seven loaves of the four thousand, 
and how many baskets ye took up ? (11) How is it that ye do not understand that 
I spake it not to you concerning bread, that ye should beware of the leaven of the 
Pharisees and of the Sadducees ? (12) Then understood they how that he bade 
them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and 
of the Sadducees. 



Verse 1. Tempting. The snare was cunningly 
devised. If he had complied with their demand, he 
would have been a Messiah such as they desired. 
They did, of course, not expect that he would do so. 
But his refusal they intended to use as an argument 
before the people, that he was unable to substan- 
tiate his claims on the Messiahship. — A sign from 
heaven. The Jewish tradition — misinterpreting 
Dan. vii, 10, and confounding the first and the sec- 
ond coming of Christ — taught that the Messiah 
would, at his appearance, give a sign of his coming 
in the clouds of heaven, or somewhere in the air. 
Most commentators, however, with reference to a 
Jewish opinion, " that demons and false gods could 
give signs on earth, but only the true God signs 
from, heaven," understand, by the latter term, such 
signs as the bread from heaven given by Moses to 
the children of Israel, or the staying of the sun by 
Joshua, or the rains brought on by Samuel and 
Elijah. (1 Sam. xii, 17 ; Jer. xiv, 22 ; Jam. v, 17, 18.) 

Verses 2, 3. The words of these two verses were 
repeated by our Lord on another occasion. (See 
Luke xii, 54—57.) As the Jews were much given to 
prognosticating the rains, etc., the Lord reminds his 
adversaries of two well-known phenomena, from 



which they draw their conclusions with great cer- 
tainty. When the sky is red in the evening, the 
cold of the night generally rarefies the vapors so 
that no rain can follow. But when the sky is red 
and lowering in the morning, the condensed vapors 
fall down in rain by the heat of the sun. — 0, ye 
hypocrites! In Greek, simply hypocrites; but this 
word is wanting in some of the best manuscripts, 
for which reason Lachmann and Tischendorf have 
omitted it. It is said that our Lord no where ap- 
plied this term to the Sadducees. Yet they deserved 
it on this occasion as much as the Pharisees, since 
men who knew how to deduct proper conclusions 
from natural phenomena, could also understand the 
moral phenomena of their times if they chose to do 
so. Their pretense, therefore, that they needed a 
sign from heaven in order to be enabled to believe 
in Jesus as the Messiah, was nothing but hypocrisy. 
" Messianic signs he had given them enough, and 
still they stoutly denied that he was the Messiah. If, 
instead of his miraculous cures, he had given them 
the wonderful signs from heaven they demanded, 
they would have said in the same spirit of defiant 
unbelief: ' Of what account are these strange phe- 
nomena, the work of the spirits of the air, that are 



408 



MATTHEW XVI, 1-12. 



in league with him? They merely blind the eyes of 
the common people, and lead them astray. Let him 
heal our sick, lame, and blind, as the prophets have 
foretold of the Messiah." (Stier.) How applicable 
is this to unbelievers of all times! — But can you 

NOT DISCERN THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES? By the 

"signs of the times" we have to understand the 
phenomena pointing out the great developments in 
the kingdom of God as near at hand. Each epoch 
of the kingdom of God has its own signs. The signs 
of those days left such as did not understand them 
without excuse. They were not only the miracles of 
Christ, but his whole personal appearance, the preach- 
ing of John the Baptist, the fulfillment of the Old 
Testament prophecies, the departure of the scepter 
from Judah, the end of the prophetic weeks of Dan- 
iel, the sanguine expectations of a Messiah, which 
were by no means confined to the Jews, but spread 
over the whole Orient. Moreover, there had been 
given signs from heaven — the star that had appeared 
unto the Magi; the heavenly hosts that appeared to 
the shepherds at the birth of Christ; the voice heard 
from heaven and the visible descent of the Holy 
Ghost upon Jesus at his baptism ! 

Verse 4. An evil and adulterous generation. 
The fact that they asked for more signs showed their 
ingratitude for those they had received, and their 
perverseness; for their unbelief arose from the want 
not of more evidence, but of a right disposition of 
heart to appreciate evidence. There are many, now, 
who say they would believe if they had more evi- 
dence. Have they properly weighed what they 
have ? If not, more evidence would be of no serv- 
ice to them. " If they believe not Moses and the 
prophets," etc. — The sign op the prophet Jonas. 
This time the Lord adds no explanation, probably 
because the individuals that demanded the sign were 
well acquainted with the same demand recorded in 
chap, xii, and, therefore, also with the answer given 
by our Lord on that occasion. The Lord, by merely 
referring to the case of Jonas, without any further 
comment, tells them, as it were, that he had to add 
nothing to what he had told them before. — And he 
left them. This leaving them has a judicial char- 
acter. Jesus was filled with holy indignation at 
their hypocrisy and hardness of heart. 

Verse 5. Matthew mentions only the disciples as 
having come to the other side, because they were 
the subject of the "had forgotten;" but, from verse 
6, it appears plainly that Jesus had come with them. 

Verse 6. Leaven. See note on chap, xiii, 33. 
The assimilating power of leaven, whether for good 
or bad, is the point of comparison. In Luke xii, 1, 
where the same warning is given on a different occa- 
sion, hypocrisy is said to be the leaven. It is true, 
there the Pharisees alone are called hypocrites, while 
here the term is applied also to the Sadducees. In 
Mark viii, 15, it is said, "And of the leaven of 
Herod," which, however, is synonymous with "the 
leaven of the Sadducees," since Herod and his court- 



iers were, for the most part, Sadducees. Stier com- 
ments on this passage as follows : " By calling Phar- 
isaism and Sadduceeism by one name, leaven, the 
Lord declares that to be intrinsically one what, ac- 
cording to its outward appearance, was then, as it is 
at other times, widely different. All Israel was then 
divided into these two parties, so that every one had 
to side with the one or the other, either denying, 
with the Pharisees, that it was lawful to give tribute 
unto Cajsar, for God's sake, or joining the other 
party, the court religion of the royal family, that 
ruled by the favor of the Romans. But Jesus warns 
his disciples against being influenced by either, both 
being radically wrong and radically one. The Sad- 
ducee is hid in the Pharisee in spite of the latter' s 
rigid orthodoxy and legalism, and with pharisaic 
zeal the freethinker passes his errors for the truth 
against his better convictions. Both are infidels at 
heart, and as infidels they are called hypocrites. 
Notwithstanding the different outward appearance, 
it is the same leaven. The unbelieving hypocrisy 
of the Pharisee and the hypocritical unbelief of the 
Sadducee betray their innermost unity, by their hos- 
tile league against the truth of God in Jesus Christ." 
Verse 1. Through these warning words of the 
Savior the disciples had their attention called to 
their lack of bread, and they accordingly interpreted 
them as a warning not to buy any bread from Sad- 
ducees and Pharisees. Whether they saw in these 
words a prohibition of all intercourse with them, 
transferring the Jewish notions of contracting un- 
cleanness by contact with heathens to the enemies 
of Jesus, or whether they took the words as a warn- 
ing against being poisoned by them, can not be de- 
termined. Only this much is certain, that they un- 
derstood the words literally, thinking of real leaven. 

— And they reasoned among themselves; that is, 
they reasoned within themselves and with each other, 
without saying, however, any thing to Jesus about it. 
That they interchanged their thoughts appears from 
the following. — Saying, It is because we have 
taken no bread ; that is, he cautions us thus be- 
cause we have no bread. 

Verse 8. The Lord rebukes, in the first place, 
the unfounded apprehension of the disciples that 
they could suffer want while they were with him, and 
that even he himself was uneasy concerning it. In 
Mark viii, 17, 18, their want of faith and under- 
standing is rebuked in still stronger terms, and 
traced to an unfeeling, hardened heart, whence Stier 
remarks : " The Lord discovers, in their lack of 
faith, which he reproves, a leaven of unbelief. In 
the same proportion as we are lacking faith we are 
incapable of comprehending the truth." 

Verses 9-11. Do ye not yet understand? that 
is, have ye, after ye have witnessed the two miracu- 
lous feedings, not yet sufficient discernment to know 
that by leaven I do not mean natural bread, whose 
want I could easily replace, but something spiritual? 

— That, in the face of such a declaration as we have 



CHRIST'S DECLARATION TO PETER CONCERNING HIS CHURCH. 



409 



in verses 9 and 10, not only rationalistic interpret- 
ers, but even Neander could maintain that only one 
miraculous feeding had taken place, is really sur- 
prising. 

Vekse 12. The doctrine of the Pharisees and 
Sadducees. Although their doctrine is here de- 
clared to be their leaven, yet this their doctrine must 
not be viewed as something distinct from their whole 
character. By their doctrine we have to understand, 
accordingly, not so much the subject-matter, to which 
the Lord enjoins obedience, (Matt, xxiii, 3,) as the 
tenor and spirit of their teaching. 



HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS. 

1. Men generally judge much more correctly on 
natural and temporal than spiritual and eternal 
things. How often, e. g., do men disbelieve the tes- 
timony concerning religious facts given by men, 



whom they would not dare to mistrust in any thing 
else. Attacks on the cause of religion are eagerly 
read in papers, books, and pamphlets, which would 
be laid aside with contempt on every other subject. 

2. The signs of the times ought to be studied at- 
tentively. The kingdom of God has its signs in our 
day also. Much is done. The Bible is freely circu- 
lated; missionaries of the Cross go to the remotest 
islands and countries; Sabbath schools are estab- 
lished; every thing points out the importance of the 
age, and augurs the speedy dawn of better days for 
the world. Thanking the Lord profoundly for these 
tokens of his favor, we ought to pray the more fer- 
vently, and do all we can to promote the spread of 
the Lord's kingdom. 

3. We are warned in this section against three 
spiritual evils: (1.) Against the influence of evil, 
which progresses slowly, but surely, (v. 6;) (2.) 
Against lack of faith, (v. 8;) (3.) Against spiritual 
dullness or hardness of heart, (v. 7.) 



§16. THE CONFESSION OF PETER AND CHRIST'S DECLARATION CON- 
CERNING HIS CHURCH. 

The Evangelist introduces us in this section into the second epoch of Christ's public 
ministry, preparatory to his suffering and death. A great crisis in his ministry had evi- 
dently been reached. Popular opinion was now apparently less favorable to Jesus than it 
had been at the outset of his ministry. The reply given by the disciples to our Lord's 
question (v. 14) shows that the hostile attitude of the hierarchy, of the scribes and Phari- 
sees, against the Savior had produced its effects ; the common people, although they had 
not given up all faith in Him, had, nevertheless, evidently lowered their views as to what 
he might be, they were unsettled, wavering; at all events, they no longer dared to speak 
of him in public as the Messiah. Add to this that the Pharisees and Sadducees had 
united in their persecution, and that he was also threatened by the Tetrarch Herod. 
Knowing that the time of his suffering and death was drawing nigh, he deemed it neces- 
sary to lay the foundation for the organization of his Church in opposition to the Jewish 
Church, Avhich was about to reject and deliver unto death its Prince and Savior. The 
disciples had, indeed, acknowledged him as the Messiah, as soon as they were called by 
him, (John i, 42, 43;) moreover, Peter had already, on a former occasion, solemnly de- 
clared: "We believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God," 
(John vi, 69 ;) but the confession which the Lord now draws forth from them had a 
higher significance and a peculiar purpose. It was to be tested now whether the disciples 
were determined to hold fast their apprehension of the true character of their Master, 
though the whole Jewish Church should reject him. At this decisive moment, at the 
peril of being excommunicated from the theocracy, Peter makes in his own name and 
that of his fellow-disciples the solemn declaration: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
living God." 

As his disciples were to be his confessors and witnesses among men, the Lord prepares 
their minds for a more thorough apprehension of this grand truth, and of the need of 
their testimony, by the preliminary question: "Who do men say that I, the Son of 
man, am ?" The answer to this question shows the false conceptions and beliefs of men, 
to which they were to oppose the true testimony which God had taught them. "The 



410 



MATTHEW XVI, 13-20. 



conversation of our Lord with his disciples on this occasion," says Lange, "teaches us, 
1. The confident persuasion of a soul under divine influence in contrast with the 
wavering opinions of men in their carnal, unenlightened state; 2. The indissoluble con- 
nection of a true confession of Christ with the existence of his Church ; 3. The perpetuity 
of the true believers and confessors of Christ." 

" The scene of the pregnant conversation recorded in the text," says a British writer, Rev. 
¥m. Wilson, author of a Practical Exposition of Matthew XVI-XVIII, from which we 
shall quote more in our comments on these chapters, " lies beyond the waters of Merom, 
and near the sources of the Jordan. It is within sight of the snow-capped mountains of 
Hermon and Anti-Libanus, and in the angle formed by their divergence. There, amid 
the magnificence of the mountain-land, Jesus unfolds to his disciples the nature of the 
work which he had come into the world to do. It was a scene amid which the lessons he 
now teaches might be most fitly learned. From these snow-clad mountains, the abode of 
perennial barrenness, descended the refreshing, inexhaustible streams which fertilized the 
land, and that Jordan which was a beauty and glory to it. So He, the despised and 
rejected One, springing like a root out of a dry ground, and having no form nor comeli- 
ness that men should desire Him, was yet the source of all fruitfulness and vitality in the 
earth, a spring of living water which was destined to spread itself over the moral waste, 
and to make glad the wilderness and solitary place, and to cause the desert to rejoice and 
blossom as the rose. Before them, and on either hand, as they journeyed northward to 
Cesarea Philippi, were the lofty eveidasting hills, which shadowed forth, in significant 
emblem, the power and stability of that kingdom against which the gates of hell can not 
prevail. Doubtless Jesus has led his disciples thither in deep sorrow of heart. Woe has 
been accumulating upon his head from day to day. Encountering every -where a hard- 
ened, impenetrable unbelief, which was only quickened by his discourses and miracles 
into stupid wonder, he has provoked that malignity which nothing will satisfy but his 
crucifixion. Yet his is far from being the woe of despair. When the cross is in view, the 
joy also is set before him. He takes these disciples into the region of Cesarea that they 
might realize them both — to lay the foundation of his imperishable kingdom, and to 
prepare them for the dark future which was awaiting them. It is an eventful period in 
the Gospel history — signalized then by peculiar indications of its importance — and in the 
future history of the Church, by the vital controversies which have gathered round it. 
The text has formed the battle-ground of Protestantism and Popery. It is here that the 
Papists have sought to lay the foundations of their system, and, from the vantage-ground 
they think it affords, to make conquest of the world. It is a text, therefore, which 
demands a full and attentive consideration." 

Verses 13— QO. (Compare Mark viii, 27-30; Luke ix, 18-21.) 

(13) When Jesus came into the coasts of Cesarea Philippi, 1 he asked his disci- 
ples, saying, Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am? (14) And they said, 
Some say that thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one 
of the prophets. (15) He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am ? (16) And 
Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. 
(17) And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: 



1 Cesarea Philippi is mentioned only here and in the 
parallel passage of Mark. It has no Old Testament 
history, though it may have been Baal- Gad. It was 
situated at the base of Mt. Hermon, near the north- 
eastern source of Jordan, the Paniv/m of Josephus, and 
inscriptions show, that the God Pan once had a sanctuary 
at this spot. Here Herod the Great erected a temple to 



Augustus, the town being then called Paneas, from the 
grotto where Pan had been honored. Panium became 
part of the territory of Philip, tetrarch of Trachonitis, 
who enlarged and embellished the town, and called it 
Cesarea Philippi, partly after his own name, and partly 
after that of the Emperor. It must not be confounded 
with the Cesarea of the Acts, (x, 1,) which was Ces- 



CHRIST'S DECLARATION TO PETER CONCERNING HIS CHURCH. 



411 



for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in 
heaven. (18) And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I 
will build my Church ; 2 and the gates of hell 3 shall not prevail against it. (19) 
And I will give unto thee the keys 4 of the kingdom of heaven : and whatsoever 
thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt 
loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (20) Then charged he his disciples that 
they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ. 



Verse 13. When Jesus came into the coasts 
[that is, territory or confines] of Cesarea Phil- 
ippi. He came from Bethsaida, passing up along 
the left bank of Jordan toward its sources in the 
north-eastern borders of Galilee. He avoided, as it 
appears from Mark viii, 27, the city of Cesarea, en- 
tering the surrounding towns and villages. — He 
asked his disciples. This question was asked, ac- 
cording to Mark, "by the way." Luke, in his report 
of the event, does not name any locality, but adds 
that the Lord had been alone and praying when he 
asked this question. (Luke ix, 18.) The same is 
said of him before he gave his disciples his first sol- 
emn charge. — Whom do men sat that I, the Son 
of man, am? According to the reading adopted by 
Tischendorf and Alford, based on Codex B, and sev- 
eral versions: "Who do men say that the Son of 
man is ?" The meaning of the question is : Who 
do men — that is, the great mass of the people — think 
that I, known as "the Son of man," am? What is 
the public opinion about me? As appears from the 
answer of the disciples, he did not inquire after 
the opinion of his avowed enemies. " This ques- 
tion," says Stier, "is and forever remains the deci- 
sive question, which is still addressed in increased 
emphasis to the world and the Church. Obedience 
to his moral precepts, of which shallow rationalism 
speaks exclusively, must be preceded by a Scriptural 
apprehension of his person." 

Verses 14, 15. From the disciples' reply it ap- 
pears that the popular opinion about Jesus was very 
unsettled, and undergoing a change for the worse 
since the Baptist had given his official testimony 



concerning him. On many previous occasions the 
people had unhesitatingly called him the " Son of 
David." (Chap, ix, 27; xii, 23; xiv, 33; xv, 22; 
John vi, 15.) It is true these declarations had either 
come from one or two individuals, who, by this time, 
were or were about to become his disciples, or they 
had been made by the assembled multitudes on wit- 
nessing some of the most astounding miracles; but 
there was now evidently a change, the result partly of 
the machinations of the hierarchy, partly of the popu- 
lar discontent on account of Jesus not realizing their 
carnal expectations. — Some say that thou art John 
the Baptist. This seems to refer to the Herodians. 
(See chap, xiv, 2.) — Elias. See note on chap, 
xi, 14. — Jeremias. The Jews assigned to Jere- 
mias in their canon the first rank among the proph- 
ets. Yet Lange says: "However high Jeremias 
may have stood in popular estimation, those that 
saw in Jesus Jeremias, had a lower faith than those 
who said that he was Elias. (Mark xv, 35 ; John 
i, 21.) The latter saw in Jesus more the mighty 
reformer, the former the meek sufferer that had pro- 
nounced woes on the demoralized people. Others, 
whose faith was still lower, saw in him only one of 
the ancient prophets in general." Mr. Wilson makes 
on this passage the following pertinent application: 
" Within the wide-spread domain of Christendom, 
what true, single-hearted faith is there in Christ, the 
Son of the living God ? What a variety of specu- 
lations, traditions, and conjectures regarding him ! 
What fatal errors respecting his person and work are 
prevailing as the avowed creed of many so-called 
Churches ! And within the pale of those Churches 



area Stratonis on the Mediterranean. 2 The term 
" eKKk-qcria. — Church," occurs only once more in the Gos- 
pels, namely, in Matthew xviii, 17, in the meaning which 
it bears in our text ; that is, " the congregation of the 
faithful," with this difference only, that in the passage 
under consideration the whole, in the other, a part only 
is meant. The word itself comes from the Greek verb, 
eKicaKeiv — to call out — and means originally an assembly 
of the people. Whether the meeting takes place for 
good or, bad purposes must be determined by the con- 
text. In Acts xix, 32, 39, it means a mob. — Before 
there existed any churches, that is, buildings designed 
exclusively for public worship, the Christians met in 
private houses ; hence we read of churches in private 
houses. (Bom. xvi, 3, 5 ; 1 Cor. xvi, 19; Col. iv, 15.) 
3 The Greek here for hell, is afijjt, the Hebrew Sheol, the 



abode of the dead. The term gates stands for power, 
being an Oriental form of speech still used when we 
speak of the Turkish power as " The Ottoman Porte." 
Inasmuch as in ancient times public business was trans- 
acted in the courts adjoining the fortified gates, these 
gates are figuratively used for the government which 
transacted its business there. Thus, the gates of hell 
mean strictly the dominion of death, and by implication, 
the infernal powers, held in the abode of death and 
darkness. 4 The function which is to be exercised with 
these keys is that of binding and loosing. There is an 
apparent incongruity in the figure that is here employed, 
which has its origin in the fact that in ancient times 
doors were usually fastened by tying. To fasten the 
tie or to unloose it was the same thing as to open 
and shut. 



412 



MATTHEW XVI, 13-20. 



which have a sounder confession, to how few has the 
arm of the Lord been really revealed ! To a vast 
multitude he is merely the son of Mary, and an object 
of dread rather than of love and worship, while the 
mother is the mediator who is trusted and adored. 
To how many is he nothing more than the model 
representative man — not the Lord from heaven, but 
the bringer-in of a new and purer earthly philos- 
ophy ! How few really know and confess him — are 
able by the Holy Ghost to call him Lord ! How 
great a number are there who have indeed a form 
of sound words, but who have never attempted to 
penetrate their meaning — who, as of themselves, can 
make no true confession of the Christ in his person 
and offices — who have not laid hold on him as the 
hope, and refuge, and anchor of their souls !" 

Verse 16. The question was directed to the whole 
body of the disciples. In the name of all Peter re- 
plied, being the mouth-piece of the other apostles, 
as Chrysostom calls him: "They are dealt with by 
the Lord henceforth as having all made it, and on 
the ground of it those blessings are pronounced and 
those powers are conferred which are the common 
property of them all. This confession set the apos- 
tles apart from all other men, and was the occasion 
of their organization into a new society. It forms 
the basis of the constitution of the Christian as dis- 
tinguished from the Jewish Church." (Wilson.) 
Peter's confession may, indeed, be called the first 
and only Gospel creed. It contains the testimony 
that was spoken from heaven, (chap, iii, 17; xvii, 5,) 
and on it St. John dwells with peculiar earnest- 
ness, both in his Gospel and in his Epistles. (1 John 
iv, 15; 1 John v, 5; x, 13.) A profession of faith in 
Jesus as the Son of God was, to the eunuch, the con- 
dition of being baptized. — The Son of God forms 
here a contrast to Son of man. The latter designa- 
tion had reference to the Messiahship and his human 
nature assumed for that purpose; the former re- 
ferred, not to the office, but to the higher nature of 
Jesus. It appears from Matt, xxvi, 63, that the 
Jews themselves understood by the "Son of God" 
the true Godhead. " The participle living," says 
Olshausen, " is here not used for the purpose of con- 
trasting the true God with the false gods of the hea- 
then, for which there was no occasion, but to express* 
the reality of God's self-revelation in Christ. The 
Father was so signally and forcibly reflected in Je- 
sus, that he was only in him fully revealed. All pre- 
vious self-manifestations of the living God were, as 
it were, dead, when compared with the fullness of 
life that gushed forth from the person of Jesus. 
(John i, 14.)" 

Verse 17. Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona; 
that is, son of Jonas. Jesus calls him, according 
to the custom of the Jews, by his father's name, in- 
dicating his natural state and extraction, in contra- 
distinction to his spiritual state, name, and blessing, 
which follow. He is addressed in the same manner 
on a subsequent occasion to remind him of his 



frailty in having denied the Lord. (John xxi, 15-17.) 
— Blessed. From this solemn benediction we have 
to infer that Peter understood, by the words he ut- 
tered on this occasion, more than when he made the 
same profession before. He had now a higher than 
the Jewish conception of the Messiah. "In speak- 
ing these words Jesus does not confer on Peter a 
blessing which he did not possess before the bene- 
diction was uttered. The blessing was Peter's from 
the moment he entered into that knowledge which 
was the source of it. It is a blessing which did not 
and could not subsist apart from the state of mind 
out of which it sprung. This necessarily is the char- 
acteristic and the condition of all spiritual blessings. 
It was not the peculiar heritage of Peter ; it must be 
the common property of all who have Peter's faith 
and knowledge. To apprehend Immanuel as he did 
is to possess this blessing. It consists in such an 
apprehension of Christ, and can not be separated 
from it. The knowledge being mine, the blessing 
also is mine. The revelation by the Father ceasing, 
the blessedness terminates. It is just at this point, 
and from utter ignorance of this grand principle, 
that the whole Popish error, grounded on this pas- 
sage, takes its origin. According to the Popish be- 
lief, blessing and character are not involved in each 
other." (Wilson.) — For flesh and blood has not 
revealed it unto thee. The glory of Jesus was so 
completely vailed by his outward lowliness, that it 
could not be recognized without a Divine revelation. 
This knowledge could not be acquired by any mere 
human power or effort, originating in himself or 
others. " The natural man receiveth not the things 
of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, for 
they are spiritually discerned. What man knoweth 
the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is 
in him ? Even so the things of God knoweth no 
man, but the Spirit of God." The same contrast 
between the human and the divine we find ex- 
pressed in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Ga- 
latians. Paul calls himself (v. 1) "an apostle, not 
of men, neither by men, but by Jesus Christ, and 
God the Father." In verse 2 he says of the Gos- 
pel: "I neither received it of man, neither was I 
taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ;" 
and again, in verses 15 and 16: "When it pleased 
God to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach 
him among the Gentiles, immediately I conferred 
not with flesh and blood." These words of Paul are 
evidently a reference to our Savior's words in the 
text, as if the apostle meant to say: "I am also a 
Peter; my faith and confession are like Peter's, not 
of flesh and blood, but of Divine revelation." 

Verse 18. And I say also unto thee. Peter had 
made a declaration concerning Christ, and now Christ 
is making a declaration concerning Peter — a decla- 
ration which we must assume to have a direct bear- 
ing upon Peter's declaration. Peter, in confessing 
Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the living God, 
declared him to be the only foundation of man's 



CHRIST'S DECLARATION TO PETER CONCERING HIS CHURCH. 



413 



salvation — that foundation of which St. Paul says: 
"According to the grace of God, as a wise master- 
builder, I have laid the foundation ; for other foun- 
dation can no man lay than that is laid, which is 
Jesus Christ." This foundation was laid immediately 
after the fall by the promise of the seed of the wo- 
man, who shall bruise the serpent's head. No other 
Being but he who was the Son of God as well as the 
Son of man, the God-man, the "Word made flesh, 
was able to save man. Of him Moses and the 
prophets testified. "Behold, I lay in Sion a chief 
Corner-stone, elect, precious, and he that believes in 
him shall not be confounded." Of him, after he had 
died for our sins and was risen for our justification, 
Peter declared to the Jews : " This is the stone which 
was set at naught of you builders, which is become 
the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation 
in any other; for there is none other name under 
heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved." 
Thus Peter's confession implied that only founda- 
tion upon which rests all hope of salvation, and 
upon which the apostles were to build. In reply to 
this confession, our Lord, after pronouncing the con- 
fessor blessed, because the Father in heaven had re- 
vealed to him the great mystery of godliness, tells 
Peter what relation he should bear to the Church 
He was about to build, and against which the gates 
of hell should not prevail. — That thou art Peter. 
In Greek, Tlfrpog ; in Hebrew, Kephas ; that is, a 
stone, or rock. This name had been bestowed on 
Simon prophetically at his first interview with the 
Lord. (John i, 42.) "Why? Certainly not on ac- 
count of a peculiar firmness of character — for in 
this he was more deficient than the other disciples — 
but with reference to his faith in Christ, the Son of 
God, the living stone, the head corner-stone — a faith 
which, out of the abundance of the heart, he so 
boldly professed, and which did not fail him in his 
deep fall, enabling him penitently to return to his 
Savior. It is very significant that "whoever has 
come to that living stone," believing in him with the 
heart and confessing him with the mouth, is called 
by Peter, in his Epistle, "a lively stone" — the same 
appellation with which he himself had been honored 
for believing in Christ, the living corner-stone. In 
the same sense the believers in Christ derive their 
name Christians from Christ. Thus Peter himself 
explains to us what the Lord meant when, in an- 
swer to his confession, he said, " Thou art Peter." 
It is as much as if he had said : Thou art a true be- 
liever. " Jesus, having blessed the disciple who had 
witnessed such a good confession, bestows upon him 
a new name as a token and seal of the blessing 
which he had pronounced. On the occasion of Si- 
mon's first introduction to the Lord, he had inti- 
mated that this name would be conferred upon him. 
The time has now come for the fulfillment of this 
prediction. Simon is now in the possession of the 
character which renders it appropriate. The be- 
stowal of this new name on such an occasion is in 



entire harmony with the examples and precedents 
recorded in the Old Testament Scriptures. Abra- 
ham received a new name, when, in virtue of God's 
gracious covenant with him, he assumed a new posi- 
tion and a publicly-recognized relationship with the 
Church of the future. Jacob, also, received a new 
name when he obtained the blessing at the hands 
of the Angel of the covenant, and was called Israel, 
because he had power with God and with man, and 
had prevailed. From these examples sprang, as it 
seems, the universal practice among the Jews, to 
give a new name to their offspring on the occasion 
of their circumcision. In that sacred rite they were 
publicly owned and recognized as members of the 
Church and in covenant with God, and they then 
received the name whereby they were henceforth to 
be known among men. The same practice is still 
preserved in the administration of baptism in the 
Christian Church. As the Lord dealt with Peter, so 
he does with every true believer and confessor of his 
name. ' To him that overcometh will I give to eat 
of the hidden manna, and will give him a white 
stone, and in the stone a new name written, which 
no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.' Peter 
received his new name as a member and apostle of 
the visible Church, and the name was therefore pub- 
lished. Believers receive theirs simply as children 
of God— as belonging to that family which, in heaven 
and earth, is named of Jesus Christ — as members 
of the Church invisible. But the relationship in which 
both he and they stand to God is indicated by the 
same process, and it proclaims them as standing on 
the same platform. Peter is here the representative 
not only of his fellow-apostles, but, in a more gen- 
eral sense, of all true believers. He, as the repre- 
sentative confessor, is laid, as a lively stone, in the 
foundation of that building which the Lord is about 
to rear. Every lively stone in the building becomes, 
in its turn, a foundation for the future superstruc- 
ture — a rock on which the Lord builds his Church. 
It is through the life imparted to some that it is con- 
veyed to others, and the Lord builds his Church, 
not by the written testimony of his own Word only, 
but by that testimony as inscribed on believing 
hearts, by living epistles, to be known and read of 
men." (Condensed from Wilson.) — And on this 
rock — £7rt ra'vTij rq izETpg. By this rock the older 
Protestant commentators — and of the recent inter- 
preters Dr. Alexander — understand Christ himself, 
pointing to his own person, on the following grounds: 
" 1. The figure of a rock, although susceptible, like 
others, of indefinitely-various applications, is espe- 
cially appropriated in the Scriptures to the Divine 
character and attributes. ' Who is a rock save our 
God?' 2. It is exceedingly unusual, if not wholly 
unexampled, to employ the demonstrative this in 
application to the object of address, whereas our 
Lord repeatedly applies it to himself. 3. The di- 
versity of form and gender in the Greek words irhpog 
and irhpa is too abrupt and marked to be unmean- 



414 



MATTHEW XVI, 13-20. 



ing, or explicable simply on the ground that the 
masculine form was used in speaking of a man. 
If they are synonymous, as commonly assumed, why 
should the feminine be used at all, the rather as it 
weakens and obscures the reference to Peter, if in- 
tended, which would certainly have been more clear 
and striking if the same Greek word had been re- 
peated, ' Thou art Peter, [that, is rock,] and on this 
Peter [that is, rock] will I build my Church' The 
assertion that this distinction exists only in the 
Greek, and that in our Lord's vernacular the same 
form was repeated, as it is in the Peshito, is without 
weight. It is altogether arbitrary to assume that the 
Aramaic dialect of Palestine, at that time, could not 
furnish two equivalents to these two Greek words. 
It has been alleged on high authority, (Lightfoot,) 
that Cephas itself bears the same relation to the 
Syriac word Cepha that Petros does to Petra, and 
that both may have been used on this occasion. But 
even granting that the same word was repeated, it 
might be, as in so many other cases, with a difference 
of meaning, not entirely clear at first, but having that 
peculiar enigmatical significance, which formed so 
prominent a feature in the Savior's method of instruc- 
tion. This double sense of one word has been some- 
times preserved even in Greek, (compare the double 
sense of dead in chap, viii, 22 ; that of V"W# m chap, 
x, 39; of vadc in John ii, 19, 20,) while in the case 
before us the usage of that language furnished two 
forms to express the kindred but distinct ideas. The 
classical use of Trerpog and irerpa is entirely distinct, 
the latter answering to rock and the former to stone, 
(fragment of a rock,) the two being scarcely ever in- 
terchanged, even by poetic license. This remarka- 
ble fact makes it still more difficult to understand 
why Matthew should have used both forms if Christ 
employed but one, or only in one sense, when the 
masculine form, rcerpoc, would have answered every 
purpose." (Alexander.) The above remarks con- 
tain the strongest argument in favor of the common 
Protestant interpretation : but it is by no means con- 
vincing, as we shall show, and the objections to it 
appear to us insuperable. First of all, this interpret- 
ation destroys wholly the intimate connection be- 
tween the new name Peter and the building of the 
Church. We have seen what a direct bearing the 
declaration "Thou art Peter" has upon his preced- 
ing confession. In that confession Peter had de- 
clared Christ to be the only foundation laid on the 
part of God for the salvation of man. There was 
evidently no need that our Lord should speak of 
himself, in this connection, as the Divine founda- 
tion of his Church, and thus repeat the fundamental 
truth uttered by Peter. On the contrary, it gives 
him occasion to speak of himself as purposing to 
build Ms Church, and to declare Peter, as it were, 
its first foundation-stone. That Trerpoe is designedly 
changed into irerpa, is not only, as Dr. Alexander 
shows, very probable, but appears even necessary, 
and is highly significant. Peter was only a repre- 



sentative foundation-stone. Our Lord did not mean 
to say that he would build his Church on the person- 
ality of Simon, the son of Jonas — for, in his nat- 
ural personality, he is soon after severely rebuked, 
(v. 23) — but on Peter as a man taught of God, and 
as the representative of his fellow-apostles, in whose 
name he had made the confession, and who were 
subjects of the same heavenly illumination — and, in- 
deed, in a wider sense, of all true believers and con- 
fessors — on which account the power of binding 
and loosing, here conferred upon Peter, is after- 
ward declared expressly to belong to the whole apos- 
tolic college, and, in a certain sense, to the whole 
Church. In accordance with this, Paul writes to the 
Corinthians : " Ye are built upon the foundation 
[not of Peter, but] of the apostles and prophets, 
Jesus Christ himself being the corner-stone ;" and 
in the Revelation of St. John we read : " The wall 
of the city of God had twelve foundations, and in 
them the name of the twelve apostles of the Lamb." 
Our Lord, after having heard Peter's confession, and 
declaring his purpose to build his Church, naturally 
speaks of the building materials which he requires 
for the organization of his Church. Every building 
must have foundation-stones. What is the founda- 
tion of the Christian Church on the part of man 1 ? 
Is it not — what Peter exhibited — a faith wrought in 
the heart by the Holy Ghost, and a confession with 
the mouth that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the 
living God? But this believing with the heart and 
confessing with the mouth is something personal; it 
can not be separated from the living personality that 
believes and confesses. The Church consists of liv- 
ing men, and its foundation can not be a mere ab- 
stract truth or doctrine, apart from the living person- 
ality in which it is embodied. This is in accordance 
with the whole New Testament language, in which 
not doctrines or confessions, but men are uniformly 
called pillars or foundations of the spiritual building. 
If by the words "and upon this rock" our Lord had 
meant simply Peter's confession, as a fundamental 
truth, as some interpret it, the first clause of the 
18th verse, "And I say also unto thee, that thou art 
Peter," would seem to be irrelevant; the Savior, 
after pronouncing Peter blessed on account of his 
confession, would at once have added, "And upon 
this rock I will build my Church." — Why Simon, 
the son of Jonas, Was distinguished before the other 
disciples by the name of Peter: why Christ honored 
him so highly by making him the representative of 
his fellow-apostles and of all true believers ; why he 
called him, as it were, the first foundation-stone 
upon which he would build his Church, and bestowed 
upon him the honor of opening the New-Testament 
Church to Jews and Gentiles, we know not. But 
this is clear, beyond the possibility of a reasonable 
doubt, that the Church of Rome has no ground to 
infer from this passage — the only passage in the 
New Testament which Popery can find to appeal to 
for her assumptions and delusions — Peter's suprem- 



CHRIST'S DECLARATION TO PETER CONCERNING HIS CHURCH. 



415 



acy over his fellow-apostles, and its transfer to the 
Bishops of Rome over the whole Church of Christ 
to the end of time. A strong presumption against 
the Popish interpretation lies in the omission of our 
Lord's address to Peter by the other two Evangelists, 
who stop short at the end of Peter's confession. 
"This," Dr. Alexander remarks, ''is something very 
different from the usual omissions in the parallel ac- 
counts. Had Mark and Luke omitted the occur- 
rence altogether, or merely given it more briefly, no 
conclusion could be drawn from such a difference. 
But if Peter's exaltation is the main design of this 
address, what precedes in verses 13-16 is simply 
introductory. Now, how can we believe that two 
of the Evangelists would only give the introduction, 
and then leave out what it introduces?" And that, 
on a subject of such a paramount importance as the 
Church of Rome assigns to it! The claim of pri- 
macy, set up for Peter on the ground of this pas- 
sage, is, as we have shown, sufficiently refuted by the 
context, and, as Dr. Alexander remarks, "by the 
continual allusions to the twelve as a collective 
body, even in the types of the Old Testament, espe- 
cially the twelve tribes of Israel, as the frame-work 
of the old theocracy, but still more clearly in the 
promise to the apostolic body, founded on this an- 
cient constitution, (chap. xix,'28,) in the repetition 
of the same thing in a different form elsewhere, 
(Eph. ii, 20,) and in the symbolical description of 
the twelve foundations of the New Jerusalem. (Rev. 
xxi, 14.)" Peter's primacy would be also in contra- 
diction to Christ's express declaration in chapter 
xxiii, 8-10. Peter himself denies the primacy when 
he writes : " The elders which are among you I ex- 
hort, who also am an elder;" and then warns them 
not to be lords over God's heritage. (1 Peter v, 3.) 
This declaration we find illustrated by facts in the 
Acts of the Apostles. According to Acts xv, 19, it 
is not Peter's but James's sentence that is sanctioned 
by the whole assembly through the Holy Ghost. In 
Galatians ii we read of a stern rebuke administered 
by Paul to Peter. Among the three principal apos- 
tles he is mentioned second, James first. (Gal. ii, 9.) 
But even if Peter had, for himself, possessed a su- 
premacy over his fellow-apostles, it is clear that this 
supremacy, in the nature of the case, could not have 
been transferred. Least of all could the Bishops of 
Rome have inherited it from Peter ; for Peter never 
exercised the functions of a bishop at Rome, as ap- 
pears from Paul's Epistle to the Romans and his dif- 
ferent Epistles written from Rome — to say nothing 
of the apostolical office being inconsistent with that 
of a bishop. Finally, suppose even that Peter had 
been a bishop of Rome, and that his successors in 
that office could have inherited, in some way, the 
powers supposed to have been bestowed upon Peter 
in the passage under consideration, the undeniable 
fact that so many dogmas of Rome are in irrecon- 
cilable contradiction to the spirit and letter of the 
apostolical teaching contained in the canonical books 



of the New Testament, is conclusive proof that the 
Bishops of Rome did not inherit Peter's prerogative, 
or most fatally forfeited the trust supposed to have 
been committed to them. — I will build. The 
Lord speaks here, for the first time, of his Church, 
soon to be called into existence. — In Christ's build- 
ing his Church himself there are three things im- 
plied: 1. That he chooses himself his instruments 
or workmen ; 2. That he accompanies the word his 
embassadors preach with the power of the Holy 
Ghost. Without Christ they can do nothing. Paul 
may plant and Apollos water, but the increase must 
come from God. On that account even the inspired 
apostles found themselves powerless, and said to the 
Churches : Pray for us. And the Lord has promised : 
Lo, I am with you to the end of the world ; 3. That 
he builds his Church according to a certain building 
plan, from which he will never deviate, and which he 
has laid down in verse 19. — My Church. "The 
Church, of which Christ is the builder, is, in the 
strictest sense, the living, spiritual Church, consist- 
ing of all whom the Father should teach and bring 
to the Savior, but not, on that account, the less that 
Church which should exist among and be seen of 
men. The Church visible, indeed, does not consist 
exclusively of those who are true believers. It con- 
sists of those who confess Christ, and credibly pro- 
fess their faith in him. The Church which Christ 
personally builds consists only of those who in heart 
and life are his. On the walls of the Divine temple 
men, in their ignorance and sin, heap many use- 
less and perishable materials — wood, and hay, and 
stubble. The Church, outwardly and formally, there- 
fore, is not coextensive with the Church which 
is the habitation of God through the Spirit. The 
former is, to a greater or less extent, the building 
of man — the latter the building of the Lord. But 
the one is comprehended in the other. The one 
consists of those who make a true confession, the 
other of those who credibly profess faith in Christ. 
The Church formal, therefore, always embraces the 
Church divine and real, and the life of the Spirit 
manifests itself within the pale of the visible Church. 
When Jesus announces that he is the builder of the 
Church, he proclaims himself its Creator and Author. 
To him, and to no other, it owes its existence, its 
character, its immunities. Above all human instru- 
mentality, and alone giving efficacy to it, the Lord is 
ever verifying the purpose which he now announces, 
in the history of the Church. He does not set forth 
Peter or any human agent as the builder of that 
glorious temple. Peter had been laid as a stone 
of the structure in the very foundation of the build- 
ing. It is Christ himself that is the efficient agent 
in erecting this house of God. Every lively stone 
in its walls is there, because he has so placed it. It 
has been hewn and fashioned by him, and fitted for 
the place it is to occupy, and the purpose it is de- 
signed to serve. Christ claims this Church as his 
own by a double right. It is his because he is its 



416 



MATTHEW XVI, 13-20. 



builder, and because he has bought it with his blood. 
Hence is derived his sole right to rule over it, and to 
legislate for it. It is neither the creature of the 
State, nor subject to its control, nor dependent on 
its countenance and patronage, nor regulated by it 
in its constitution and administration. It is not a 
voluntary association — a combination of men, united 
for the accomplishment of certain objects, and is, 
therefore, not the creature of human will and ca- 
price. Its true members have surrendered their 
own will to that of God. It is independent of men 
that it may be solely dependent on God. It is ele- 
vated into a region above the earth, and lives under 
the shadow of the Almighty. It moves and acts in 
a higher region of light and knowledge — in the radi- 
ance of which the wisdom of this world is shown 
to be foolishness. It ceases to be a kingdom of 
Christ — a temple of the living God — just in so far 
as it ceases to be animated by the Divine life, and 
to be governed by the Divine laws." (Wilson.) — 
And the gates of hell shall not prevail against 
it. On the term gates of hell see foot-note 3. "The 
kingdom of darkness," says Lange, "will henceforth 
develop its power in a continual conflict with the 
Church of Christ. It will, in the first place, attempt 
to drag it down into hades, the realm of death, by 
those persecutions and executions that commenced 
with the crucifixion of the Messiah. When this at- 
tempt fails, it will try to spread spiritual death over 
the Church by superstition and infidelity; but all 
these efforts shall fail. Instead of succumbing to 
Satan and his power, Christ will overcome and abol- 
ish the kingdom of death. (Is. xxv, 8; Hos. xiii, 
14; 1 Cor. xv, 55; Eph. i, 19, 20.) The kingdom 
of Christ, as the realm of life, shall triumph over 
the realm of death." — The most important, practical 
question is, in what sense the promise, here given by 
the Savior to his Church, has been verified. Some 
expositors have denied that any visible organization 
is meant by "my Church," and they, accordingly, un- 
derstand by it the so-called invisible Church. But 
if this view were correct, we must assume either 
that Christ did not purpose to organize a visible 
Church or that his purpose was frustrated, neither 
of which can be admitted for a moment. We hold, 
1. That the promise of invincibility and perpetuity 
was given to the visible Church, built upon the foun- 
dation of the apostles and prophets, and that this 
Church, though under a change of names, has main- 
tained its existence and essential character. Christ 
has had, in all ages, a visible Church, in which there 
were found, in smaller or greater numbers, living 
stones of the same substance. and material as Peter; 
true believers, to whom not flesh and blood, but the 
Father in heaven, had revealed his Son ; souls hav- 
ing a vital union with the Head of the Church; 
members of Christ's mystic body; branches of the 
true vine ; wheat sown by the Son of God, and stand- 
ing at the side of the tares sown by the enemy; silver, 
gold, and precious stones, built upon the same foun- 



dation upon which many useless and perishable ma- 
terials, wood, hay, and stubble, were built. And as 
the Jewish Church, at the very time it ceased to be 
the Church of the faithful, had hidden in its bosom 
souls whom the Lord made the foundation-stones of 
the Church of the New Testament, so there was, in 
the Roman Catholic Church, in its apostate condi- 
tion, a regenerative germ, a leaven left by which the 
true Church of Christ was preserved and propagated. 
The promise of her perpetuity is, evidently, not to 
be restricted to a certain locality or to a certain 
class of men. " Let us observe," says Mr. Wilson, 
" what it is that Christ is now doing. There is a 
Church whose seat is in Jerusalem — a Church of 
high pretensions, of patriarchal descent — to which 
pertained the giving of the law and the covenants. 
But he is founding a Church outside the Jewish — 
formally setting it aside and constructing another. 
That Church has ceased to be a habitation of God, 
and has become a synagogue of Satan — has become 
the Church's enemy and persecutor — the instrument 
and agent of quite another than God, and personify- 
ing the gates of hell. He is raising up a Church 
and people to bear witness against it — a Church 
composed of men who were thrust out of its syna- 
gogues, and excommunicated from its fellowship. 
But to the Jewish Church had been given promises 
as comprehensive and as absolute as were ever given 
to the Christian Church. There is not an argument 
which can be employed on behalf of the infallibility 
and perpetuity of the Christian Church in the sense 
in which Romanists understand and interpret these 
terms, which could not be used with still greater 
force and conclusiveness on behalf of the Church at 
Jerusalem. In the only true and legitimate sense 
these promises have been made good in the experi- 
ence of both Churches. God has not violated his 
promises to Abraham and his seed; but the promise 
from the first was not to the seed according to the 
flesh, but according to faith. Jerusalem has been 
destroyed, and her inhabitants scattered abroad, be- 
cause they forsook the faith of their fathers. But 
the father of the faithful has a progeny as numerous 
as the stars of heaven — not of Jewish extraction in- 
deed, but the heirs of Abraham's faith. It was by 
faith the Jewish Church stood, and by their want of 
it they fell. So it is still. ' Because of unbelief 
they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be 
not high-minded, but fear.' So wrote the apostle 
Paul of old to the Church of Rome, revealing 
wherein their true strength lay, and indicating, at 
least, the possibility of their fall. It is a lesson 
which they have sadly forgotten, and have, therefore, 
fallen so deeply. Like Jerusalem of old, the perse- 
cutors of the saints represent themselves as the only 
true saints and servants of Christ. But while thus, 
by guile and by force, the gates of hell may seem 
to prevail, the Church is, notwithstanding, perpetual 
and infallible, for it stands not in the wisdom of 
men, but in the power of God. The promise of 



CHRIST'S DECLARATION TO PETER CONCERNING HIS CHURCH. 



417 



God is not limited to race and locality. Whatever 
communities and individuals may fall away from the 
truth, Christ will always have, as in times past he 
has, had, a Church on earth. Satan never will suc- 
ceed in exterminating the Church. The gates of 
hell shall not prevail against it. Nay, we know, on 
the sure promise of the Word, that it will be univer- 
sally and gloriously triumphant, and the kingdoms 
of this world shall become the kingdoms of our God 
and of his Christ." 2. Any particular branch of 
the general Church may claim the promise that the 
gates of hell shall not prevail against it, in the de- 
gree and to the extent in which it suffers Christ to 
build it up through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit 
and through a ministry divinely called, in the same 
measure in which it holds fast the doctrines and 
precepts of the apostles, laid clown in the canonical 
books of the New Testament as the only rule of 
faith and practice. But as far as any fundamental 
feature of the building plan, which the Head of the 
Church enjoined upon the apostles, is deviated from 
by any Church in doctrine or in discipline ; as far 
as the voice of praise, prayer, and intercession is 
hushed in silence within its walls ; as far as the 
membership is no more cemented by brotherly love: 
so far a congregation or denomination will forfeit 
the fulfillment of the promise that the gates of 
hell shall not prevail against it. 

Verse 19. And I will give unto thee the keys. 
On the term keys see foot-note 4. ■ — Of the kingdom 
of heaven. By this term we have evidently to un- 
derstand the Church which our Lord says he will 
build, and against which the gates of hell shall not 
prevail. Yet the visible Church and the kingdom 
of heaven are not, in every respect, identical. 
"When the whole Church becomes in reality," says 
Lange, "what she is potentially, when she has pro- 
gressed from her apostolical beginning to apostol- 
ical perfection, she becomes so thoroughly identi- 
cal with the kingdom of heaven, that her acts be- 
come those of the Spirit of God. Disobedience to 
the commands of the Church will then be an offense 
against the Spirit of Christ, and, vice versa, every 
offense against the Spirit will become manifest and 
be condemned as an offense against the Church. 
But this plenitude of power in the Church is a real- 
ity only in so far as the Gospel ministry preserves 
its apostolical character inviolate, so long as its 
spirit is essentially the Spirit of Christ. For in 
reality it is always Christ himself, through his Spirit, 
who receives into the true communion, and who also 
virtually excommunicates. (Rev. iii, 1 ; Isa. xxii, 
22.)" — And whatsoever thou shalt bind [liter- 
ally, shalt have bound] on earth, shall be bound 
in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose 
[shalt have loosed] on earth, shall be loosed in 
heaven. Our Lord, having declared Peter, repre- 
senting the whole apostolic college, in virtue of his 
confession, the foundation of the spiritual building, 
the Church, designates now the functions which he 



27 



is to discharge; but these functions belong equally 
to his fellow-apostles, and to the whole membership 
of the true Church of Christ, in a certain sense, 
which we shall subsequently explain, as appears from 
Matt, xviii, 18. Though our Lord may have used 
the figure of the keys in allusion to the honor Peter 
afterward had in opening the door of the New Test- 
ament Church for both Jews and Gentiles, it is clear, 
from the addition of the next clause concerning the 
binding and loosing, that more than the mere open- 
ing of the door is meant by the keys. Keys are the 
emblem of the whole power of a steward, in the same 
sense in which a mayor or commander is said to 
have the keys of a city or fortress — of course, subject 
to the authority of the king. To bind and to loose is 
a phrase which the Jews used concerning the teachers 
of the law, who were supposed capable of explaining 
its requirements — what it forbade and what it per- 
mitted. It implies, 1. To declare what is lawful or 
unlawful; 2. To determine whether a deed was done 
according to or against the law; 3. To pronounce 
on the arraigned party the sentence of excommuni- 
cation, or to admit one into communion. We may, 
accordingly, define the power of the keys— conferred 
here upon Peter, as the representative of the apos- 
tles, and afterward expressly declared to belong to 
all the apostles — to be a twofold power. 1. It is 
what has been called the key of doctrine ; that is, 
the authority to declare, for all time to come, the 
conditions of salvation. "By the key of doctrine 
they unlock the treasures of Divine wisdom; unfold 
and declare the whole counsel of God; proclaim to 
men the way of pardon and acceptance, and the ter- 
rors of that law whose sentence is death ; repeat and 
inculcate that testimony which God has given con- 
cerning his Son ; give utterance to the blessings and 
curses which God himself has pronounced. By the 
word of this Divine testimony they unloose the 
chains which have bound the captives of sin, and 
bring welcome deliverance and peace to the troubled 
soul, seal upon it the pardon which the Savior pur- 
chased, and give access into that grace wherein be- 
lievers stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of 
God. By that word they bind over the impenitent 
and unbelieving to condemnation. It is the savor 
of death unto death as well as life unto life. They 
denounce the just judgments of God against all un- 
godliness and unrighteousness of men, and seal on 
their souls the sentence which will be repeated on 
the great day of judgment. But in the use of this 
key they are expressly stewards. They can not shut 
what God has opened, nor open what he has shut. 
They can not alter or modify what he has determ- 
ined. They merely proclaim what his determina- 
tions are." (Wilson.) For this end the apostles 
needed and received the plenary inspiration of the 
Holy Spirit. Their writings are, therefore, invested 
with Divine authority. Whatever they have bound 
in their writings must be obeyed at the peril of our 
salvation. But what they have not bound is left 



418 



MATTHEW XVI, 13-20. 



free. No human authority can make it binding on 
our conscience. It is on this ground that the in- 
spired writings of the New Testament constitute the 
only and sufficient rule of Christian faith and prac- 
tice. By the authoritative teaching of the apostles 
the Church is bound. She dares not add nor detract 
from it. But it is the duty and the right of the 
Christian ministry to declare the whole counsel of 
God, as it is laid down in the inspired volume, and, 
so far as they do this, their teaching is as authorita- 
tive as that of the apostles themselves. The power 
of the keys implies, 2. What has been called the key 
of discipline ; that is, the authority to declare the 
terms of membership in the Church on earth, and to 
lay down such laws for the order and government of 
the Church as are to be binding to the end of time. 
By the apostolical legislation the Church is bound in 
the administration of discipline, in the admission 
and exclusion of members. She is not permitted to 
make new terms of membership. She must strictly 
follow the directions of the divine Word. It is only 
that Word which really binds or looses. To shut out 
men from Church fellowship without its sanction is 
not to exclude from the kingdom of heaven ; to ad- 
mit them without its warrant does not give entrance 
into the kingdom. But within these limits, what the 
Church binds is bound, and what she looses is 
loosed. — On the Popish pretense that the power, 
here conferred upon Peter, includes supreme juris- 
diction over the Church, and passed from him to his 
pretended successors, we have said enough above. 
But it may be well to add a few remarks on the 
claim which the Romish priesthood bases upon this 
passage, and upon John xx, 23, authoritatively to 
pardon sins, and thus to give admission into and ex- 
clude men from heaven. If Peter or any other 
apostle had possessed this power, it is strange that 
we read of no instance in the New Testament in 
which they exercised it. We no where read of men 
confessing their sins unto the apostles, and receiv- 
ing absolution from them. What did Peter say to 
Simon the sorcerer? "Repent of this thy wicked- 
ness, and pray to God, if perhaps the thought of thy 
heart may be forgiven thee." He did not take it 
upon himself to retain this man's sins, but con- 
tented himself with exhorting him to flee from the 
wrath to come by sincerely repenting of his sins. 
When the jailer asked Paul what he must do to be 
saved, Paul neither imposed penance on him, nor 
did he absolve him, but he said: "Believe on the 
Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." What 
the Savior msant, when, after his resurrection, he 
breathed upon the disciples and said, " Receive ye 
the Holy Ghost; whosesoever sins ye remit, they are 
remitted unto them ; and whosesoever sins ye retain, 
they are retained," we can be at no loss to understand. 
He then ratified what he here promised to Peter. The 
sense in which Christ's words were understood by 
his disciples is determined by the way in which they 
acted upon them. We find them simply preaching 



the doctrine of repentance for the remission of sins, 
the doctrine that faith in Christ secured forgive- 
ness at the hands of God. to whom the power and 
the act of pardon are always and immediately as- 
cribed. On the dogma of the Romish Church, that the 
power of authoritative, efficacious absolution or for- 
giveness of sins is a function of the Christian priest- 
hood, Mr. Wilson remarks: "In examining this doc- 
trine, we observe, in the first place, that the power 
of forgiveness is not a priestly power or function at 
all. It never was so, and, in the nature of the case, 
it can not be so. Heb. v, 1, defines a priest to be 
one 'ordained for men in things pertaining to God, 
that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sin.' 
The priesthood involves the functions of mediation 
and atonement, but not that of forgiveness. The 
Levitical priesthood, accordingly, did not forgive sin. 
They simply offered sacrifices as an atonement for it. 
Even Christ himself, in his priestly character, did 
not forgive sin. When he forgives he acts as Lord. 
Pardon is always an exercise of sovereignty, and is 
incompatible with the functions of mediation and 
atonement. But, secondly, the Christian ministry 
is not a priesthood at all, so that even if priests had 
the power of forgiveness, it would not follow that 
this function pertained to the Christian ministry. 
They are never described in the New Testament as 
priests — a thing which is inconceivable on the sup- 
position that they really were priests ; for the writers 
of the New Testament books were not ignorant of 
the nature and functions of a priesthood. On the 
contrary, they had never known or heard of a relig- 
ion without it. But they never call any of the office- 
bearers of the Church priests. Still further, no 
priestly function is ever ascribed to Christian min- 
isters. The functions of the priest, according to 
apostolic definition, are mediation and atonement — 
mediation between parties otherwise mutually inac- 
cessible, and atonement by the presentation of an 
expiatory sacrifice. But such mediation and atone- 
ment the New Testament never ascribes to Christian 
ministers. Again, the Scriptures represent Christ 
himself as the only priest of his people, who, by the 
one offering of himself, has superseded and abol- 
ished all other atonement— who has no successor in 
that office, because he is a priest forever — and who, 
by his own mediation, has given to each believer 
boldness to come to a throne of grace, that he may 
obtain mercy and find grace to help him in the time 
of need. Christian ministers are not priests under 
Christ as the Levitical priests were. They were 
types indicating him who was to come. But now 
that he has come, there is nothing to prefigure, or 
even to recall, for Christ is an everlasting priest, 
and perpetually present with his people. Christian 
ministers are not even mediators specially appointed 
to bring men to Christ, as Christ himself brings men 
to God. For the Scriptures uniformly teach that we 
may come to Christ without any mediator at all, and 
they hold forth the freeness of immediate access to 



CHRIST TELLS HIS DISCIPLES WHAT IS AWAITING HIM AND THEM. 



419 



the Savior, without any intervention as one of the 
gracious peculiarities of the Gospel. 'If any man 
thirst, let him come to me and drink.' The Scrip- 
tures declare the Christian minister to be something 
entirely different from a priest. Ministers are spok- 
en of as the messengers and heralds of salvation, 
teachers, watchmen, rulers, overseers, shepherds. 
'Feed my sheep — feed my lambs;' 'Christ sent me 
to preach the Gospel;' 'Who is Paul, and who is 
Apollos. but ministers by whom ye believed?' . . . 
Pardon is an act of sovereignty. None but God, 
against whom the offense is committed, can forgive 
sins. Therefore it is Jesus, who is represented, on 
the one hand, as bearing the keys of hell and death, 
and, on the other hand, the key of the house of 
David. The former keys he possesses in virtue of 
his atoning death and triumphant resurrection. He 
successfully assailed the stronghold of Satan, broke 
the barriers of the grave, and ascended as a con- 
queror, having spoiled principalities and powers, and 
made a show of them openly. And as he is alive 
for evermore, in virtue of his atoning death, he has 
those kevs by which he effects for others the same 
deliverance as he achieved for himself. To him only 
it pertains to bring forth into glorious liberty the 
captives of Satan and sin, to spoil the grave of its 
prey, and to make his people partakers of his own 
glorious victory. To him pertains forever the use 
of these keys, not only for the deliverance of his 
own people, but for the purposes of judgment and 
final retribution. At his word the sea shall give up 
the dead which are in it, and death and hell shall 
deliver up the dead which are in them, and they 
shall be judged every man according to his works. 
To him also belongs the key of David. He open- 
eth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no 
man openeth. He gives access to the domain and 
heritage of the saints, and he excludes from par- 
ticipation in the promises. He exercises the royal 
prerogative which David held over Israel, and, as 
now seated on his throne, admits to and excludes 
from the kingdom, secures an entrance to those 
whom he hath redeemed, and shuts out those who 
have falsely professed his name. It was the apostle 
John who thus, in vision, saw the risen Savior in the 



possession and exercise of this power — exercising it 
while the apostles were still discharging their func- 
tions upon the earth. He is not represented as 
sharing it with them, far less surrendering it unto 
them. Whatever may be implied, then, in this 
power of the keys, certainly it does not imply the 
usurpation of the Savior's own prerogative, the 
doing of that which he alone does and is competent 
to do." 

Verse 20. That they should tell no man. The 
time had not yet come when he was publicly to be 
declared and recognized as the Messiah. This 
should not be done till shortly before his death. 
(Matt, xxvi, 64.) A positive public announcement 
of his Messiahship might have given rise to a rebell- 
ion against the government. Besides, the disciples 
were as unripe for proclaiming as the Jews were for 
receiving the truth which they had confessed to their 
Master till that truth should have been fully mani- 
fested to both in the facts of Christ's future history. 
It is a peculiar characteristic of Bible truth that it 
every-where makes its appeal to facts. All its doc- 
trines rest on these, and till the fact has been ac- 
complished the doctrine embodied in it is not fully 
declared. By Divine teaching the disciples had dis- 
cerned and confessed one fundamental truth, but 
they were yet ignorant of another equally-funda- 
mental one. They did not yet understand the ne- 
cessity of the atoning suffering and death of Christ. 
Therefore, they are commanded to retain for a 
season in their hearts the great truth till they 
learned to understand that which makes the knowl- 
edge of the truth they possessed so significant to 
men. Let us draw from this the important prac- 
tical lesson, 'that it is better to hold our peace than 
to speak when our knowledge is not ripe and full, 
and when to proclaim the truth would evidently be 
to injure its power and influence. Before the disci- 
ples became preachers they became learners, and 
continued to be such till they apprehended the whole 
truth which they were commissioned to proclaim. 
It must be so always. The teacher must himself 
have learned, and it is true wisdom for him to be 
silent till he knows what he speaks, and can render 
a reason for the hope that is in him." (Wilson.) 



§87. THE SAVIOR PREDICTS HIS DEATH AND RESURRECTION, AND 
ENJOINS UPON HIS FOLLOWERS TO TAKE UP HIS CROSS. 

After having called forth joyous anticipations concerning the kingdom of heaven on 
earth in the minds of his disciples by his response to their confession, the Lord suddenly 
turns their joy into sorrow and perplexity by telling them of his impending suffering 
and death — words which they could not comprehend. ' In dark, mysterious words, the 
Lord had, indeed, on former occasions hinted at his violent death and his subsequent 
resurrection from the dead, (John iii, 14; Matt, x, 38; John ii, 19; x, 17, 18;) but on the 
present occasion he spoke without figure openly, as Mark expressly remarks, (viii, 32,) 



420 MATTHEW XVI, 21-28. 



and that for the following reasons: 1. The faith of the disciples was now such as qualified 
them to bear the sad announcement; 2. This very announcement was intended to strike 
at the root of their carnal Messianic expectations; 3. The Lord acquainted his disciples 
with what was in store for him and them, because he wished them to act from choice in 
following him in the path of suffering and death. In the plainest language the Lord 
henceforth spoke of his suffering, death, and resurrection. How little the disciples ap- 
prehended what Christ told them of his suffering and death is apparent from the fact 
that the distinct announcement of his resurrection failed to make any impression upon 
their minds. It has been asked, "How can we account for it that, after the Lord had so 
clearly and repeatedly predicted both his death and resurrection, his disciples did not 
confidently expect the latter when the former had taken place?" To this question Lange 
replies: "In the first place, it must be borne in mind that they neglected at the proper 
time to receive into their hearts what he told them of his death in connection. with his 
resurrection. As long as they were unwilling to give any credence to his imminent 
death, all he said about his resurrection was, of course, meaningless for them. In the 
next place, their uncertainty was also owing to the fact that they were for a long time 
doubtful whether they were to take his words in their literal meaning, or to understand 
them figuratively. The distance between the hight of the Master's spiritual life and their 
low religious stand-point was such that they were often at a loss how they should take 
his words. They often understood his figurative language literally, (Matt, xvi, 7; John 
iv, 33; xi, 12,) while at other times they were inclined to take his literal expressions 
figuratively. (John vi, 70; Matt, xv, 15, 17; John xi, 11.) Their uncertainty as to the 
real meaning of their Master's words about his resurrection was, thus, the natural conse- 
quence of many errors they had made in interpreting his language on various other 
occasions. On account of this uncertainty they conferred with each other about the 
meaning of his rising from, the dead, when he spoke of it for the second time. (Mark ix, 
10.)" We must, moreover, bear in mind how slowly hope strikes root in the dejected 
heart, and how many sayings of our Lord were necessarily dark to his apostles, because 
suffering and triumph seemed to them irreconcilable. The allegation of Strauss, that the 
Lord's predictions of his death, etc., recorded in the synoptic Gosj^els, are contradictory 
to those in John's Gospel, is a mere assertion, devoid of any proof. What Strauss calls 
contradiction is this, that John records what our Lord said before the assembled multi 
tudes at the beginning of his public ministry in dark figures, (John ii, 19, etc.;) theSynop- 
tists record what he said toward the close of his ministry, plainly and without figure. 
(See also John, chapters xiv, xv.) 

"Verses 21— 28. (Compare Mark viii, 31 — ix, 1; Luke ix, 22-2?.) 

(21) From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he 
must go nnto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief- priests 
and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. (22) Then Peter 
took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall 
not be unto thee. (23) But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, 
Satan: thou art an offense unto me: for thou savorest not the things that be of 
God, but those that be of men. (24) Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any 
man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. 
(25) For whosoever Avill save his life shall lose it: and Avhosoever will lose his life 
for my sake shall find it. (26) For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the 
whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his 
soul? (27) For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his 



CHRIST TELLS HIS DISCIPLES WHAT IS AWAITING HIM AND THEM. 



421 



angels ; and then lie shall reward every man according to his works. (28) Verily 
I say unto you, There he some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till 
they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom. 



Verse 21. From that time forth began Jesus. 
From this expression it appears that heretofore the 
Lord had not spoken so plainly of his death. Mark 
and Luke connect the prediction of his death imme- 
diately with the injunction of secrecy as to his being 
the Messiah. — How that he must. This significant 
must we find also in chap, xxvi, 54, and in Luke 
xxiv, 26. What happened to Jesus, happened ac- 
cording to the counsel of God as revealed in the 
Scriptures. Christ did not suffer or die because it 
was predicted of him, but it was predicted because 
his suffering and death were absolutely necessary for 
the salvation of mankind, according to God's right- 
eous and infallible counsel. " It is not at all a 
matter of contingency — a thing which might be 
avoided by some change in the course of events. It 
is needless to desire or hope for a different issue. 
This must be. Jesus speaks in a way thus determ- 
inate of his sufferings, as it were, to anticipate the 
objections which he knew were in the minds of his 
disciples, and to reconcile them to his sufferings as 
an inevitable necessity. He must suffer. The Word 
of God had declared it. The daily and yearly sacri- 
fices uttered the same language to the ear of faith. 
It was by the determinate counsel and foreknowl- 
edge of God that he was to suffer. Without this 
there is no possible salvation. There must be blood- 
shedding in order to remission — -death in order to 
deliverance from its power. His was not the death 
of a faithful witness, who might escape the doom of 
martyrdom by flight or by the mercy of his perse- 
cutors. He was the Lamb of God — a destined vic- 
tim bound to the horns of the altar. This sacrifice 
must be. The eternal love of God for fallen men 
had so determined it. It must be. All nature pro- 
claimed its necessity — this revolted earth through- 
out all its domain — the creation which till now had 
been groaning and travailing in pain— man, and the 
sphere of his habitation, accursed by reason of his 
sin. Who shall assume that curse, and remove it? 
It is thus alone that it can be removed. Causeless 
it did not come ; without sufficient cause it can not 
depart. Who shall take upon him that burden under 
which creation groans, and accumulate upon his own 
head that manifold weight of woe and sorrow? Who 
is able to bear it? Who is able to open the sealed 
book of promise, and scatter its precious contents 
over the wide earth, and make them good to men? 
Who but he, the Christ, the Son of the living God? 
He alone is worthy — he alone has the power. He 
must suffer and die, else all men must die for ever- 
more. Yet while Jesus speaks thus certainly of his 
sufferings, they are as a dark cloud projected from 
a field of light, which gives sure promise of clear 
shining after the rain. Without the cloud there can 



not be the bow. The revelation of judgment is, in 
his history, also the revelation of covenant mercy. 
He must be killed, but then he must also rise again— 
not overcome of death, but overcoming it. He goes 
to the grave, but it is to rob it of its prey; and thus, 
indeed, by his resurrection from the dead, to be re- 
vealed as the Son of God, with power — the Son of 
the living God, himself the center and source of all 
true and enduring life." (Wilson.) — And suffer 
many things of the elders and chief-priests and 
scribes. "He does not speak of the manner of his 
death, further than to intimate it was to be a violent 
one, and after great sufferings; but he brings promi- 
nently forward the persons who were to deal the 
blow. These were the elders, the chief- priests, and 
the scribes, the representatives and heads of the 
Jewish people. The elders were the rulers and 
magistrates of the Jewish commonwealth, in so far 
as the Romans had left to them any right of self- 
government. They had not indeed the power of life 
and death, and an appeal lay against their judg- 
ment to the authority of Cassar. But still they were 
judges in the first instance, and conducted the ordi- 
nary civil administration of the kingdom. These 
were to be against him, and agents in inflicting his 
sufferings. Then, secondly, the priests, who were the 
heads of the ecclesiastical government — men who 
stood as mediators between the people and God, who 
were daily in the Temple, through whom all accepta- 
ble sacrifice was presented, and who alone had ac- 
cess to the holy place and to the altar of incense, 
where prayer was always made, and where the light 
of the holy oil always burned — these were also to be 
against him. And, lastly, there were the scribes — 
men in whom was centered all the learning of the 
community; the expounders of the Scriptures, and 
the oracles of the people, to whom reference was 
made in all questions of difficulty, the occupiers of 
the seat of Moses. From these also he was to suffer 
many things. This must have been to the disciples 
a terrible announcement. They were, indeed, aware 
that these classes looked with a scowling eye on Je- 
sus, and present appearances indicated such an issue 
as he here points at. But they still clung to the be- 
lief that such a state of things was temporary. Being 
sure that he was the Christ, the Son of God, they 
felt confident that the time of his obscuration must 
be brief, that his glory would soon be revealed, and 
that, amid the hosannas and rejoicings of the whole 
nation, he would restore the kingdom to Israel. But 
if what Jesus now spoke was true, in what a position 
did its fulfillment place them! The events which 
he now foretells involved the hostility of the whole 
Jewish nation; for these parties — the elders, the 
priests, and the scribes — authoritatively spoke its 



422 



MATTHEW XVI, 21-28. 



mind. They, then, in cleaving to Jesus, must be- 
come aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and, 
as appeared, strangers also to the covenants of 
promise. The Jews, they knew, indeed, in entering 
upon such a conflict, must needs be ultimately the 
weaker party, and must insure their own rejection 
and destruction; for was not Jesus the Son of God? 
To raise an arm against him, therefore, was to in- 
sure its being paralyzed. But, then, was not Jesus 
the Messiah, the deliverer of that very people, the 
hope of Israel, and their Savior in time of trouble ? 
How could both of these things be true ? How could 
Jesus at once destroy and save them ? It was a dif- 
ficulty too great for them. Not till long afterward 
were they able to understand the profounder mean- 
ing of these Scripture predictions and promises, and 
to lay hold on the truth that the real seed of Abra- 
ham were the children of faith. But meanwhile all 
was dark and perplexing, contrary to all the fond 
thoughts and hopes which had possessed their minds. 
The trial was, for the moment, too severe for them. 
They staggered under the burden which Jesus im- 
posed. There was truly need, at this moment, for 
all the faith they had in him as the Son of God. To 
trust in a suffering Savior, it was necessary for them 
to know him in his glory as the Christ." (Wilson.) 
" Let us try," says Stier, " to conceive, as well as 
we can, of the different effects which the Master's 
words must have produced on the several apostles, 
according to the personal peculiarities of each — on 
the still, contemplative John and Nathanael, the de- 
sponding Thomas, giving vent to his feelings in the 
melancholy exclamation, 'Such an end he must, 
then, after all, come to!' completely forgetting, for 
the moment, the preceding words as to the Church; 
the cunning listening of Judas Iscariot. Then the 
ingenuous question of Andrew or Philip: 'What 
can he mean by what he says? We do not under- 
stand what he means.' None expresses at once his 
inmost thoughts. Peter alone is rash enough, with- 
out further consideration, to give utterance to his 
feelings." 

Verse 22. Then Peter. " He had witnessed a 
good confession; he now proves himself to be a pre- 
sumptuous intermeddler. Once he walked boldly 
on the sea; the next moment he sank in slavish ter- 
ror. Once he was ready to die for his Master; on 
the same evening, like a coward, he denied all 
knowledge of him. These alternations of character 
were as sudden as they were striking. He presents 
to us on the same day, and almost in the same mo- 
ment, characteristics extremely the opposite of each 
other. It was the same man acting throughout, and 
yet not the same. It was not the same nature act- 
ing in different circumstances, but a different nature 
acting in the same circumstances. He triumphed 
and was defeated in the same hour — braved danger, 
and was overborne by it — rose now to the hight of 
divine knowledge, and now again sunk into the 
depths of presumptuous ignorance. Now he was 



the humble suppliant, and again immediately he 
became the proud dictator. There was doubtless a 
disharmony in this nature of his. In him we do 
not see a man merely acting under the influence of 
different emotions or passions, but a man in whom 
there was a warfare between the flesh and the spirit, 
who in himself, as Simon, was the most impulsive 
and inconstant of men — as Peter, the unshrinking, 
self-sacrificing apostle of the truth. It is a thing 
worthy of remark in his history, that a new privi- 
lege always exposes him to a new fall ; on ascend- 
ing one step he is hurled back always to a greater 
depth than that out of which he had issued. 
Throughout his history as a disciple we can trace 
this remarkable development. On the Sea of Gal- 
ilee he manifested this alternation of strength and 
weakness. On the present occasion, again, he has 
made a prodigious step in advance, and received 
the blessing of the Lord, and has had a distin- 
guished place assigned him in the very foundation 
of the Christian Church; but no sooner is he so 
elevated than at once he is precipitated, and from 
being a living stone in the sacred building, be- 
comes a stone of stumbling and rock of offense. 
Again, on a future occasion, he sat at the sup- 
per table, and his affections and reverence were 
so enkindled that he was ready to die a martyr's 
death; but on the same night he proved himself a 
cowardly apostate." (Wilson.) — Took him. The 
Greek word means to take a person by the hand, to 
draw him aside. " He withdraws him for the pur- 
pose of private and confidential intercourse. He 
will not utter what he has to say in the presence of 
the rest — as if they were worthy to take part in the 
remonstrance and reproof which is on his lips. Has 
he not been peculiarly honored? Has he not been 
set in a place of greater trust and responsibility than 
they? Is he not entitled, then, to confidences in 
which they have no right to share ? — to speak to Je- 
sus in a way in which no other is entitled to address 
him, and to receive from him communications as to 
his real purpose, which it would be a kind of sacri- 
lege to impart to others ? Therefore, he takes Jesus 
aside, and whispers in his ear this presumptuous re- ' 
proof." (Wilson.) — -And began to rebuke him. 
The word began is not found in Codex B. Alford 
omits it, and reads: "And says, rebuking him." — 
Be it far from thee — literally, Propitious to thee, 
to which phrase God is supplied as subject. Others 
translate: "Be thou propitious to thee;" that is, 
spare thyself. "After all, then, it is not without 
some reason that Romanists claim this man as the 
founder and patron of their Church; but then that 
Church takes its form and character, not from Peter 
the confessor and apostle, but from old Simon, again 
reasserting his dominion, and yielding to the dictates 
of Satan. In the spirit and manner of this rebuke 
of Simon, we have the germ of Popery — the root 
out of which' that vast system has developed itself. 
1. The assumption of the Pope, as if he alone had 



CHRIST TELLS HIS DISCIPLES WHAT IS AWAITING HIM AND THEM. 



423 



the ear of the Lord, and was entitled to announce 
his will. He, like Simon, takes the Lord aside, as it 
were, for secret conference, and as if he alone had 
the privilege of access to him, and to proclaim, with 
a voice of divine authority, what he will have men 
to do. The assumption of this lordly authority over 
men does not, indeed, crown his ambition, but is 
merely the outflowing of that greater presumption 
in virtue of which he claims to be the master of 
Christ himself. 2. Like Simon, he also virtually 
says, Spare thyself. Christianity shall be a religion 
of worldly influence and authority — of pomp and 
grandeur — of self-indulgence and pride — a religion 
which shall gratify human ambition, and set its foot 
on the necks of kings. His language always is, 
Spare thyself; spare nothing but thyself; let every 
thing be subservient to thy ease, and self-indulgence, 
and grandeur. Here, on the one side, then, in the 
language of Simon, we have Popery; on the other 
side, in the language of Jesus, we have Christianity; 
for the relations between the true religion and the 
world are unalterable. Simon says, Spare thyself; 
Jesus says, I go to suffer and die. To follow Si- 
mon's advice is to leave the world unsaved. 3. Like 
Simon, the Pope assumes the attitude and language 
of a director, and not of a disciple. It is not his to 
hear submissively what the Lord says, but to dictate 
to the Lord what he ought to do — not to learn what 
his will and purpose are, but to decree what they 
must be. Popery has been well and truly called the 
religion of human nature acting under satanic in- 
fluence. We see in the example of Simon that it is 
really so. Its condemnation has been long ago pro- 
nounced in the ever-emphatic words : ' Get thee be- 
hind me, Satan !' " (Wilson.) 

Verse 23. But he turned and said tjnto Peter. 
Mark says : " He turned about, and looked on his 
disciples, and rebuked Peter, saying." The Lord's 
words are personally addressed to Peter; but they 
are also intended for the other disciples, because 
there was in all of them something of the same 
mind that had found utterance in the words of 
Peter. — Get thee behind me, Satan. The word 
Satan is used here in the general sense of tempter. 
Just as Peter, in the moment of his confession, had 
become an organ of the eternal rock, Christ, so he 
represented in this moment of rash presumption, 
unconsciously, Satan. He repeated the voice of 
temptation which had addressed the Lord in the wil- 
derness. It was, in fact, a severe temptation for 
Jesus, this word of the beloved Peter; for our Lord, 
as man, feels most keenly whatever has reference to 
the necessity of his suffering, and the possibility of 
escape from it. This cross, this drinking the cup 
of wrath, was his sorest temptation — far more 
searching and painful than his temptation in the 
wilderness, as we may see from comparing his act- 
ing in the garden and in the wilderness respectively. 
This baptism was what straitened him, what he 
looked forward to with awe and trembling. Yet it 



was what he had set himself to endure, what was to 
constitute the foundation of the redemption of the 
world. But his spotless spirit rejected at once with 
horror any proposition that involved a violation of 
God's holy will. Stier, referring the words ' get thee 
behind me, Satan' to Satan himself hiding behind 
what was carnal in Peter, says : '.' This accounts for 
the severity of the rebuke, such as the Lord made 
use of on no other occasion against any of his dis- 
ciples. Hence his quick perception and rejection of 
Satan's cunning attempt to shake his purpose ! But 
scarcely has he uttered this severe rebuke in the first 
sentence, when he comes back in the second to the 
person of Peter, and adds in tenderness and love, 
1 Thou knowest not, Peter, that and how Satan has 
spoken through thee to me. Thou thinkest and 
speakest exactly as men do.' May we learn front 
this how little men understand in their carnal minds 
God's plan of redemption, how dangerous an enemy 
to the Father's and Son's holy love the carnal mind 
is! This temptation of the Lord by Peter is expe- 
rienced by his followers in a thousand ways. Our 
best friends become our most dangerous enemies 
when their counsel is carnal. In such cases we 
must faithfully copy our glorious Master and use the 
weapons which he gives us in verses 24 and 25." 

Verses 24, 25. What the Lord says here he had 
already declared to his disciples, when he sent them 
out on their first mission. (See the notes on ch. x, 
38, 39.) The repetition of the solemn declaration 
here has an important and direct bearing upon what 
precedes. According to Mark, (viii, 34,) the Lord 
called unto him the people .with his disciples also, 
and Luke (ix, 23) says likewise: "And he said to 
them all." "Jesus had been speaking of his own 
sufferings and death, greatly to the surprise and dis- 
pleasure of his disciples, for in this case, as in other 
instances, Peter is to be regarded as the mouthpiece 
and representative of them all. Not that all of 
them, indeed, would have expressed their objection 
precisely in the same way as he, but all of them en- 
tertained radically the same feeling regarding the 
incongruity of suffering and death with the glory 
and dignity of Christ the Son of the living God. 
They anticipated for him, and that in a visible and 
temporal sense, the fulfillment of the Baptist's pre- 
diction — ' He must increase.' With such concep- 
tions of the earthly history of the Messiah, there 
were necessarily associated, though perhaps not dis- 
tinctly acknowledged even to themselves, certain ex- 
pectations as to their own destiny. For they were 
peculiarly his followers; they had cast in their lot 
with him, and must have anticipated for themselves 
some share in that advancement which they expected 
for him. When, therefore, they revolted at the idea 
of his sufferings and death, there might have been 
lying at the root of the affectionate interest they felt 
and expressed for his welfare, some grain of selfish 
ambition. To contemplate for him such misery and 
degradation, was to cast the shadow of it over their 



424 



MATTHEW XVI, 21-28. 



own life also. Let us, in thus judging them, not 
forget that the same feeling of self-regard is com- 
mingled with all the exercises of mere human affec- 
tion. However tender and true love may be, the 
interest it feels in its object is never altogether sepa- 
rated from an undercurrent of self-regard. Jesus 
enters into and exposes this feeling of theirs. After 
the severe reproof he has uttered, he at once pro- 
ceeds on the assumption that his lot and theirs were 
to be, to some extent, identical. He speaks to that 
state of feeling into which they had passed. They, 
in looking forward to his rejection and death, have 
been contemplating also their own. He tells them 
that they are not deceived ; that what awaited him 
awaited them also. If, therefore, they protested 
against his sufferings, even while their own were un- 
acknowledged and unseen, he tells them plainly that 
his history and theirs were really so far identical ; 
that if they shrank from the fact of his death and 
ignominy, it was right they should see it in all its 
grave consequences to themselves. He puts to them 
now the alternative of following or of rejecting him. 
He will not hide from them what is to happen. He 
does not seek self-deceived followers — to make men 
his dupes — -and therefore he indicates that if they 
are to come after him, it must be as sufferers after a 
suffering Savior. His cross and theirs are, in one 
view, contrasted ; for his cross is their salvation. 
He is a vicarious sufferer for them, one assuming 
their burden and delivering them. His death is their 
life. In his exhausting the penalty of the law, and 
yet righteously fulfilling it, lie their eternal peace 
and safety. And yet for them there was a cross 
also. The saving of them not only implied his 
death, but theirs also. They, too, must be crucified. 
Their old man must suffer death. In order truly to 
live they must be created anew. To cling, as they 
had been doing, to the earth and its honors and en- 
joyments — to save, to preserve the life they now 
had, to make it more honorable, lovable, and glori- 
ous, was to lose all, to lose the true life. To give 
up all this, to lose their present and past life, was 
really to save it. In their discipleship and following 
after Christ, it was needful that they should surren- 
der far more than they had yet done, not merely 
that they should part with their goods and posses- 
sions, but also with themselves. Their life must be 
the reflection of Christ's life. To go after him they 
must go to death. Therefore he announces this as 
the universal law of the Christian life. ' If any man 
will come after me, let him deny himself and take 
up his cross and follow me.' To this law there is 
no exception. He that is truly a Christian has de- 
nied himself, and is crucified. In all this Christ has 
gone before us, and all this is essential to the Chris- 
tian life. Christ's personal sacrifice is denuded of 
its profound meaning unless it be so. There was no 
need for it, if we can carry what we have and are 
into the heavenly kingdom. These sufferings and 
death of Christ always proclaim that it is not so; 



that to be as we are is to be outcast and condemned; 
that we must be born again in order to see the king- 
dom of God; that we must die in order to live; that 
we must part with every thing in order to gain the 
pearl of great price." (Condensed from Wilson.) 

Verse 26. "This is a question not of vain curi- 
osity, with the solution of which we may engage a 
leisure hour, or which we may leave altogether un- 
solved. It is not a question of mere speculation, 
but the most practical of all questions. It is a kind 
of bargain-making from which we can not turn 
aside. It is an exchange which, in point of fact, 
every man makes. This is its grand peculiarity. 
The merchant makes what bargains he chooses. If 
the exchange does not seem to him advantageous, 
he simply declines to make it. It is not absolutely 
necessary that he should trade in any commodity 
which he does not like to have. But this exchange 
can not be let alone. The question of the text 
demands and practically receives its solution from 
every man. You can not be without both the world 
and the soul. This is evident enough. But then 
the matter does not present itself to men in the 
light in which the text reveals it. It is only in the 
Bible that you find these two quantities put on altern- 
ative sides. God assures you that you can not have 
them both; that you must make your choice between 
the one and the other. It is here always that the 
mind and wisdom of God are in conflict with those 
of men. They will not believe that these things are in 
opposite scales — they believe that they can have both 
the world and the soul, and that it belongs to them 
to make the best of them both. The soul they have 
already, and do not mean to part with it. They 
must have it, at least, in order to the real possession 
of any thing else. To lose the soul, evidently would 
be to lose every thing. But then this is what pecul- 
iarly and inherently belongs to every man, and 
therefore it can not well be lost. Without it, indeed, 
the world, the wide universe, could be to them noth- 
ing. In the soul lies the essence of all enjoyment. 
It looks out through the eyes, and it drinks in pleas- 
ant sounds, and is the seat of all sensation. It 
imagines, and loves, and thinks. Without the soul 
nothing can have any worth. But then, while all 
this is evidently true, there is at the same time the 
persuasion that such an alternative as that of the 
text is not really presented to them. They will have 
both the soul and the world. They will, in fact, 
employ the soul in earning the world, and will make 
sure, in this way, of the best possible bargain. The 
real difficulty, then, of the question propounded in 
the text lies here: Must I ptd the soul and the 
world in opposite scales ? Is this exchange to me a 
matter of absolute necessity? That question being 
conclusively settled, all the rest becomes quite easy; 
for no man, deliberately and of set purpose, would 
give his soul for the world, knowing and believing 
that the acquisition of the world involved the loss of 
his soul. Such folly would imply that the soul had 



CHRIST TELLS HIS DISCIPLES WHAT IS AWAITING HIM AND THEM. 



425 



been already lost ; that the light of reason had been 
altogether darkened, and the mind denuded of its 
distinguishing properties. Yet if the Bible be true, 
there must be some important sense in which it is a 
fact that the gain of tbe world involves the loss of 
the soul. The text asserts this in language the most 
unmistakable. Let us endeavor to ascertain what it 
means in making this assertion, and in order to this, 
1. Let us bear in mind that the soul is not self- 
sufficient; that it must go out of itself, and must 
rest in something, or exercise itself on something 
external to itself. What would the soul be by itself, 
exercised only upon itself, destitute of all means of 
communication with that which is without and be- 
yond itself? Reason, imagination, affection, hope, 
benevolence, veneration, conscience, even the action 
of the will itself, all presuppose and imply a some- 
thing beyond the soul, on which it is to fasten itself, 
and by feeding on that, to be nursed to maturity, 
and to have its sphere both of action and enjoy- 
ment. This is the condition of all intelligent crea- 
ture existence, and still more emphatically if that 
creature have a moral sense and responsibilities, as 
man has. It belongs to God only to be self-sufficient 
and independent. 2. This, then, being the case, 
what is the relation established between the soul and 
the things on which it feeds ? If they are perisha- 
ble, what becomes of it? It does not indeed die 
with them, for its existence is independent of and 
apart from theirs. Nay, the fact that it feeds upon 
and uses them is a proof of its superiority. The 
soul, then, does not die, though the fashion of these 
perish. And will it not, when they are gone, only be 
alive to misery? Nothing is more certain than that 
such a separation must come between the soul and the 
world. The bond which connects us with this world 
must sooner or later be severed. We pass onward 
to the gates of death and disappear, or those who 
are around us and dearest to us die, and the fashion 
of the world passeth away, and the time is hastening 
on when the elements shall melt with fervent heat, 
and the present order of things shall be dissolved. 
In some form or other, the connection we have had 
with the world shall be broken, and then, if the soul 
has been resting only on it, expatiating with its far- 
reaching power of hope and affection only in it, 
what remains? Disappointments, ungratified long- 
ings, blighted affections, thwarted ambition, a mind 
quickened to action by the world and the things it 
contains, and sustained by these, and left at last 
stranded on the eternal shore, without an object to 
love, without a hope to lighten the darkness of de- 
spair. Is not such a soul, in the truest and most 
profound sense, a lost one, unable now to retreat 
into stupid dormancy, and yet drifted from all its 
anchorage of desire and emancipation — a wreck 
upon a shoreless sea — the old passions of covetous- 
ness, and lust, and envy, and pride, and love of 
glory, wasting their energies on the soul itself, and 
drowning the clearness and pride of reason in fath- 



omless despair? Then at last, if not before, it will 
be seen that this is the alternative — the world or the 
soul; that to have both is impossible; that to gain the 
one is to lose the other. But if now, foreseeing this, 
I make up my mind to choose, if this bargain be- 
comes to me a necessity, and if, as every thing in 
my soul dictates, I choose the loss of the world and 
the gain of the soul, what then ? What of the 
world ? What is my relation to it? Must I fling it 
utterly away, or go out of it? Must I cut asunder 
all those bonds which unite me to it, and hasten to 
some ethereal region where I shall find new objects 
on which to put forth my energies, and on which my 
soul may feed and grow? These are questions which 
press themselves upon the consideration of every 
man who seriously and fairly considers what is in- 
volved in the exchange between the world and the 
soul. In ordinary bargain-making I can not have 
both the thing purchased and the price paid for it; 
and from the statement of the text it would appear 
that in this bargain I can not do so. If, on the one 
hand, I am to gain the world, I must lose my soul. 
If, on the other hand, I gain my soul, what is the 
real relation in which I stand to the world? It is 
not necessary to go out of the world, or to quit its 
business and duties ; it may not be even necessary 
to change our external position at all. But it is, 
while in this world, to live by the powers of the world 
to come — to cease to make this our home — the rest- 
ing-place and object of our highest affections. It is 
to have eternity nearer the heart than the world — by 
faith to enter within the region of the invisible — and 
to cleave with the whole heart to that which is there 
revealed. It is to be lifted out of the miry clay, and 
to lay hold on that all-powerful arm stretched forth 
to deliver us — to enter into new and holy fellowships 
with that home and rest which is prepared for the 
people of God — to have our hope entering into that 
which is within the vail, and thus becoming an an- 
chor to the soul, to have our home and rest in the 
bosom of the Father. This is to save the soul ; for 
to fasten and feed on these objects can never end in 
desolation and misery. For these are amaranthine 
flowers that strew the eternal pathway, and its trees 
never fade, and its river of life is never dry, and its 
immortal inhabitants know no parting tears, and 
there is no curse there, and no night, and no tem- 
ple, and the Lord God giveth them light, and they 
reign forever and ever. Thither Christ has gone, 
and thither, by the cross and self-denial, he invites 
us to follow him. He himself is the way, the truth, 
and the life. He hath come down hither and made 
himself a brother to us, to lead us out of our mis- 
ery — to break that hard and foolish bargain which 
we had made with the world, and to lead us forth 
into light and liberty." (Condensed from Wilson.) 
Verse 27. On the connection of these words 
with what precedes, and on their meaning, we can 
not present the reader with any thing so good as 
Mr. Wilson's exposition. " In immediate connection 



426 



MATTHEW XVI, 21-28. 



with the statement regarding this most important 
and vital of all transactions — namely, the giving up 
of the world for the safety of the soul — Jesus, ac- 
cording to Mark and Luke, introduces another idea 
which unfolds to us more clearly the hostile relation 
in which the world and the soul stand to each other; 
namely, 'Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of 
me and of my words,' etc. On an attentive com- 
parison we shall find that Mark and Luke have 
omitted what Matthew has recorded, and, on the 
other hand, that Matthew has omitted what they have 
recorded. To understand what Jesus spoke on this 
occasion it is necessary to read verse 38 of Mark 
and verse 2*7 of Matthew, as a continuous narrative, 
thus: 'Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me 
and of my words in this adulterous and sinful gener- 
ation, of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed 
when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the 
holy angels. For the Son of man shall come in the 
glory of his Father with his angels, and then he 
shall reward every man according to his works,' In 
the text thus read, then, we have a twofold state- 
ment brought before us: 1. An argument grounded 
on the fact that to cleave to the world is to be 
ashamed of Christ; and, 2. The just retribution of 
such sin and folly. Let us attend to these two 
things in their order. 1. To keep the world, or to 
gain it, is to be ashamed of Christ. Here Jesus 
translates the question he had put from its abstract 
form into a shape more likely to tell directly and 
forcibly upon the hearts of his disciples. But little 
is practically gained by teaching a man that the in- 
terests of the soul are unspeakably higher than those 
of the world. In spite of this knowledge, and while 
admitting it to its fullest extent, the world is still 
loved, and so the soul is lost. It is not easy always to 
say what is best for the soul. Jesus therefore puts the 
ease differently: You have owned, and truly owned, 
me to be the Christ, the Son of the living God. Under 
the vail of my lowly humanity you have read this glo- 
rious truth. My Father has taught it to you, and 
you have believed and confessed it. You are disap- 
pointed when I tell you what awaits me. Will you 
shrink from my side in shame when the whole world 
disowns, abjures, and casts me out as evil? At that 
crisis, even as now, the alternative must be the world 
or me. Ashamed of me, you gain the world in- 
deed, but then you lose the soul. When you shall 
behold me betrayed, spit upon, dealt with as the off- 
scouring of all things — tried, sentenced, dragged to 
death — then will you not be ashamed, and hide your 
faces from me? Will you remember that I am the 
Christ, the Son of the living God? If you can go 
with me to that cross, and own me there in the full 
assembly of the seorners, then indeed you have 
given up the world and saved your soul. But if 
not, what then? If you falter, if you deny me, what 
is this but to cleave to the world, and to destroy 
your soul? Thus Jesus presents to them, by antici- 
pation, this great truth. He ripens their minds to 



embrace it, and prepares them for making, deliber- 
ately and decidedly, the choice between the soul and 
the world. They might not be able to see, in the 
very nature of things, that this choice must be made. 
But in his life and death lay the demonstration of 
the fact. It was not an abstract doctrine of philos- 
ophy, but must be to them a real historical fact, 
brought out in their choice or rejection of him. 
If the world was not lost to them, they must be 
ashamed of Christ and his words. It was impossi- 
ble for them, at the same time, to love the world 
and to cleave to Christ. He was already of the low- 
est of the people, and was to descend yet lower, even 
to a criminal's doom. To espouse his cause, to be 
on his side, was to espouse the cause of a con- 
demned malefactor — to be against all the fashion, 
opinion, power, law, and religion of the age, and to 
stand forth enduring the frown of all these, and to 
expose themselves to his very doom. To them there 
was but this one alternative, to be ashamed of Christ 
or to renounce the world. But is it so now? Is this 
the alternative for believers still? Must we also 
make this momentous choice ? Were these words 
of Jesus of mere temporary significance, and thus 
unlike all the other words which he uttered? Is 
there no shame in the Cross now? Has Christ be- 
come a prince of this world, so that when I am on 
his side I am with the world? The tests, indeed, are 
not now quite the same in their outward form as in 
those days. But it is still true that the world and 
Jesus are on opposite sides, and that the friendship 
of the world is enmity with God. Christ is not now, 
as in the Jewish and Roman community, regarded 
in the light of a condemned criminal. The Cross 
has had its outward as well as its internal triumphs. 
It is no longer the signal of disgrace and the warrant 
for cruel persecution. Christ has been recognized 
as a conqueror — not merely as killed, but as risen 
again, and the Cross has been invested with a glory 
before which even worldly men consent to do rever- 
ence. It is more a matter of shame among us to be 
an atheist than to be a Christian. No one is now 
ashamed to be known as a member of the Christian 
family, and as sitting at the table of the Lord. The 
shame lies all on the other side. It is rather scan- 
dalous than otherwise not to be all this. Christ, 
therefore, would appear so far to have overcome the 
world as to have entirely changed his position in .it. 
The glory is now his, and shame is the portion of the 
world. Thus, indeed, the case stands outwardly, and 
when we look at the Christian profession in its mere 
worldly aspects. But let us look a little deeper. It 
is indeed a compliment to Christian truth that the 
world affects to believe it, and assumes the religion 
of Jesus somewhat as the Crusaders did of old. 
They have marked with his cross their banners and 
their garments. But to assume these outward 
badges is not to espouse Christ's cause, nor to give 
up the world. This is rather to betray than to pro- 
mote his cause — to worship the world under the 



CHRIST TELLS HIS DISCIPLES WHAT IS AWAITING HIM AND THEM. 



427 



pretext of serving Christ. Is it not demonstrated in 
the whole life of such Christians that the world and 
Christ are still upon opposite sides ? You have not 
harmonized them by professing to serve them both. 
The Christian camp is to you the seat of a hostile 
army, and you move about in it as a spy and a 
traitor. You hide yourself from the Captain of the 
Lord's host, and have no cordial fellowship with the 
soldiers of the Cross. That cross, indeed, has been 
blazoned on your outer garment, but you have not 
taken it up as yours. The world is still your motive 
and aim, the seat of your hope and affections, the 
stay and confidence of your soul. It is the world 
that is ever uppermost in your family, in the market, 
in all your intercourse with men. Christ is buried 
out of sight as if you had no concern with him." 
(Condensed from Wilson.) — For the Son of man 

SHALL COME IN THE GLORY OF HIS FATHER, WITH HIS 

angels. True faith, in its conflict with the world, is 
able to overleap all time preceding the end, to soar 
upward, and to live in that future glory, in that 
blessed region of light and love — afar off to behold 
Christ as seated on his throne, and to say, God for- 
bid that I should glory save in the Cross of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, whereby the world is crucified unto me 
and I unto the world. — According to his works — 
literally, according to his working; that is, his whole 
conduct, including both his faith and its fruits, one 
of which is the confession of his name. 

Verse 28. The transition of our Lord's announce- 
ment of his second visible coming to judge the world 
to another coming of his which should take place 
during the lifetime of some of his hearers, has un- 
necessarily perplexed some interpreters. To say 
nothing of the fact that the intermediate links of 
our Lord's discourses are sometimes omitted by the 
Evangelists, and that the Oriental mode of speaking 
has not so many intermediate links as our modern ad- 
dresses — the transition, without supplying any thing, 
is very natural. The final judgment was in the far- 
distant future, and to cheer his disciples, who were 
cast down by the prediction of his suffering and 
death, and of their own trials and privations, he sol- 
emnly assures them that during their lifetime they 
should see him establish his kingdom. This should 
be to them the pledge and assurance of his future 
coming in glory. They should not only await in 
hope a distant future triumph, but enjoy a present 
one. — There be [correctly translated, there are] 
some standing here. By "some" our Lord most 
probably understood all his disciples, except Judas 
Iscariot, in contradistinction to the crowd referred to 
in Mark viii, 34. — Which shall not taste of 
death. This is an Oriental mode of expression, 
representing death by the figure of a bitter, poisoned 
cup. — Till they see the Son of man coming in 
his kingdom. Mark says, "Until they have seen the 
kingdom of God come with power." Luke, "Until 
they see the kingdom of God." Our Lord may have 
used the words reported by Mark and Luke, in addi- 



tion to those of Matthew; both expressions, however, 
as well as what he had said in chapter x, 23, have 
the same meaning. Some of the older commenta- 
tors understood by the Son of man's coming in his 
kingdom the transfiguration, on the ground of 2 Peter 
i, 16-18; but this view is refuted both by the parallel 
passages, and by the words, there be some standing 
here, an expression which our Lord would not have 
used in speaking of an occurrence so near at hand. 
Some understand by it Christ's resurrection from the 
dead and the establishment of his Church by the 
outpouring of the Holy Ghost; but against this view 
it may be objected, that the establishment of the 
Church by the resurrection and the subsequent Pen- 
tecost, was an event which not only a few of those 
standing by witnessed, and that from the expression, 
they shall not taste of death, a more distant event 
is to be inferred. It is, therefore, better to apply the 
passage to Christ's providential coming to overturn 
the whole Jewish policy in the destruction of Jerusa- 
lem, by which catastrophe the Christian Church was 
finally and fully separated from Judaism. On the 
whole, Dr. Alexander's view is the most correct. He 
says: "The solutions of this question which have 
been proposed are objectionable, chiefly because too 
exclusive and restrictive of the promise to a single 
point of time, whereas it really has reference to a 
gradual or progressive change, the institution of 
Christ's kingdom in the hearts of men and in society 
at large, of which protracted process the two salient 
points are the effusion of the Spirit on the day of 
Pentecost, and the destruction of Jerusalem more 
than a quarter of a century later, between which 
points, as those of its inception and its consumma- 
tion, lies the lingering death of the Mosaic dispensa- 
tion and the gradual erection of Messiah's kingdom." 
We close this section with the following appropriate 
reflections of Mr. Wilson : " The Church has always 
a present evidence of the ultimate triumph of her 
Lord. The Church survives all the storms of time, 
all the opposition of the world. The power which is 
in it triumphs over all. The existence of the Church 
is the one enduring fact in the history of the earth's 
empires and manifold revolutions. The world assails 
it in vain, for it is built on the Rock of Ages. Even 
the martyr's death only verifies and assures his con- 
quest, and his blood becomes the seed of the Church. 
Christ reigns in it, and not man's feebleness. He 
came, and is still here in his power, visibly in the 
midst of his people, covering them with his over- 
shadowing wings, bearing them up in the tempest, 
or walking with them in the furnace of fire. Still, 
as of old, the world and Christ are brought into 
deadly conflict — the world-power, apparently mighty, 
as when it was impersonated in the ancient strength 
of Babylon — the Church, apparently feeble, as the 
three children who were cast into the furnace; but 
they are inconsumable, for the Son of man is with 
them there. The history of that moment included 
and manifested the history of ages. The Son of man 



428 



MATTHEW XVII, 1-13. 



comes in his kingdom, and so the gates of hell do 
not prevail against it. Thus it was in that genera- 
tion, to whom it was given to see the majestic power 
of the risen Savior, to feel his presence pervading 
their cowardly and selfish natures, and making them 
victorious in life and death. Thus it was on that 
pentecostal day, when, being baptized with fire, they 
recognized the fulfillment of Christ's promise, and 
knew his present exaltation as the head over all 
things, and the dispenser of all gracious gifts. Thus 
it was, when the word went forth from them in the 
power and grace of the Holy Spirit, and when the 
hearts of thousands bowed to the yoke of the Savior, 
and when the utterance of his name dispelled dis- 



ease, and they felt that there was with them that 
Son of the living God by whose mighty works they 
had formerly recognized his Messiahship. Thus 
it was, above all, when, to the few survivors, his arm 
of vengeful power was revealed, and the reversal of 
the world's false judgments began — when the wicked 
city whose people had slain him was converted into 
heaps of rubbish, and its surviving inhabitants made 
a hissing and reproach among the nations — when 
the worship of the Temple had ceased forever, and 
there was no Church of the living God but the Chris- 
tian. Then, both in the terrors and the deliverances 
of that fearful time, did they see the Son of man 
coming in his kingdom." 



CHAPTEE XTII 



§88. THE TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS. 

After the remarkable conversation between Jesus and the disciples at Cesarea 
Philippi, an interval of six days occurs before we find any further notice of them. These 
days were, in all probability, clays of gloom and dejection. They began to realize that a 
sore trial was awaiting their Master and themselves. For the first time they had come 
within sight of the cross and were shocked by it. At first it proved to them, as it did 
to the nation at large, a stumbling-block. Yet they cleave to Jesus. Their spirit was 
willing, but the flesh was weak. "Leaving the populous places about Cesarea Philipj3i, 
Jesus probably took them into the mountain solitudes, and during a period of six days 
was imparting to them further instructions, of which no record has come down to us. 
Then, as a teacher sometimes does with the most advanced of his class, he chose out of 
his disciples three, to impress on them a lesson which they alone were at all prepared to 
receive. He leads them up into a high mountain, and while he is praying his counte- 
nance glows with a celestial radiance; spirits of just men made perfect stand by him, and 
a voice is heard speaking to them from heaven. They did not fully understand it then, 
but after his death and resurrection from the dead had laid open to them its meaning, 
they publish their account of it to enrich forever the minds of Christian believers." 
(John H. Morison's Notes on Matthew.) 

Before we examine the importance and the object of this great event for Jesus himself 
and his disciples, it is proper to make a few preliminary remarks on the historical char- 
acter and objective reality of the event itself. This, it is true, is in general sufficiently 
guaranteed, against all attacks, bj^ the historic credibility of the Evangelists. (See Gen- 
eral Introduction.) It is also most solemnly confirmed by what one of the eye-witnesses 
says concerning it, (2 Pet. i, 16-18:) "For Ave have not followed cunningly-devised 
fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
but were eye-witnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honor and 
glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved 
Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, 
when we were with him in the holy mount." John also, another eye-witness, although 
he does not narrate the event, refers evidently to it, when he says, " We beheld his glory, 
the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." The particulars 
of the transaction are recorded by three Evangelists, without any thing to indicate that 
it is not a narrative of real events, and with such minuteness and precision that, if the 



THE TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS. 429 

writers were honest, it is impossible to doubt the objective reality of what they relate. 
Nevertheless, it has been argued, "that the occurrence was not a real one at all, but a 
vision presented to the minds of the three disciples during their sleep — that they only 
dreamed they were with Jesus on a high mountain, and saw him in radiant glory in 
converse with Moses and Blias — and that they only thus heard the words which were 
spoken." In support of this view it is said, that the Lord himself (v. 9) called the event 
a vision, and that Luke says, the three disciples were heavy with sleep. But the two argu- 
ments are of no weight whatever. What is termed " the vision " in Matthew, is defined 
by Mark and Luke as u the things which they had seen." ISTor does Luke say that they 
were heavy with sleep, while they saw his glory; but when they were awake, after they had 
been heavy with sleep, they saw his glory. (Luke ix, 32.) Moreover, if it was only a 
dream, how have we to account for it, on natural principles, that the three disciples should 
have the same dream? And why should a mere dream occupy the conspicuous and sig- 
nificant place it does in three of the Gospels, and how was it possible that Jesus himself 
could attach so much importance to it, as he did in charging the disciples to tell no one 
of it till after he had risen from the dead? — -That the seeing of the celestial scene was 
not an ordinary seeing with the eyes of the body, but a perceiving with a higher sense 
of the inner man, which is closed for ordinary purposes, (Num. xxiv, 3, 4,) we may 
readily admit. In order to see the supernatural with their natural eyes, the disciples 
themselves had to be raised into a higher, heavenly sphere. (Compare the notes on 
Matthew iii, 16, 17.) 

As to the significance of the event, let us first consider it with reference to our Lord 
himself. "At this as at other eventful periods of the earthly life and ministry of Jesus," 
says Mr. Wilson, "we find him engaged in prayer. At this time we know that he had 
much trouble to bring and to unfold before his gracious and ever-loving Father. The 
prospect of his sufferings was pressing upon his spirit — sufferings the awful extent and 
severity of which he alone knew, and already it had become apparent that he must bear 
them alone, without any human sympathy. For his spirit had been vexed with the pre- 
sumptuous ignorance and shrinking horror of these his chosen disciples. These spiritual 
evils in them were ever a sore grief to him — their unapprehensiveness, their unbelief, 
their self-righteousness, their inconstancy, their cowardice, their selfishness, were ever 
hindering the outflowing of his love, and rendering him more deeply a sufferer. At this 
time he had a cause to bring before his Father. He needs refreshment and strength, and 
goes apart to a mountain with the chosen three to seek them. To him it is a very sacred 
season. Out of the depths he cries to Him from whom, to the distressed, all help and 
light come. His human soul needs this stay of prayer. Tossed as it is by fast-coming 
woe, and by the contradiction of sinners against himself — and these sinners, too, his own 
disciples, his closest earthly friends — he enters into that undisturbed calm and haven of 
rest which he finds beside the throne of Grod. And even while he prays he is lifted up — 
he enters into the radiant glory which faith contemplates, and anticipates heaven upon 
earth — and the fashion of his countenance is changed — the vesture of his humility is 
transformed into one of glory — and he is exhibited as the only begotten of the Father, 
full of grace and truth. The joy is not only set before him, but for a brief time it is 
realized, and the cross becomes therefore endurable. He not only predicts the advent of 
his kingdom, but is invested with its royal insignia, and already he appears in his own 
glory and in his Father's. He is proclaimed king, and obedience is claimed for him as 
one who has been already enthroned." During his whole earthly career the Savior 
appears in a twofold relation; namely, as redeeming mankind, and as perfecting himself. 
(Heb. ii, 10.) The latter, that is, the development of his Divine-human life, is laid open 
to our view in his transfiguration. "The moment," says Dr. Bbrard, "had now come 
when Jesus entered upon his last journey, firmly resolved to die for mankind. As he had 
once at his baptism practically declared this his purpose and forthwith confirmed it by 



430 MATTHEW XVII, 1-13. 



coming victorious out of the temptation, so he had declared it again at the present time 
before his disciples, and had likewise sternly rebuked the temptation that this time came 
from the lips of a disciple, who in the power of the Holy Ghost had just before confessed 
him. And as his Father had at his baptism solemnly declared him to be his beloved 
Son before John, who closed the Old Testament dispensation, so it was repeated here 
before the lawgiver and the distinguished representative of the prophets. The law and 
the prophecy came, as it were, in person; the old dispensation, the dispensation of 
promise, welcomed the new as its fulfillment, and God declared for the second time that 
he was well pleased in Jesus." Thus the transfiguration, as an earnest of that glory 
which was his destined inheritance, was strengthening him for the last decisive struggle. 
"While it typically foreshadows the earnest of glory, which is promised to the faithful 
followers of Christ amid their protracted and painful conflicts, and is an emblem of the 
kingdom of glory in which the risen saints shall dwell with their Savior, Ave learn, at 
the same time, from the transfiguration, that Jesus, the second, but sinless Adam, would 
not have died without God's eternal counsel concerning our redemption, that on account 
of his perfect sinlessness his body without tasting death could have entered forthwith 
into the life of glory. The God-man might at once have entered into heaven if he had 
been disposed to detach his own destiny from that of the human family. But recognizing 
with the two glorified prophets his suffering and death as the only means of redeeming 
his people, it is the firm purpose of his holy love to descend into the dismal valley of 
death, and, accordingly, his body was obscured again. 

Of equally great importance was the transfiguration for the disciples. They had 
dared to own him as the Christ, the Son of the living God. They now hear him pro- 
claimed as such from the excellent glory. In the conference of their Master with Moses 
and Elijah they received the fullest assurance of the unity of the Old and the New Test- 
ament — that Jesus was the fulfiller of the law and of the prophets. And in seeing him, 
as it were, removed from the earth in a cloud of light with two inhabitants of the spirit- 
world, they had the fullest evidence of his pow r er to retain his life, and that it was of his 
own free accord if he should descend into the valley of death. The disciples had their 
faith strengthened. They had to be drawn first, as it were, up to the heavenly world by 
this sublime vision, before they were to be drawn down into the depth of temptation, 
such as the death of Christ was for them. But why was this revelation of the Lord's 
glory confined to three out of the number of his disciples, and why were even these 
forbidden to say any thing of the event prior to his resurrection? The reason, undoubt- 
edly, was, because the disciples in general could not properly understand and appreciate 
the whole event before the resurrection of the Lord. Three were sufficient to attest the 
truth of this wonderful scene, and had more been present it might have been somewhat 
difncidt to have kept it secret. The other disciples, however, had also their faith 
strengthened by seeing those favored ones return into their midst in such a frame of 
mind as made the impression upon them that a special revelation had been granted unto 
them, and still more by the Lord coming to their assistance at the foot of the mountain. 

Verses 1-13. (Compare Mark ix, 2-13; Luke ix, 28-36.) 

(1) And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and 
bringetli them up into a high mountain apart, (2) and was transfigured before 
them : and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. 

(3) And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him. 

(4) Then answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here: 
if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, 
and one for Elias. (5) While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed 



THE TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS. 



431 



them : and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in 
whom I am well pleased; hear ye him. (6) And when the disciples heard it, they 
fell on their face, and were sore afraid. (7) And Jesus came and touched them, 
and said, Arise, and be not afraid. (8) And when they had lifted up their eyes, 
they saw no man, save Jesus only. (9) And as they came down from the mount- 
ain, Jesus charged them, saying, Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man 
be risen again from the dead. (10) And his disciples asked him, saying, Why then 
say the scribes that Elias must first come? (11) And Jesus answered and said 
unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things. (12) But I say unto 
you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him 
whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them. (13) 
Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist. 



Verse 1. And after six days, or, as Luke has 
it more indefinitely by a Grecism, "About an eight 
days after;" that is, about one week afterward. The 
transfiguration took place, probably, by night, for the 
following reasons: 1. Luke informs us that the Lord 
had gone up the mount to pray, which he usually did 
at night. (Luke vi, 12; xxi, 37; xxii, 39; Matt, xiv, 
23, 24.) 2. All the circumstances connected with 
the glorification and accompanying appearances 
could thus be more distinctly seen, 3. The apostles 
were, according to Luke, (ix, 32,) "heavy with sleep." 
4. They did not descend till the next day, (Luke ix, 
37,) which would be almost inexplicable, had the 
event happened by day, but a matter of course, if by 
night. — Peter, James, and John. " These three be- 
longed evidently to a kind of inner circle among 
the disciples. They stood nearer to Jesus than the 
rest, and were admitted to peculiar privileges. They 
were not only the witnesses of his glory on the 
mount, but of his -agony in the garden — of his lowest 
abasement, and of his highest elevation in the world. 
Not that in them Jesus revived in any sense the 
practice of heathen philosophy, and taught them 
esoteric doctrines, which he hid from the other disci- 
ples. Whatever at first he told them in secret, was 
ultimately proclaimed from the house-top. But while 
all of them were brethren of the same household, 
and all sharers in the same revelation of the gracious 
will of God, to them it was given to have a closer 
intimacy with Jesus, and to be personal witnesses of 
what the rest did not see. And the effect of this 
specialty of treatment became abundantly manifest 
in the future history of the Church. These three 
stand out most prominently in the early proclama- 
tion of the Gospel, and in the performance of those 
miracles by which it was attested, and even to this 
day we reap the benefit of their higher privilege in 
those epistles which they, and they only, were in- 
spired to write. In all this we see a manifestation 
of what was to be the permanent condition of the 
Church; namely, that while in the true Church there 
was to be the same spirit, there would be diversities 



of gifts — that while all were brethren there would yet 
be differences among them, in virtue of which some 
would be greatly signalized above others, both in the 
measure of grace they possessed, and in the extent 
to which that grace would become available for the 
establishment and extension of the Church. There 
would ever be some who, more than others, were ad- 
mitted to a closer intimacy with the Lord, and en- 
dowed with a more penetrating insight, and unto 
whom the Lord would more fully unvail his glory. 
Nor should we lose sight of the fact that the higher 
privileges of the three resulted in the greater imme- 
diate and permanent edification of the Church. We 
are to regard the one as the cause of the other. 
And this principle of causation has not ceased. It 
is still he who gets nearest to the Lord, that labors 
in his service most abundantly and successfully. 
There is no evidence that Peter, James, and John 
were possessed of higher natural endowments than 
the rest of the twelve, but they saw the Lord's glory 
on the mount, and were with him in his agony, anci 
so they became in the Church as sons of thunder, in 
the mighty power of Divine love. And so it is al- 
ways. The secret of strength and influence lies in 
this intimate Divine fellowship. Those who see most 
of Christ are able to speak of him most powerfully 
and winningly." (Wilson.) — And bringeth them 
up into a mountain apart. Our Lord's taking them 
apart from the other disciples indicates that he knew 
before what was to take place there. — It is worthy 
of notice that while the Evangelists are precise in 
denoting the time, they are very indefinite in respect 
to the locality. The same is the case with regard to 
all the more remarkable events in the life of Jesus. 
The reason of this we may find in the manifold 
abuses to which even a conjectural knowledge of 
sacred places has given rise. Tradition has pointed 
out Mount Tabor as the spot, but, as Dr. Robinson 
has shown, the summit of Mount Tabor was then 
occupied by a fortified city. Besides, Mount Tabor in 
Galilee was too far distant from the region of Cesa- 
rea Philippi, where, as appears from Mark ix, 30, 



432 



MATTHEW XVII, 1-13. 



our Lord joins the rest of his disciples again. The 
mountain was most probably the so-called Great 
Sermon, north-east of Gennesaret. Stanley in his 
Sinai and Palestine says: "It is impossible to look 
up from the plain to the towering peaks of Bermon, 
almost the only mountain which deserves the name, 
in Palestine, and not to be struck with its appropriate- 
ness to the scene. That magnificent hight, mingling 
with all the views of Northern Palestine, from She- 
chem upward, though often alluded to as the northern 
barrier of the Holy Land, is connected with no his- 
torical event in the Old or New Testament. Yet 
this fact of its rising high above all the other hills of 
Palestine, and of its setting the last limit to the wan- 
derings of Him who was sent only to the lost sheep 
of the house of Israel, concurs with the supposition 
which the words of the Scripture narrative inevitably 
force upon us. High up on its southern slopes there 
must be many a point where the disciples could be 
taken 'apart by themselves.' Even the transient 
comparison of the celestial splendor with the snow, 
where alone it could be seen in Palestine, should not, 
perhaps, be wholly overlooked." — It is worthy of 
notice that the most solemn scenes in the life of our 
Savior took place on mountains, whither he resorted 
also for the most part in order to pray. In the Old 
Testament the sacrifices were also offered up on 
mountains, and the Temple stood on a mountain. 
The mountains were symbols of heaven. The En- 
glish " heaven " comes from the Saxon " heafan," and 
means " elevated" or "arched." The German „-fnin= 
1ltd" has been derived from the Hindoostan "Hima- 
laya," the residence assigned to the Hindoo gods. 

Verse 2. And was transfigured before them — 
literally, was transformed. The features of his coun- 
tenance assumed an unusual heavenly expression. 
The apostle Paul applies the same term to the inner 
process of regeneration. (Rom. xii, 2; 2 Cor. iii, 18.) 
It is well known what changes joy, love, and other 
emotions, produce in the human countenance; how 
the inward happiness of a dying man often trans- 
forms his countenance. The revelations of the 
future world made the prophets sometimes pale like 
the dead, (Dan. x,) sometimes radiant with joy. The 
countenance of Moses shone when he descended from 
Mount Sinai, so that the children of Israel could not 
steadfastly look upon him. But the transfiguration 
of Jesus differed from all these phenomena, his glory 
coming not only from without, as that of Moses did, 
which the apostle (2 Cor. iii, 7) for this very reason 
calls transient, but from within; it was the conformity 
into which the Savior's body was brought with his 
indwelling spirit. It is thus a type of the resurrec- 
tion body of the saints. — According to Luke the 
transformation took place while the Lord was pray- 
ing. We might see in this a type of the elevating 
and transforming power of prayer. " The true dis- 
ciple of Jesus ascends with him the holy mount of 
ordinances, a high mountain which brings him near 
the very gate of heaven, and while he prays he passes 



out of the thick darkness into light inaccessible — is 
raised out of the depths of his severe conflict into 
the serene calm of assured faith; and while no out- 
ward visible change takes place on his countenance 
and raiment, he feels that there is to him a trans- 
formation not less real and blessed; that in this 
sacred converse with the Highest he has passed from 
the region of doubt and fear into that of holy confi- 
dence; and that now, refreshed, and strengthened, 
and armed with heavenly panoply, and in sight of 
the glory to be revealed, he also can bear the cross, 
and in it triumph over his enemies. He has already 
become a king in the mastery over his troubles 
which he has achieved, and will wear the conqueror's 
crown. This for us is the ark of refuge — the place 
of rest — the secret of our strength. He who prays 
becomes invincible, and rides in safety amid those 
surging billows which shall not overwhelm his soul. 
Most blessed privilege, did we but know how to use 
it! for the outpouring of the Spirit of grace and 
of supplication, and then would the Church assume 
a new attitude in the presence of her foes — then her 
bondage would be turned back, and she would appear 
clear as the sun, fair as the moon, and terrible as an 
army with banners! We, the very humblest of us, 
through the gifts which prayer brings, and the trans- 
formation it effects, may become stronger than the 
mightiest, and the glory of the Lord will arise upon 
us. Alas, how much we need this transformation!" 
(Wilson.) 

Verse 3. The recognition of Moses and Elias by 
the disciples is not to be wondered at. It seems to 
have been intuitive. Besides, there may have been 
something in their appearance and accompaniments 
such as to render their personality unmistakable, or 
the disciples may have gathered the fact from the 
conversation between them and Jesus. " What Je- 
sus was doing on the earth was not unknown in the 
heavenly places. The angels desired to look into 
these things, and if they did so, surely not less the 
glorified children of men, who had seen the day of 
Christ afar off and rejoiced in it, and by faith had 
entered into the promised rest. And among these 
heavenly inquirers the most deeply interested must 
have been Moses and Elias. We find that the an- 
gels hovered around the path of Jesus, observed his 
progress, and strengthened his fainting spirit. And 
Moses and Elias now also come forth from the inac- 
cessible glory to inquire, to wonder, and to speak of 
these things — to learn more perfectly this mystery 
of the incarnation, what is implied in it, and how 
it is to work out its blessed results. Of one of 
these men we are told that he was translated to 
heaven in a chariot of fire; of the other that, 
though he died, no man knew of his sepulcher, 
and that the archangel Michael claimed his body. 
It is not irrational, then, to believe that these men 
had, body and soul, been taken to the place of bliss- 
ful rest, and of unclouded glory — not, indeed, as an- 
ticipating the resurrection of Jesus, who became the 



THE TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS. 



433 



first-fruits of them that sleep, but as undergoing in 
the moment of death, and ere the separation between 
soul and body was complete, that glorious transform- 
ation which shall be the privilege of the living 
saints, when the time of the manifestation of the 
sons of God shall come. There was, when we thus 
regard their state, a possibility of their appearing as 
they did, for they had been reinvested with a glori- 
fied body, and were not like the rest of the glorified, 
existing as unclothed and invisible spirits. These 
two, then, appeared in glory speaking with Jesus 
on the mount? Why these? Jesus had shortly 
before announced to his disciples his purpose to 
found a new Church, with new terms of fellowship, 
and by that fact had seemed to separate them from 
the faith and hope of their fathers. They were told 
that the Church which they had been owning as the 
true one which the Lord was to visit and bless, 
would not only reject Christ, but put him to death. 
In cleaving to Christ they felt that they must be sep- 
arated from that Jewish Church. But was not it the 
representative of Abraham, of Moses, and of the 
prophets ? Such a fact was fitted to fill them with 
wonder and perplexity. Here was now the solution 
of the mystery. Here on this mount they see Moses 
himself, not rejecting Jesus, but doing him reverence. 
These scribes, and priests, and elders, then, must 
misrepresent Moses, and that Church of theirs must 
have become a synagogue of Satan. Jesus is here 
visibly in harmony with Moses ; it is these Jews who 
have broken the harmony. This Church, then, which 
is to be built on the living confessors of Jesus, shall 
not be a separate Church, but shall be one with that 
of the fathers and confessors of old — the Church of 
Abraham, and of Moses, and of Elias." (Condensed 
from Wilson.) — Talking with him. Luke says: 
They spake of his decease which he should accom- 
plish at Jerusalem. "This was the grand theme 
which engaged their thoughts as they dwelt in that 
glory. It was a topic suited to the time. In it, in- 
deed, was to be found an explanation of this wonder- 
ful appearance. That decease — that shameful death, 
of which the disciples had been afraid to think, as 
involving the destruction of all their hopes — is a 
theme for converse within the gates of heaven itself. 
The cross begins already to radiate its glory. It is 
spoken of as a decease — a death not endured be- 
cause the violence and injustice of man so willed 
it — not forced upon Jesus reluctantly, as a thing 
from which he could not escape — as if cruelty and 
unbelief were to obtain a final victory over all that 
is lovely and pure. They speak of it as a decease 
to be accomplished — a part of Christ's own work — 
the crowning and most glorious fact of his history — 
a thing which he would himself accomplish — that he 
had set himself to bear — the voluntary giving away 
of his life as a ransom for many." (Wilson.) 

Verse 4. Then answered Peter. The verb to 
answer is a Hebraism, and does not always imply 
that what is said is in reply to something said be- 



28 



fore. It often means simply to begin to speak. 
From Luke we learn that Peter spoke at the mo- 
ment when Moses and Elias were about to depart. 
The disciples had been overcome with sleep, and 
were, as it seems, awakened by the glorious appear- 
ance of the two heavenly messengers. Peter was 
evidently desirous to prolong this wonderful vision 
and its enjoyment; but the bewilderment under 
which he spoke — expressed by Luke in the words: 
"He knew not what he said;" Mark: "He wist not 
what to say : for they were sore afraid" — is evident 
from the strange proposal to t-rect tabernacles, that 
is, temporary booths, such as were used at the Feast 
of Tabernacles, for such celestial visitants. " Peter 
is ever the same impulsive man. We might have 
thought that the rebuke he had so recently received 
would have constrained him, for a season at least, to 
hold his peace. But this, to him, seems impossible. 
Whatever suggests itself to him must find expres- 
sion. We can not help admiring this perfect open- 
ness and simplicity of character. We are sure al- 
ways to know what is passing in his mind. It is 
not enough for him to look on, and meditate, and 
adore. He can not permit himself to stand outside 
as an on-looker, but must get into the very heart of 
the business. So was it with him on the stormy Sea 
of Galilee. He could not be satisfied with seeing 
Jesus walking there, but he must try it himself. So 
is it now in widely-different circumstances. He is 
not content to look on and wonder at the glorious 
scene presented to his view. He must have a hand 
in it. He must be employed somehow about it. 
One can not help admiring and loving such a char- 
acter, ever so prompt and ready, entering so fully 
and heartily into every thing he does, and adapting 
himself so speedily to every change of scene and 
circumstance. This disposition, if it led him into 
some errors, earned for him also many distinctions. 
It characterized his whole course of action, and 
marks him out distinctively from all the other disci- 
ples. It is a kind of intense human sympathy. He 
must get into close contact with the men in whose 
society he happens to be, by word or by deed. He 
gets into the very position of those around him, en- 
ters into their heart, and feelings, and objects, and 
identifies himself with them. We may find here the 
secret of the two grand errors of his life— his re- 
proof of Jesus and his denial of him. It seemed to 
him, from this ardor and intense sympathy of his 
nature, as if, when Jesus spoke of dying, he also 
must die with him, as afterward he boldly and hon- 
estly declared his resolution to do. He had, at the 
moment, no idea of a life apart from Jesus, and 
therefore his alarm and his rash reproof. It was 
given under the belief that they were to share a 
common fate. Again, this feeling, which made him 
so strong at other times, proved his weakness in the 
high-priest's hall. This ardent, sympathetic man 
could not well stand alone. He must be thoroughly 
with those around him; and, accordingly, there, 



434 



MATTHEW XVII, 1-13. 



amid profane mockers, he denied Jesus with oaths 
and curses. At the present time, with his wonted 
ardor and promptitude, he enters into the scene be- 
fore him. For a brief period after he had awaked, 
the awful and majestic scene appears to have sub- 
dued him to silence. But when this scene was ap- 
parently about to dissolve, in a moment he over- 
comes his terror and speaks. He has a proposal to 
make, which it seems to him will suit the occasion. 
In affairs belonging to this world, even in matters 
of life and death, he waits no warrant, and errs in 
his haste. But here he must have a word of Jesus 
to authorize him. He can not act without permis- 
sion. He has been carried into an unknown and 
visibly-glorious land, in which he is yet a stranger, 
and he will not move a step without a warrant. 
Even his strong practical turn of mind compels him 
to wait for this. He does not know whether the ex- 
pedients which are suited to another and homelier 
ro^ion may serve the purpose here. He wishes, in- 
deed, to try, but he will not attempt it unless he is 
permitted." (Condensed from Wilson.) 

Verse 5. While he yet spake, behold, a bright 
cloud overshadowed them — that is, the Lord, Mo- 
ses, and Elias, so that they were concealed from the 
disciples' view. " While Peter was yet speaking, 
Jesus and the two glorified ones entered into it. This 
was their tabernacle, and they needed not that of 
Peter. The sanctuary within which they were in- 
closed was a tabernacle woven of the beams of Di- 
vine glory. Jesus and they become invisible in that 
intense light which is equivalent to darkness. The 
voice which is heard in it proclaims what the cloud 
is. It is the Shekinah restored — the symbol of the 
Divine presence — the cloud into which Moses en- 
tered of old on Mount Sinai — the cloud which also 
rested on the tabernacle and on the Temple, and which 
was both bright and dark. The mediator of the new 
and better covenant enters into that bright cloud, and 
is, for a brief moment, again in the embrace of the 
Father. Most blessed and happy reunion! Blessed 
for the oppressed and heavy-laden soul of the man 
Christ Jesus— a reunion in which he receives new 
joy, and consequently new strength to finish his 
course. Most blessed harmony of heaven and earth, 
when Jehovah is well pleased in the anticipated tri- 
umph of Jesus Christ! Blessed, also, to heavy-laden 
souls, groaning under the burden of sin, and waiting 
earnestly for deliverance, because it proclaims a God 
already reconciled, and condescending again to dwell 
with men on earth. The thunders of an outraged 
and violated law are no more heard, and it is only 
the voice of a Father which is heard issuing from 
that bright cloud, ' This is my beloved Son.' " (Con- 
densed from Wilson.) — Hear ye him. "In the 
same words the first lawgiver had promised a second 
and greater one. (Deut. xviii, 18.) It is the voice 
of the Father, who installs his Son as the spiritual 
Lawgiver, as the Sovereign of his kingdom, whom 
he commands us to obey. The Messiah, who thus 



far had taught and acted in obedience to his Divine 
commission, is now formally installed as the Lord 
and Head over all, before the representatives of heaven 
and earth. What the tempter had promised him 
(Matt, iv, 8) he receives now at the hands of the 
Creator of all things." (Lange.) 

Verses 6, 7. The voice that spoke out of the 
cloud had such an effect upon the disciples that 
they fell on their face. (Comp. with this Dan. 
x, 8, 9; Rev. i, 17.) This was partly an act of rev- 
erential prostration in the presence of the Deity, 
partly the effect of fear. (Comp. Gen. xvi, 14; 
Ex. xx, 19; Judges xiii, 22; Isa. vi. 5.) — And 
Jesus came and touched them. (Comp. Isa. vi, 
5-7; Dan. x, 9, 10; Rev. i, 17.) By touching the 
disciples he convinced them that he was still a real 
man, clothed in flesh and blood. "There is a restor- 
ative power in that touch and word. It lifts them up 
and imparts strength to them. And for us, as for 
them, there is no rising up from prostrate helpless- 
ness and fear, except in this way. Struck down 
under a sense of sin, we do not arise and go to 
Jesus; he comes and touches us, and establishes his 
identity with us. We can not go for help — help 
comes to us — so near is Christ, and so infinitely 
gracious. When by the Spirit there has been re- 
vealed to us the Divine majesty and holiness, and 
when in the presence of that, we are self-emptied, 
without strength, prostrated in the dust, Christ comes 
forth and touches us. We shall never find him 
otherwise than thus. How many have sought him 
long years in vain — groping their way to find salva- 
tion, and whose search has been fruitless; till worn 
out, exhausted, all resources and methods having 
been tried without avail, they have sat down in con- 
scious helplessness, almost in despair' — and then, 
when prostrate, with their faces on the ground, Jesus 
has touched them, and dispelled their fear, and made 
darkness light about them!" (Wilson.) 

Verse 8. " Now that the three disciples are again 
set on their feet, that glorious majesty which had 
filled their souls with terror is no longer visible. 
When they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man 
save Jesus only. Is there not here also a profound 
spiritual truth? Does it not set forth the experience 
of the delivered and ransomed soul? At one mo- 
ment, all is fear and conscious vileness. And now, 
again, under the gracious power of that touch of 
Jesus, it is he alone whom we see — our brother, our 
friend, our Savior. Now all is peace. The terror 
of the night is passed, the morning light has come, 
the Sun of Righteousness has arisen on us with 
healing in his wings. Then it was an angry God 
with whom we had to do, now it is a loving and 
gracious Savior. Our eyes see only him, and God's 
eye sees only him. Now there is no condemnation — 
we have passed from death to life and have peace 
with God, who in Jesus has become to us a Father. 
Most blessed and life-giving sight, to see Jesus alone — 
to feel his restoring, re-invigorating power — to have 



THE DISCIPLES UNABLE TO CAST OUT A DEMON. 



435 



our eye fastened upon and filled with the vision of 
the Lamb of God — to be so near him, and so quick- 
ened by him!" (Wilson.) 

Verse 9. Tell the vision to no man. See intro- 
ductory remarks. This prohibition amounts to this, 
that the disciples were not to speak of this tempo- 
rary glorification of the Son of man, so long as he 
should continue in his state of humiliation. — Mark 
(ix, 10) says that "the disciples kept that saying with 
themselves, questioning one with another what the 
rising from the dead should mean!' The resurrec- 
tion of their Master was beyond their comprehen- 
sion. They believed in the general resurrection ; 
but that the Messiah, whom they had just seen in 
his heavenly glory, should rise from the dead, was 
altogether beyond the horizon of their comprehen- 
sion, since they could not believe that he would or 
could die. 

Verse 10. The question of the disciples was nat- 
urally prompted by the appearance and disappear- 
ance of Elias, as well as by the silence imposed upon 
them concerning their having seen him. Its mean- 
ing is: Since the appearance of Elias was only a 
transient one, and we are forbidden to say any thing 
concerning it, are we to infer from this that ihe 
scribes are wrong in saying that Elias must first 
come — that is, before the kingdom of the Messiah is 
established — or was this appearance of Elias his 
predicted coming? 

Verses 11, 12. Elias truly shall first come, 
and restore all things. Stier and the literalist 
school of English premillenarians understand the 
Lord to speak here of a yet future coming of Elias; 
namely, with reference to the literal " restoration of 
the kingdom to Israel" at the second coming of 
Christ. But it is evident that — even if what the 
prophets declare concerning the future restoration 



I of Israel is to be understood literally — -our Lord 
would not speak of it in this connection. He uses 
the future tense simply from the stand-point of the 
prophets who predicted the coming of Elias, and im- 
mediately adds that this prophecy has been fulfilled. 
— But I sat unto you that Elias is come al- 
ready. Not, indeed, that Elias had personally come, 
but in conformity with the word of the angel to 
Zecharias before his birth, John the Baptist had 
gone before the Lord in the spirit and power of 
Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the chil- 
dren and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just. 
He had gone forth preaching the doctrine of repent- 
ance, the restoration of that which was fallen and 
decayed — not to introduce a new economy, but to 
prepare for it by seeking to repair the desolate con- 
dition of Israel. This was his work — a work which, 
though it was unsuccessful in its results, as the work 
of Elijah had been when on earth, he executed with 
the same zeal. He was the Elias who was to come 
before the Lord, according to Mai. iv, 5, 6. The 
scribes, then, were right in saying, Elias mvst first 
come; but they were so blinded and prejudiced, so 
carnally-minded, that they knew not him, who came 
in the spirit and power of Elias. This infallible in- 
terpretation of the prophetic record by our Lord 
should furnish us with a key to the interpretation of 
all the prophecies of a like kind. It not only per- 
mits us to look for, but suggests that what we are to 
look for in prophetic fulfillment is not the letter but 
the spirit of prophecy — not the resuscitation of per- 
sons, but the revival of the spirit whereby holy men 
of old were animated, and of the work in which they 
were engaged. — Likewise shall also the Son of 
man suffer of them. By these words our Lord 
again foretells his rejection by the nation, linking 
the issue of his own ministry with that of John's. 



9. JESUS HEALS A 
WHOM HIS 



LUNATIC BOY, MADE DUMB AND DEAF BY A DEMON, 
DISCIPLES WERE UNABLE TO CAST OUT. 



Mark gives the most circumstantial account of this miracle, which we must take into 
consideration to make a proper improvement of what Matthew records, who takes notice 
only of the main point, and relates more fully our Lord's answer to the disciples' question : 
"Why could we not cast him out?" 

During the absence of Jesus, and of Peter, James, and John, a father had brought his 
only son, who was made deaf and dumb by a demon, to the disciples to be cured. But 
though they had been invested with miraculous powers, and had before exercised them 
successfully, they failed this time. "The scribes were pressing the advantage which they 
had gained by this miscarriage of the disciples to the uttermost. A great multitude, too, 
were gathered round, spectators of the defeat of the servants of Christ; and the strife 
was at the highest — the scribes, no doubt, arguing from the impotence of the servants to 
the impotence of the Master, and they denying the conclusion; when suddenly He, con- 
cerning whom the strife was, appeared, returning from the holy mount, his face and 
person yet glistening, as there is reason to suppose, with reminiscences and traces of the 



436 



MATTHEW XVII, 14-21. 



glory which had clothed him there— 30 that, < all the people, when they beheld him, were 
greatly amazed.'' Yet here the impression which that glory made was other than the im- 
pression of the countenance of Moses. When the multitude saw him as he came down 
from his mountain, the skin of his face shining, 'they were afraid to come nigh him,' 
(Ex. xxxiv, 30,) for that glory upon his face was a threatening glory, the awful and 
intolerable brightness of the law. But the glory of God shining in the face of Christ 
Jesus, though awful too, was also an attractive glory, full of grace and beauty, drawing 
men to him, not driving them from him; and thus, indeed, 'all the people, when they beheld 
him, were greatly amazed,' such gleams of brightness played around him still; yet did they 
not therefore flee from him, but rather, as taken with that brightness, they 'running to 
him, saluted him.' Yet the sight and sounds which greeted him on his return to our sinful 
woidd, how different were they from those which he had just left upon the holy mount ! 
There the highest harmonies of heaven; here some of the wildest and harshest discords 
of earth. There he had been receiving honor and glory from the Father; here his disci- 
ples, those to whom his work had been intrusted in his absence, had been procuring for 
him, as far as in them lay, shame and dishonor. But as when some great captain sud- 
denly arriving upon a field of battle, where his subordinate lieutenants have well-nigh 
lost the day, and brought all into a hopeless confusion, with his eye measures at once the 
necessities of the moment, and with no more than his presence causes the tide of victory 
to turn, and every thing to right itself again, so was it now. The Lord arrests the 
advancing and victorious foe; he addresses himself to the scribes, and saying, ' What 
question ye with them?' takes the baffled and hard-pressed disciples under his own pro- 
tection, as if he had said to them: 'If you have any question, henceforth it' must be with 
me.' But they to whom these words were spoken were slow to accept the challenge; for 
it was one from among the multitude, the father of the suffering child, which was his 
only one, who took up the word, and, kneeling down before Jesus, declared all his own 
misery and his son's." (Trench.) 

Verses 14-31. (Compare Mark ix, 14-29; Luke ix, 37-43.) 

(14) And when they were come to the multitude, there came to him a certain 
man, kneeling down to him, and saying, (15) Lord, have mercy on my son; for 
he is lunatic, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the 
water. (16) And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him. 
(17) Then Jesus answered and said, faithless and perverse generation, how long 
shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me. (18) 
And Jesus rebuked the devil ; and he departed out of him : and the child was 
cured from that very hour. (19) Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, 
Why could not we cast him out? (20) And Jesus said unto them, Because of 
your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard 
seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place ; and it shall 
remove : and nothing shall be impossible unto you. (21) Howbeit this kind goeth 
not out but by prayer and fasting. 



Verse 15. For he is lunatic. "All the symp- 
toms, as put into the father's mouth, or described by 
the sacred historians, exactly agree with those of ep- 
ilepsy, which is affected by changes of the moon ; 
not that we have here only an epileptic ; but this was 
the ground on which the deeper spiritual evils of this 
child were superinduced. The fits were sudden and 



lasted remarkably long; the evil spirit 'hardly de- 
parteth from him;' 'a dumb spirit,' Mark calls it — 
a statement which does not contradict that of Luke, 
' He suddenly crieth out.' This dumbness was only 
in respect of articulate sounds; he could give no ut- 
terance to these. Nor was it a natural defect, as 
where the string of the tongue has remained un- 



THE DISCIPLES UNABLE TO CAST OUT A DEMON. 



437 



loosed, (Mark viii, 32,) or the needful organs for 
speech are wanting — not a defect under which he 
had always labored, but the consequence of this pos- 
session. When the spirit took him in its might, then 
in these paroxysms of his disorder it tare him, till 
he foamed and gnashed with his teeth; and alto- 
gether he pined away like one the very springs of 
whose life were dried up. And while these accesses 
of his disorder might come upon him at any mo- 
ment and in any place, they often exposed the un- 
happy sufferer to the worst accidents: ' Ofttimes he 
falleth into the fire, and oft into the water.' In 
Mark the father attributes these fits to the direct 
agency of the evil spirit: ' Ofttimes it hath cast him 
into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him.' " 
Verse 17. When the father told the Lord of the 
ineffectual efforts which his disciples had made for 
his relief, he with a sorrowful indignation exclaimed : 

0, FAITHLESS AND PERVERSE GENERATION! These 

words were not directed exclusively to the disciples, 
but to all who were present at the scene ; to the 
scribes, who rejoiced in the failure of the disciples, 
and had their share in it by their hardened unbelief; 
to the father of the child, whose faith was defective, 
for, in appealing to Jesus for help, he seemed still to 
doubt whether the Lord was able to cure an evil so 
deeply seated and of so long standing, (Mark ix, 
22;) to the multitude who stood looking on. " Had 
the faith of the father been in active operation, the 
work he desired would have been done, for his confi- 
dence and hope would have restored the sinking 
hearts of the disciples, and brought them back to 
him who had given them power and authority over 
all devils to cast them out. Had the disciples be- 
lieved, they would have felt, as of old, that the 
power and presence of Jesus were with them to 
heal, and they would have been delivered from their 
shame and disappointment. Their faith would have 
dispelled doubt from the heart of the father, even as 
Jesus now does, before he effects the cure. Had the 
multitude believed, the power of God would have 
been revealed in the midst of them. Their faithless- 
ness hindered its exercise, even as we are elsewhere 
told of Jesus at Capernaum, that he could do no 
mighty works there because of their unbelief. What 
happened here has been taking place from age to 
age in the history of the Church. The incapacity 
of the disciples, the stout resistance of the devil, 
their inability to destroy his works, and to limit his 
power, is surely no uncommon thing. It is not a 
matter of history merely, but of every-day experi- 
ence. Every-where the devil is proving himself 
stronger than the disciples of Christ. He not only 
holds his own, but increases his power. The Church 
stands amazed and trembling in the presence of her 
spiritual adversaries. Iniquity eometh in like a 
flood. Heresies, delusions, blasphemies, and crimes 
manifold, intrench themselves behind impregnable 
bulwarks, and the Church has no artillery powerful 
enough to demolish them. The Gospel is preached, 



never, perhaps, so extensively as now — -the words of 
exorcism, so to speak, are uttered every-where, but 
the Divine power to heal is fearfully wanting. The 
arm of the Lord seems to be shortened. The devil 
keeps possession of the soul, and is not subject to 
the word of healing, and some cry one thing, and 
some another — some apparently eager to detect the 
source of the mischief and to restore its lost power 
to the Gospel; while others proclaim that it has be- 
come effete and worn out, and resolve to try the ex- 
orcism of a new philosophy and social ameliorations, 
forgetting the while that what renders any ameliora- 
tion necessary — the thing which produces the mani- 
fold social miseries, manifesting themselves in forms 
as disgusting and terrible as in the case of this poor, 
possessed child, is just that the devil is there assert- 
ing his supremacy, and displaying the cruel tyranny 
of his reign, and that nothing can be done effect- 
ively till he be cast out. And our modern scribes, 
with their proud mockery, speak of the powerless- 
ness of the Gospel, and glory over its prostrate 
strength. The world is very much in the state now 
in which that multitude were when Jesus descended 
among them from the Mount of Transfiguration. 
The eyes of the blind are not opened, and the deaf 
are not made to hear, nor the dumb to speak — the 
dead are not raised, and no mighty works attest the 
presence and power of him who binds Satan, and 
wrenches from him his prey; and the enemies of 
Jesus are glorying in their strength! The cry has 
been raised, for an earnest ministry ! By all 
means, nothing is more urgently needed, nothing can 
be more vitally important. But you can not get an 
earnest ministry without having something besides. 
These nine disciples had been earnest and successful 
ministers. But now they are weak and helpless — 
their faith is overborne by the unbelief which en- 
compasses them. They speak, but the devil is no 
longer subject to their word. Let us look to this re- 
buke of Jesus. 1. It falls upon that unhappy father 
of a sorely-afHicted child, and so also upon the par- 
ents of this generation. Do you think that life and 
grace will come to your homes from the pulpit only? 
It can not do so. The pulpit may sustain, help, 
stimulate, and direct you, but it can not take the 
charge and responsibility out of your hands. To 
you primarily it belongs to train your children in the 
nurture and admonition of the Lord, to wrestle for 
them, to travail in soul, till Christ be formed in 
them — by fasting, by prayer, to cast out the devil — 
to invoke the presence of God in your homes, and 
the gracious power of his Spirit — to bear your chil- 
dren under the shadow of the wings of the Almighty. 
Even when Jesus returned from the mount, there 
was no deliverance for this child till faith had been 
awakened in the father's heart. And in your case 
it will be even so. Only believe, all things are pos- 
sible to him that believeth. 2. But the parent, in 
his turn, needs to be sustained and stimulated in this 
gracious work. In such a matter always there is the 



438 



MATTHEW XVII, 14-21. 



same mutual action as in the case of this parent 
and the disciples. His faith would have awakened 
theirs — their faith would have excited his. Faith 
being lively and strong in neither party, the gracious 
work remained undone. So it is now. Parents, it 
may be, are struggling against manifold temptations 
and difficulties, amid efforts which constantly try 
their patience, and depress their hope, and weaken 
the energy of their faith. They see how rapidly and 
strongly evil develops itself in the souls of their 
children — how powerful the hold of Satan is — what 
vanity is bound up in their hearts — and thus de- 
pressed, discouraged, and faint-hearted, they come to 
the Church to the ministers of Christ's Word, and 
bring their children there. Alas ! if there also faith 
be feeble — -if there be no word of strength and res- 
toration — if in the mouth of Christ's embassadors 
that Word has become an empty sound ! 3. But this 
is not all. According to the laws of the kingdom of 
grace, a faithless Church can not have a faithful 
ministry. The warmest affections may be chilled 
and repressed, and the liveliest faith rendered inop- 
erative, in the face of a cold,- dead, unbelieving peo- 
ple, who have no interest in God's message, and no 
desire for his salvation — who sit at their ease in 
Zion, and say each to himself, I am rich and in- 
creased with goods, and have need of nothing. In 
such circumstances the arm of the Lord is arrested, 
and to an unbelieving people the Lord gives a faith- 
less, slumbering ministry. They need, in order to 
do their work well, to be sustained by the faith and 
prayers of their people. The apostle Paul, the most 
successful minister of Christ that ever lived, felt and 
owned that his power lay here. He says, 'Finally, 
brethren, pray for us that the Word of the Lord may 
have free course and be glorified.' Evidently he felt 
that if the prayers of the people were restrained, the 
Word of God would be bound. That Word was 
magnified among the Thessalonians becauso they 
prayed. So it is now, and has been in all ages. The 
Lord performs not his mighty works among a gain- 
saying and unbelieving people. Let us all,, then, 
hear this word of reproof, '0, faithless generation!' 
and let parents, and ministers, and people, by hu- 
miliation, confession, contrition, and prayer, seek 
that Satan may be stripped of his power, and that 
the Word of God may have free course; and this 
period of the Church's history shall be a memorable 
one, not only in our experience, but in the annals 
of eternity." (Condensed from Wilson.) — How 

LONG SHALL I BE WITH YOU? HOW LONG SHALL I 

suffer you? " Only he can speak thus," says Stier, 
"who, as the Holy One among sinners, bore the bur- 
den of all, and whose whole life was, in the inner- 
most sense, from the very first, a profound suffering, 
by feeling and bearing the sins of those around him. 
Thus this his word, spoken immediately after the 
manifestation of his glory, reveals to us the depth 
of his human endurance, the pain of Divine love 
in his human nature. If we had not this word, and 



that other in Luke xii, 50, we should want the true, 
entire insight into the self-denying, atoning nature 
of his whole earthly course in our flesh and blood. 
What complainings, known only to the Father, does 
this single expression, which he neither can nor will 
restrain, presuppose ?" 

Verse 18. The circumstantial account of the cure, 
see in Mark. 

Verses 19, 20. "The disciples do not care to 
mention the difficulty which still perplexed them, in 
the presence of the multitude. They take Jesus, 
therefore, apart to ask him how it happened that 
they were unable to cast out this evil spirit. It is 
evident that they are yet very slow to understand. 
They have not rightly gathered up the meaning of 
what Jesus had spoken, both to the father of , the 
victim and to the multitude, else they would have 
found that their question had been already answered. 
The truth which he had spoken to these parties was 
also a truth for them. But their minds had been 
seeking a solution of the mystery in far other di- 
rections. As almost always happens, they did not 
expect to find the cause of their failure in themselves. 
There were many other quarters in which it was pos- 
sible to seek it. This might be a spirit more power- 
ful than any they had hitherto encountered, or the 
fault might lie in the son, or in the father who sought 
their help. Jesus at once undeceives them. It was 
your unbelief that disabled you. The same sin and 
weakness which I have reproved in others belongs 
also to you. Had you believed there would have 
been no failure, for faith is always armed with in- 
vincible strength. The smallest amount of it is able 
to accomplish the mightiest works, for by faith the 
power of God is called into exercise." (AVilson.) — 

Ye SHALL SAY UNTO THIS MOUNTAIN, REMOVE HENCE, 

etc. On this passage Dr. Whedon makes the follow- 
ing pertinent comment : "The faith here spoken of 
supposes a concurrence between God and man — on 
the part of God a mission or duty assigned to the 
man, for which the power of faith is granted; and 
without this true faith is impossible. On the part 
of man there must be exercised all the granted faith- 
power by which he puts forth the act or pursues the 
course which is opened in the way of duty before 
him. When these two things combine, it is lit- 
erally true that any thing is possible. If the man's 
mission be to remove the Andes into the Pacific, 
it can be done. If there be no duty to it, there 
can be no true faith for it; and the attempt to 
do it would not be faith, but rash self-will. God 
gives no man faith wherewith to play miraculous 
pranks. On the other hand, if there be the duty 
and the God-given power of faith, and yet it be not 
exercised with the full strength of heart and the 
firm trust in God which knows the impossibility will 
be done, no miracle shall follow. This the disciples 
had not." To the same effect is also the remark of 
Lange : " Faith can only accomplish what it has rec- 
ognized in Divine certainty as the will of God; but 



HOW THE LORD PROVIDES FOR THE TEMPLE TAX. 



439 



what it has thus recognized it accomplishes with 
Divine certainty. Faith makes no experiments; 
what it undertakes is already decided by God. If a 
man undertakes to remove mountains without faith, 
he deserves blame, just as the disciples did." — And 
kothing shall be impossible to you. These words 
show that, although the "removing of mountains" 
may be a figurative form of expression, yet this fig- 
urative language implies, by no means, more than 
the Lord actually desired to say. The omnipotence 
of God is placed into the hand of faith. Stier re- 
marks, very properly, that the Lord speaks of mira- 
cles of God's power in nature, in order to rebuke 
the false belief which is so deeply seated in the hu- 
man heart, that the so-called laws of nature are 
superior to or independent of the will of God, and 
in order to strengthen our faith for the greater mira- 
cles of Divine grace in the human heart. "It is a 
more difficult work to root out sin from the heart, 
to dispossess the spirit of evil from the soul in which 
it has long reigned, than to remove a mountain. 
God is making this truth manifest in his own man- 
ner of working. The work of creation was effected 
by a word; that of redemption is being accom- 
plished in a long succession of ages. When, by the 
work of thousands of years, he has prepared his peo- 
ple, the new heavens and the new earth will be trans- 
formed for them in a day. Faith does not literally 
remove mountains, but it has a higher and nobler 
work. It works for the kingdom of God, and that 
kingdom is not promoted by such marvels. The 



mountains which it removes are those which sin has 
raised in the human heart." 

Verse 21. Howbeit, this kind goeth not out 
[that is, is not cast out] but by prayer and fasting. 
Our Lord does not mean to say that prayer and fast- 
ing were, in addition to faith, the efficient means of 
casting out this particular kind of demons. Demons, 
of whatsoever kind they are, are cast out by faith; 
but prayer and fasting belong to every act of faith 
that removes mountains, and this in proportion to 
the greatness of the obstacle that is to be removed by 
faith. The meaning of the Lord's words, therefore, 
is that they lacked sufficient faith to expel the de- 
mon, because they had not properly strengthened 
their faith by fasting and prayer. Very appropriate 
is the remark of Lange : " Whoever wishes to re- 
move mountains must enter into God's will by 
prayer, and, in the same degree, free himself from 
the world by fasting. Thus being in unison with 
God and opposed to the world, nothing will be im- 
possible to him. The greater the evil is which he 
labors to remove, the more he must make use of 
these two auxiliaries in the life of faith." He that 
lives a life of prayer lives a life of faith, and the 
prayer of faith is never unavailing in whatever we 
undertake. Prayer itself is facilitated by fasting, 
sobriety, and temperance in all things, while an op- 
posite mode of life strengthens the flesh and weak- 
ens the spirit. Proper fasting makes the spirit more 
independent of the body, and thus man becomes bet- 
ter prepared to exert a saving influence upon others. 



40. THE LORD'S SECOND ANNOUNCEMENT 
URRECTION. PAYMENT OP THE 

Verses 32-37. 



OF HIS DEATn AND RES 
TEMPLE TAX. 



(22) And while tliey abode In Galilee, Jesus said unto them, The Son of man 
shall he betrayed into the hands of men : (23) And they shall kill him, and the 
third day he shall be raised again. And they were exceeding sorry. (24) And 
when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute movey came to 
Peter, and said, Doth not your master pay tribute? (25) He saith, Yes. And 
when he was come into the house, Jesus prevented him, saying, What thinkest 
thou, Simon ? of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute ? of their 
own children, or of strangers ? (26) Peter saith unto him, Of strangers. Jesus 
saith unto him, Then are the children free. (27) Notwithstanding, lest we should 
offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast a hook, and take up the fish that first 
cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of 
money : that take, and give unto them for me and thee. 



Verses 22, 23. And while they abode in Gali- 
lee — literally, while they were going about or pass- 
ing through Galilee. Mark (ix, 30) says: " And they 
departed thence, [that is, from the region of Cesarea 



Philippi,] and passed through Galilee ; and he would 

not that any man should know it: for he taught his 

disciples " Our Lord wishes to be alone with his 

' disciples, to impress upon them still more what he 



440 



MATTHEW XVII, 22-27. 



tad told them concerning his approaching death and 
resurrection; and for the purpose of a solemn review 
of all they had seen and heard of him, he takes 
them back to those places where they could most 
vividly recall the principal scenes of his ministry. — 
Jesus said ukto them. According to Luke (ix, 44) 
he prefaced his second announcement of his suffer- 
ing and death by the words: "Let these sayings sink 
down into your ears." — The Son of man shall be 

BETRAYED INTO THE HANDS OF MEN. Luke says : 

'' The Son of man shall be delivered into the hands 
of men." Mark: "The Son of man is delivered 
into the hands of men." While the other Evangel- 
ists speak simply of his being delivered up into the 
hands of his murderers, Matthew gives us, addition- 
ally, the first announcement of the treachery by 
which our Lord was to be delivered up into the 
hands of the Jewish rulers. The delivering up of 
the Son of man is represented by Mark as already 
being done, in the same sense in which Peter de- 
clared to the Jews: "Him, being delivered by the 
determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye 
have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and 
slain." As he, however, was not yet delivered up in 
fact till men had seized and slain him, Luke speaks 
of it as yet future. — And they weee exceeding 
sorry. Mark (ix, 32) says: "But they understood 
not that saying, and were afraid to ask him." Luke, 
(ix, 45 :) " But they understood not this saying, and 
it was hid from them, that they perceived it not : and 
they feared to ask him of that saying." Unable to 
understand how Christ, the Son of the living God, 
the holy, sinless Son of man, could be subject to 
death, they thought their Master's words must have 
some metaphorical meaning, but as he had spoken 
in so plain terms to them, they were afraid to put 
any further questions to him. 

Verse 24. And when they were come to Caper- 
naum. " Let us remember that Jesus, traveling 
from Cesarea Philippi, had come southward into 
Galilee, and, with the disciples, was living retired 
from intercourse with other men, seeking a season 
for them and for himself of solemn meditation. In 
the course of their journeying they came to Caper- 
naum, for that was the city in which Peter had his 
home, and which Jesus had so often visited, and in 
which he had dwelt so long, that it had come to be 
called his own city. Here necessarily they come 
into contact with men, though it is noticeable that, 
on this occasion, there is no crowding round the 
footsteps of Jesus, no urgent solicitations for his 
aid, no sick waiting to be healed. They come now 
into this town unnoticed and unsaluted — a very re- 
markable fact at this era in Christ's history, and im- 
porting either a supernatural influence exerted over 
the minds of the people, in order to leave the disci- 
ples still free to meditate even there, or, what is 
more probable, that these people were shutting them- 
selves up in the darkness of unbelief, because they 
had not known the time of their merciful visitation. 



This fact itself also was fitted to deepen and extend 
the spirit of reflective meditation in the minds of the 
disciples. The only salutation they meet with is that 
recorded in the text." — They that received [the] 

TRIBUTE-MONEY CAME TO PETER AND SAID, DoTH NOT 

your Master pay tribute ? The Greek word, trans- 
lated ti'ibute^noney, is ra <Md"gaxp-a. This didrachm 
was exactly the sum which we find mentioned in 
Ex. xxx, 11-16, as the ransom of the soul, to be 
paid by every Israelite above twenty years old, to the 
service and current expenses of the tabernacle. 
From 2 Kings xii, 4, and 2 Chron. xxiv, 6-9, we 
find that this impost was kept up for the maintenance 
of the Temple. Originally it seems designed to 
have been paid only on the comparatively-rare occa- 
sions of numbering the people, but it grew, in course 
of time, into an annual payment. After the Baby- 
lonish captivity, at all events, it assumed the charac- 
ter of an annual tax. In Nehemiah x, 32, it is 
spoken of as an annual payment. The amount, in- 
deed, is specified at only one-third of a shekel, for 
the service of the house of God ; but this restriction 
on the amount may be regarded as a kind of com- 
promise necessitated by the distresses incident to the 
recent return from captivity, and the hostilities to 
which they were exposed from their neighbors. Jo- 
sephus mentions that it was an annual payment in 
his time ; and Philo, who also tells us how conscien- 
tiously and ungrudgingly it was paid by the Jews of 
the dispersion, as well as by those of Palestine, so 
that, in almost every city there was a sacred treasury 
for the collection of these dues, some of which came 
from cities beyond the limits of the Roman Empire. 
It was only after the destruction of Jerusalem that 
the Roman Emperor Vespasian caused this capita- 
tion tax to be henceforward paid into the imperial 
treasury, instead of the treasury of the Temple, 
which now no longer existed. Of this Emperor, Jo- 
sephus says : " He imposed a tribute on the Jews, 
wheresoever they lived, requiring each to pay yearly 
two drachms to the Capitol, as before they were 
wont to pay them to the Temple at Jerusalem." It 
becomes sufficiently evident from this testimony that 
at the period of Christ's earthly ministry this tax 
was paid annually by all the devout Jews for the 
service of the Temple. The text does not say that 
it was the publicans who came asking this tribute of 
Peter. Those men who came do not demand pay- 
ment as a right which they could enforce. They 
merely put the question, " Doth not your master pay 
tribute ?" Such a mode of putting it is just what 
we might expect, when payment was not a thing of 
legal compulsion, but a voluntary act of legal piety. 
It, is equivalent to saying: Is your master a good 
and pious son of Abraham? is he willing to give 
this proof of his friendly regard to the Temple and 
its services, and the God who is there worshiped? 
Peter might have answered no, without another result 
than this, that his master would have been set down 
as one indifferent, or as an enemy to the Temple 



HOW THE LORD PROVIDES FOR THE TEMPLE TAX. 



441 



service, which was just the thing the Pharisees and 
scribes were anxious to charge against him. They 
avoid the Master himself, which a publican would 
scarcely have done." The question of the tax-gath- 
erer seems to show that he had not previously col- 
lected it of the Lord. It is very probable that up to 
this time no tax had been demanded of Jesus, he 
being regarded as a prophet, and that the demand 
was now made, for the first time, at the instigation 
of his enemies. It is also said that the Rabbins 
were exempt from it. Others think that it was the 
long absence of the Lord from Capernaum which 
caused the question of the receivers. 

Verse 25. He saith, Yes. The Lord had either 
paid this tribute before, or Peter inferred, from the 
general respect paid by Christ to all religious duties, 
that he would pay it; and doubtless he would have 
paid it at once himself, if he had had the means at 
hand. " Yet there was here, on the part of the 
apostle," says Trench, " a failing to recognize the 
higher dignity of his Lord. It was not in this spirit 
that he had said a little while before : ' Thou art the 
Christ, the Son of the living God.' He had lost 
sight of his Lord's true position and dignity, that he 
was a Son over his own house, not a servant in an- 
other's house; that he was the Head of the theoc- 
racy, not one of its subordinate members. It was 
not for him, who was ' greater than the Temple,' and 
himself the true Temple, (John ii, 21,) identical with 
it according to its spiritual significance, and in whom 
the Shekinah glory dwelt, to pay dues for the sup- 
port of that other Temple built with hands, which 
was now fast losing its significance, since the true 
tabernacle was set up, which the Lord had pitched, 
and not man. It is, then, for the purpose of bring- 
ing back Peter, and with him the other disciples, to 
the true recognition of himself, that the Lord puts 
to him the question which follows; and being en- 
gaged, through Peter's hasty imprudence, to the 
rendering of the didrachm, yet by the manner of the 
payment he reasserts the true dignity of his person, 
which it was of all importance for the disciples that 
they should not lose sight of or forget. The mir- 
acle, then, was to supply a real need — slight, indeed, 
as an outward need, for the money could assuredly 
have been in some other and more ordinary ways 
procured; but as an inner need, most real: in this, 
then, differing in its essence from the apocryphal 
miracles, which are continually mere sports and 
freaks of power, having no ethical motive or mean- 
ing whatever." — And when he was come into the 
house, Jesus prevented him; that is, anticipated 
his communication, showing that he was acquainted 
with it already. — What thinkest thou, Simon? 
On what principle hast thou been promising this for 
me? — Of whom do the kings op the earth take 
custom or tribute? The Greek word for the trib- 
ute is Kf/vaog. not ra Sifyaxfia. Our Lord argues from 
the less to the greater, from things earthly to things 
heavenly. The kings of the earth seem to be men- 



tioned in contrast with the King of heaven, as in Ps. 
ii, 2. — Of their own children, or of strangers? 
Kings do not tax their own children. The term 
strangers means here simply those that are not their 
children, that stand not in so near a relation to the 
king. 

Verse 26. Then are the children [literally, the 
sons] free. God is the King of the Temple ; con- 
sequently his Son is free from the Temple tax. It 
is significant, however, that the Lord does not say, 
"Then I am free, as the Son of God," but that he 
extends the right of exemption, which properly speak- 
ing belonged to him alone as the Son, also to his 
disciples, as it were, sons with him! They are no 
longer servants, like the legal Jews, but children of 
God, members of the kingdom, and as such exempt 
from all compulsory contributions toward the sup- 
port of the Temple. (Comp. ch. xii, 8.) They be- 
long to a higher dispensation than those for whom 
the payment of the Temple tax was enacted. 

Verse 27. Notwithstanding lest we should 
offend them; that is, lest we should make them be- 
lieve that we despise the Temple. Although the 
Savior was fully conscious of being superior to the 
Old Testament economy, (ch. xii, 8,) yet he sub- 
mitted to it in every respect, neither setting aside 
nor exempting himself from any point of the estab- 
lished Temple service, till he had finished his work 
upon earth. Since he was not recognized as the 
Son of God beyond the narrow circle of his friends, 
he graciously takes into consideration the offense 
which his refusal to pay the tribute would have given, 
as if he and his disciples despised the Temple. If he 
insists in some instances upon it, that he has as the 
Messiah the power to subordinate some regulations 
of the law to his will, (see ch. xii, 8 ; comp. John vii, 
21, etc.,) it must be borne in mind that he did it in 
repelling the attacks of his adversaries, for which 
purpose it was absolutely necessary to maintain his 
Messianic right to complete or perfect the law, (ch. v, 
17.) — Thou shalt find a piece of money, in Greek 
a stater, an Attic coin, equal to four silver drachma?, 
or sixty cents in our money; the Temple tax being 
thirty cents per head, it was just enough for Jesus 
and Peter. All attempts to get rid of a miracle, and 
to make the Evangelist to be telling an ordinary 
transaction, as the scheme for instance of Paulus, 
who will have it that the Lord bade Peter go and 
catch as many fish as would sell for the required 
sum, need no refutation. We have also seen that 
the miracle had a deep moral significance, and was 
called for by special circumstances. If our Lord 
had not paid the money, they would have charged 
him with contempt of the Temple; if he had paid it 
in an ordinary way, he would have compromised his 
Messianic dignity, which under the circumstances 
was called in question. From making use of the 
fisherman Peter to perform this miracle on a fish, 
we may also infer that our Lord intended to make 
an indelible impression upon him. The issue of the 



442 



MATTHEW XVIII, 1-14. 



bidding is not told us, but we can not doubt that 
Peter went to the neighboring lake, cast in his hook, 
and found, according to Christ's word, the money 
that was needed in the mouth of the first fish that 
ascended from the deeper waters to his hook. " The 
miracle does not lie only in a foreknowledge on the 
Lord's part that so it should be in the first fish which 
came up; but he himself, by the mysterious potency 
of his will, which ran through all nature, drew the 
particular fish to that spot at that moment, and or- 
dained that it should swallow the hook. (Compare 
Jonah i, 17.) 'The Lord had prepared a great fish 
to swallow up Jonah.' Thus we see the sphere of 



animal life unconsciously obedient to his will; that 
also is not out of God, but moves in him, as does 
every other creature. (1 Kings xiii, 24; xx, 86; 
Amos ix, 3.)" (Trench.) — For me akd thee. The 
Lord never puts himself on the same footing with 
his disciples. (Comp. John xx, 17.) The prepo- 
sition, translated for, signifies literally in place of, 
and is another proof that the tribute money here 
spoken of was the redemption money, commanded 
in Ex. xxx, 12. Peter was a resident of Capernaum, 
as Jesus himself was to a certain extent. The other 
disciples had nothing to pay at Capernaum, because 
they did not reside there. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

§41. CHRIST ENJOINS UPON HIS DISCIPLES THAT WHICH SHOULD EVER 
CHARACTERIZE THE MEMBERS OF HIS CHURCH. 

What Matthew records in this chapter of our Lord's instructions falls naturally into 
three divisions, which are connected with each other by one fundamental idea; they all 
treat of true brotherly love that proceeds from humility. The question of the disciples, 
which of them would be the greatest in the kingdom of God, induces the Lord to show 
unto them that his kingdom, his Church, would be the very opposite of the kingdoms of 
this world. "The foundation of his kingdom," says Lange, "is the willingness to serve 
in love. (Vs. 1-14.) Upon this foundation the Church must exhibit a holy severity by 
maintaining proper discipline on the one hand, (vs. 15-20,) and on the other a holy 
leniency by her readiness to forgive penitent offenders. (Vs. 21-35.) " 

A. HUMILITY— THE SOURCE OP TRUE BROTHERLY LOVE. 

Instead of steadily keeping before their minds the subject of meditation, which Christ 
gave them, namely, his twice-predicted suffering and death, the disciples seem to have 
tenaciously clung to the hope that their Master would before long vindicate his Messiah- 
ship against his enemies by setting up his kingdom, more or less in accordance with their 
Jewish notions. This hope had no doubt been greatly confirmed by what our Lord had 
said in answer to Peter's confession and by the declaration, that some would not taste of 
death till they should see the Son of man coming in his kingdom. It, therefore, naturally 
became a question of personal interest to them who should fill the highest places in that 
kingdom, the more so, as their Master had made a distinction among them, by permitting 
only Peter and James and John to accompany him on the mountain, where they had 
seen and heard things of which they were not permitted yet to speak. There arose, 
consequently, on the way before they came to Capernaum (Mark ix, 34) a dispute, which 
should be the greatest among them. After his conversation with Peter about the payment 
of the Temple tax — which was well adapted to prepare the disciples for the instruction 
Jesus is about to give them on humility, inasmuch as he, rather than to raise a dispute 
with the people about his immunities and dignities, consented, though the acknowledged 
Son of God, to be dealt with as a servant in his Father's house by paying the redemption 
money — our Lord, knowing (according to Luke ix, 47) the feeling by which they were 
moved, asked them (according to Mark) what they had been disputing about by the way. 
They, obviously abashed by his question — from which as well as from the subsequent 
admonitions (compare Mark) we may infer that their dispute had been animated, and 



SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF CHRIST'S CHURCH. 



443 



that they had probably wounded each other's feelings by angry words — at first make no 
reply. But afterward, considering that the Lord knew already what they had been 
disputing about, they took courage to put to Jesus, apart from their personal dispute, the 
general question, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Though there is an appar- 
ent discrepancy in the statements of the three Evangelists, there is evidently nothing 
contradictory in them. Luke's account is the shortest; Mark gives the warning against 
offenses with its occasion most fully, but Matthew gives some minor points that are 
wanting in Mark. As appears from Mark and Luke, the discourse was interrupted by a 
question of John on another subject. "But," says Stier, "as the Lord was not diverted 
by this interruption from pursuing the train of his thoughts, till the question of the dis- 
ciples, is fully answered and disposed of, so Matthew is not diverted from laying before us 
the words of Christ, spoken on this occasion, as a well-connected and significant whole." 

"Verses 1—14. (Compare Mark ix, 33-50; Luke ix, 46-50.) 

(1) At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest 
in the kingdom of heaven? (2) And Jesiis called a little child unto him, and set 
him in the midst of them, (3) and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be con- 
verted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of 
heaven. (4) Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the 
same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (5) And whoso shall receive one such 
little child in my name receiveth me. (6) But whoso shall offend one of these 
little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged 
about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. (7) Woe unto 
the world because of offenses ! for it must needs be that offenses come ; but woe to 
that man by whom the offense cometh ! (8) Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot 
offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee : it is better for thee to enter into 
life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into ever- 
lasting fire. (9) And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee : 
it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to 
be cast into hell fire. (10) Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones ; 
for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my 
Father which is in heaven. (11) For the Son of man is come to save that which 
was lost. (12) How think ye ? if a man have a hundred sheep, and one of them 
be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mount- 
ains, and seeketh that which is gone astray? (13) And if so be that he find it, 
verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine 
which went not astray. (14) Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in 
heaven, that one of these little ones should perish. 



Verse 1. What preceded this question has already 
been stated in the introductory remarks. — Who is 
the greatest [literally, who, then, is the greater^] 
in the kingdom of heaven? "The particle then, 
unfortunately omitted in our common version, shows 
that the question in Matthew grew out of just such 
an incident as is fully narrated by Mark." (Owen.) 
This question indicates that the disciples had not 
yet a proper conception of the spiritual nature of 



the kingdom of God. Our Lord teaches them that 
while in the kingdoms of the world all strive to at- 
tain the highest rank, in his kingdom one shall rise 
only in the degree in which he humbles himself to 
raise others. Incidentally we may also infer from 
the question of the disciples, that they had not un- 
derstood the words addressed to Peter (ch. xvi, 19) 
in the sense of the Church of Rome; they were as 
yet quite uncertain as to who should be the prince 



444 



MATTHEW XVIII, 1-14 



of the apostles, whether it would be one of the Lord's 
brothers, or the disciple whom Jesus loved, or Peter. 

Verse 2. And Jesus called a little child unto 
him, (waiS'iov,) here evidently a little boy, small enough 
to be taken in the arms, as Mark relates, and large 
enough to understand and follow a call. It seems 
also, as Stier justly remarks, that it was a very well- 
bred child, that came at once at the call of the 
friendly stranger and did not object to being set by 
him in the midst of twelve other strangers. That, 
however, not the character of this individual child — 
tradition says that it was the martyr Ignatius — but 
that of children in general is spoken of, needs 
scarcely to be mentioned. "Jesus makes this one 
child the representative of the childlike character in 
general as a type and pattern for the members of 
the kingdom of God. Although the general de- 
pravity of human nature shows itself also in the 
child, yet humility, the absence of all assumption, is 
characteristic of childhood; the prince is not ashamed 
of playing with the beggar's child. This trait is here 
the point of comparison, the more so as a child is 
not conscious of its humility." (Olshausen.) 

Verse 3. Except ye be converted; that is, lit- 
erally, except ye turn, namely, from that disposition 
of mind which makes you seek preeminence or 
power over others. " Conversion in a general sense," 
remarks Dr. Whedon, "implies our being turned by 
the influence of truth and the Divine Spirit, with the 
consenting act of our own will from our course as 
sinners to the ways of religion." — And become as 
little children; that is, in self-obliviousness and 
simplicity. The absence of self-importance and self- 
seeking in little children is no proof of their not 
partaking of the general depravity of human nature, 
inasmuch as it is the natural consequence of their 
helplessness and dependence on others. This sense 
of helplessness and dependence on others being 
naturally wanting in adults, the latter come to this 
childlike disposition only through a moral process, 
through an act of humble self-renunciation and de- 
pendence upon God. ■ — Ye shall not enter into 
the kingdom or heaven. Instead of occupying a 
position of eminence in the kingdom of God, ye are 
altogether unfitted for it, except ye attain to the very 
reverse of the disposition, which you have just shown 
by your dispute. 

Verse 4. Whosoever, therefore, shall humble 
himself. The future indicates that the disciples 
needed a change of mind to make them humble. ■ — 
As this little child — not as this little child humbles 
itself, but as this little child is naturally humble. — 
The same is the greatest; that is, greater than oth- 
ers, according as he is more humble than others. 
There are, indeed, different degrees of honor and 
bliss in the kingdom of God. (Comp. 1 Cor. xv, 
39-41.) But God's rule is the very opposite of that 
of men. Among men he stands highest in honor 
and influence, that knows to make the most of him- 
self — that pushes himself forward, and makes people 



talk of him; but God will look to the humble; he 
has respect unto the lowly. "An injunction of hu- 
mility was the first word taught in the Sermon on 
the Mount, when he opened his mouth and said, 
' Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the king- 
dom of heaven.' It was the special lesson of his 
whole life. To him, beyond all question, belonged 
the highest place in the kingdom. In what way did 
he reach it ? Even by the very path which he now 
indicates to them and to us — by becoming the least 
of all and the servant of all. It is this which de- 
termines the dignity and glory of the future state. 
Christ, the Son of the living God, the king of this 
kingdom, has become the lowest of all — has de- 
scended, and will yet descend, into greater depths — 
has given up all to become possessed of all, and will 
die in order to live. He has become the servant of 
all, even of the lowest and most abject and de- 
graded—the servant as well as the friend of pub- 
licans and sinners. This universal service is the 
glory of the crucified One, and for us there is no 
other pathway to glory." (Wilson.) 

Verse 5. And whoso shall receive one such 
little child. The question of the disciples is an- 
swered. But the Lord proceeds to show his disciples 
that from true humility proceeds that love which 
does not despise or neglect one such little child, by 
which term we have to understand one that appears 
as insignificant as a little child, or one that has be- 
come as humble and unassuming as the child in 
question. The word "little child" is used in a gen- 
eral sense, and in contrast with the apparently great. 
To understand what the Savior says, in verses 5-14, 
of little children in a natural sense, is evidently for- 
bidden by the scope and object of the discourse, 
which was occasioned by the disciples' question in 
verse 1. At the same time, verses 5, 10, and 14 
may be practically applied also to little children in 
the natural sense of the word. — Shall receive. 
Receiving is the opposite of a cold neglect, or a 
haughty turning off. — In my name ; that is, on my 
account, for my sake. (Comp. xxv, 40.) Between 
this and the following verse falls the question of 
John, recorded by Mark and Luke, respecting a per- 
son who had cast out demons, and had been forbid- 
den to do so by the disciples, because he did not be- 
long to their number. The internal connection of 
this question with the discourse under consideration 
will be considered in Mark. 

Verse 6. But whoso shall offend one of these 
little ones, which believe in me. The idea of 
"offending the little ones" follows very properly that 
of receiving them, (v. 5;) it expresses, in fact, only 
its other side, and the meaning of these words is, 
accordingly, the little ones are so dear unto the 
Lord that what is done for them he considers and 
rewards as done unto himself, and whoever does 
them harm is severely punished for it by the Lord 
himself. The giving of offense or causing to sin 
seems to refer here, as appears from the connection 



SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF CHRIST'S CHURCH. 



445 



in Mark, especially to a hierarchical spirit, a lording 
over the little ones. " The avoiding of offenses ob- 
viously involves the same principle as brotherly love, 
and is even more evidently the offspring of humility. 
For the chief source of division and strife, the cause 
or occasion of offense among men, has been the 
assertion of self. He who walks humbly with God — 
whose interests have all become identified with Jesus 
Christ, because he has heard the Lord's voice, and is 
resting trustfully and in conscious helplessness on 
the bosom of Jesus — such a disciple is not likely to 
offend his brethren. It is when pride takes the place 
of humility, when a believer forsakes the Lord, and 
seeks the promotion of his own ends, and the grati- 
fication of his own ambition, that he becomes offens- 
ive to other disciples. Christian faith always implies 
brotherhood — equality, and not lordship — the conse- 
cration of all gifts and graces, with a humble heart, 
to the s-ervice of Jesus Christ. It does not imply 
sameness, nor hinder the utmost diversity of gifts, op- 
portunities, capability and usefulness in the Church, 
but it implies that the believer lives in and by Christ, 
and that he and the least endowed are alike serv- 
ants of a common Lord, to whom they are indebted 
for every thing, and in whose service they are willing 
to expend all they have." (Wilson.) — It were 
better for him. The meaning is, a man had better 
suffer the most dreadful death than to live on, to 
commit the sin of offending one of Christ's little 
ones. To be cast into the deep sea, with a large 
millstone round the neck, so that even the body is 
irrecoverable, was a proverbial expression for a cer- 
tain and most terrible death. 

Verse 7. Woe unto the world because of of- 
fenses! The common interpretation of this pas- 
sage is that a woe is pronounced upon the world on 
account of the offenses which it gives, that is, the 
obstructions it lays in the way of the spread of the 
kingdom of God, either by its persecutions or by its 
corrupting influences. Lange is the only commen- 
tator who interprets the passage differently, taking 
the word woe rather as an exclamation of pity than 
a denunciation of judgment, and understanding the 
words thus: "Alas for the world, on account of the 
offenses which it receives from false members of the 
Church!" — For it must needs be that offenses 
come. "Luke has: 'It is impossible but that of- 
fenses will come;' and Paul says: 'There must be 
also heresies among you, that they which are ap- 
proved may be made manifest among you.' There 
are two facts here which all philosophy is bound to 
accept as verities, but which no philosophy can logic- 
ally reconcile. One is Divine prescience and the 
other is human responsibility. Here is Divine pre- 
science. ' It must needs be that offenses come.' 
Christ foresaw all the opposition that in all future 
ages should arise to retard the onward march of his 
religion in the world. He knew that the eternal an- 
tagonism between the '■two seeds' would produce 
these ' offenses.' He knew that the more his truth 



spread the more offenses would come; as the brighter 
and warmer the sun the more insects crowd the air. 
But foreknowing does not involve foreordaining. 
He foresees all future evil; but he does not prede- 
termine it. All his predestination in the matter is, 
that souls shall be free ; free to obey and disobey ; 
free to do evil and good. Here is human responsi- 
bility. Though 'offenses' must come, 'woe unto 
that man by whom they come.' The same idea 
comes out in Christ's statement concerning Judas: 
' The Son of man goeth as it is written of him, but 
woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is be- 
trayed.' Sin may appear a necessity in our poor 
logic, but it is not so in our consciousness. We feel 
that the sinful act is ours ; that we are its origina- 
ting cause; that our moral instincts will not allow us 
to charge it upon any object out of us, upon any de- 
cree concerning us, or upon any arrangements ante- 
cedent to us. The simple act is ours. We feel it. 
Hence our self-crimination and remorse. No argu- 
ment can destroy the feeling. Though Heaven fore- 
saw all the demons in our nature that have figured 
in human history, and all the wicked deeds, even to 
the utmost minutioz, they were not the less demons 
on that account. Do not ask me to reconcile Divine 
prescience or Divine preordination with human free- 
dom and human responsibility. I can not — no one 
has ever done so; no one can; he does not know his 
mental position in the universe who dares attempt 
it." (Homilist.) — But woe to that man by whom 
the offense cometh. " Woe to the man, even were 
he an apostle," says Stier, "he is an offense and a 
devil among the twelve. Perhaps, as was the case at 
other times, at the anointing of Christ in Bethany, 
Judas may have been the originator, or at least the 
promoter, of the evil thoughts connected with the 
unhappy dispute among the disciples. This, how- 
ever, is only conjectural and uncertain. With more 
certainty we may apply the word of Christ most 
justly to another. Woe unto him who pretends to 
be the greatest in the kingdom of God, the pre- 
tended successor of Peter, the overbearing ' servant 
of all servants of God,' who with false key shuts the 
kingdom of heaven, offends and corrupts the faith- 
ful — nay, builds up, instead of the Church of Christ, 
a world full of offenses, as the Babylon which is 
afterward to be thrown down, as a millstone is cast 
into the sea. (Rev. xviii, 21.)" 

Verses 8, 9. If we understand by " the offenses," 
in verse 1, the offenses which the world gives, the 
connection would be: "If the Church, in resisting 
and overcoming her external foes, is strengthened 
and purified, how much more will it be so in the 
conflict between the flesh and the spirit within a 
man's own soul! Do not, therefore, be ever looking 
outward in order to detect and to complain of the 
offenses which come upon you. It may be that the 
offense is within yourself." But if we adopt Lange's 
view, our Lord proceeds to show his disciples how 
they may become stumbling-blocks to others, by 



446 



MATTHEW XVIII, 1-14 



suffering their hands, feet, or eyes to be a stumbling- 
block for themselves. With the exception of the of- 
fending foot, the same caution had been given before 
in the Sermon on the Mount. (Chap, v, 29, 30.) 
But here the offending members have a different 
meaning. The Sermon on the Mount speaks of 
offenses — that is, allurements to sin through the 
outward senses — while the members mentioned seem 
to represent here certain states of the mind or heart. 
Lange has the following comment: "If, in interpret- 
ing these figurative expressions, we take the occa- 
sion into account, which is recorded by Mark, it ap- 
pears probable that John was in danger of commit- 
ting a sin through an improper use of his hand ; 
that is, by a wrong manifestation of his energetic 
character. He attempted, in his zeal, to exercise 
discipline with unwonted severity. Jesus counsels 
him, therefore, to cut off the offending hand, that is, 
to restrain his too violent temper. But as for one 
disciple the hand can easily become a cause of of- 
fense, so for another the eye, the organ of light, the 
organ for receiving and imparting instruction ; for 
false doctrines proceed generally from the unre- 
strained, dogmatical zeal of such as have more call- 
ing to serve the Church with their hands and feet 
than with their eyes. (James iii, 1.) Again, a dis- 
ciple may mistake his particular calling with re- 
gard to the cause of evangelical missions, the work 
of his feet. It may be that, instead of becoming a 
missionary in the true sense, his zeal degenerates 
into a proselyting spirit." As to the meaning of 
cutting off, plucking out, see chap, v, 29, 30, and 
Mark ix, 43-48. 

Verse 10. Hitherto our text has been parallel 
with that of Mark ix. The remainder of the dis- 
course is given by Matthew alone. — Their angels 
in heaven. Some interpreters understand by their 
angels the disembodied spirits of little children after 
death ; but the Scripture no where uses the word 
angel in this sense. In support of this view the pas- 
sage in Acts xii, 15, can not be appealed to; for the 
notion that it was Peter's angel was founded on the 
general belief that the guardian angel of a man re- 
sembled that man in appearance. Moreover, how 
could the Lord have said, " They always behold the 
face of my Father," representing the act as going 
on then, if he had understood by the angels the spir- 
its of those children after their death, which had not 
yet taken place ? It is evident, therefore, that our 
Lord speaks here of guardian angels. That the 
angels are " ministering spirits, sent forth to minis- 
ter for them who shall be heirs of salvation," (Heb. 
i, 14,) is an explicit doctrine of the Holy Scriptures. 
But this is the only passage from which we may in- 
fer that each child of God has some angel, specially 
devoted to his service. " This idea is reasonable. 
If angels minister to men at all, must they not have 
some method of action — something like a division 
of labor among them ? Great as they may be, they 
are still finite; and can finite beings attend to all 



alike ? Impossible. They must have their own 
spheres. Moreover, judging from analogy, may we 
not suppose that as among men there is a mental 
sympathy which gives different men a special inter- 
est in certain individuals, and thus qualifies them to 
render special service, so there may be mental sym- 
pathy between some angelic spirits and certain men 
which does not exist between others, and which in- 
duces and enables them to render service to them 
which they render not to others." (Homilist. ) " The 
ministry of the angels is surely a high privilege of 
God's people. Yet, perhaps more than any other 
pertaining to them, it is practically lost sight of. 
The Lord sends these ministering spirits to guard 
his people and to uphold their footsteps in the rough 
pilgrimage of life, and they, for the most part, are 
unconscious of the honor. The Lord warns men to 
respect and deal tenderly with his little ones because 
of this ministry, and they, in great measure, do not 
believe in its existence. Yet it is a truth, doubtless 
most useful to be kept in mind, both by the Church 
and by the world, in order both to assure the hearts 
of God's people in the hour of tribulation, and to 
awe the world into deference and respect for the holy 
seed. Let us briefly notice, therefore, some of the 
facts and declarations regarding this angelic minis- 
try to the saints which the Scriptures have preserved, 
that we may understand somewhat of its nature and 
uses. They are represented as constant attendants 
on him whose throne is in_ heaven, and whose king- 
dom ruleth over all. They are employed by him as 
agents in the government of the world. From the 
beginning of the world's history to its consumma- 
tion angels have had to do with the affairs of men, 
executing and carrying into effect the will of God 
regarding them. But their special office and em- 
ployment is in relation to the heirs of salvation. 
They are ministering spirits sent forth to minister to 
them. This ministry is not a fresh revelation to the 
New Testament Church. The saints of old rejoiced 
in the knowledge of it, and gathered fresh confi- 
dence from it to sustain the good fight of faith. David 
again and again breaks out in songs of rejoicing con- 
fidence in the grace and efficacy of such a blessed 
ministry. ' The angel of the Lord encampeth about 
them that fear him, and delivereth them;' 'He 
shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee 
in all thy ways; they shall bear thee up in their 
hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.' Nor 
did that gracious ministry cease when Jesus came. 
It was then, indeed, that this service became more 
frequent and active. An angel announced the birth 
of Christ's forerunner, and to Mary he foretold the 
birth of Jesus, and a choir of them hailed in ever- 
during song his advent into this world of woe : 
' Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, 
good-will to men.' Angels attended the footsteps 
of the Son of man, and witnessed his agony, and 
strengthened him to bear it. They still watch the 
heavenly birth of souls, and spread joy in heaven 



SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF CHRIST'S CHURCH. 



447 



over every sinner that repenteth. Christ's little 
ones have their attendant angels, who wait upon 
them from their spiritual birth, and at length bear 
their souls to the place of rest. For we read that 
when Lazarus died he was carried by the angels into 
Abraham's bosom. The bodies of the saints even 
are committed to angelic care — Michael, the arch- 
angel, contending with the devil, disputed about the 
body of Moses — and they await them on the morning 
of the resurrection ; for when the Son of man shall 
come in the clouds of heaven, with power and great 
glory, he shall send his angels to gather his elect 
from the four winds, from the one "end of heaven to 
the other. It is true, indeed, that all this gracious 
ministry is invisible, but it is not on that account 
the less real. It is a spiritual ministry, but an effect- 
ual one. The vision of Jacob's ladder warrants the 
inference that it is by angels that the intercourse be- 
tween heaven and earth is maintained. Nor does 
the idea of such a ministry separate between us and 
the Lord himself. A gift or message is not less 
truly from the Lord that it is conveyed to me by the 
hands of an angel. The Lord is not less truly pres- 
ent with me that he makes an angel my ministering 
spirit. Nay, does not such a ministry help to bridge 
over in my thoughts the distance between me, a 
helpless, sinful creature, and the great God who 
filleth heaven and earth? The Lord standeth above, 
but the intervening space is occupied by his angels, 
who are spirits, and his ministers, who are a flame 
of fire. Does it not enlarge my spiritual apprehen- 
sion to know that I am thus environed by a spiritual 
agency, and that in the rough places of the world's 
pathway they are charged to bear me up in their 
hands? Does it not deepen my sense of the love 
of God that he hath appointed to me such a service, 
and that my angel is now beholding the face of my 
Father in heaven — that he is there already in the 
presence of God, and by his ministry has been ap- 
pointed to prepare me for that lofty station? I am, 
if a child of God, here called upon to wrestle not 
with flesh and blood, but with principalities and pow- 
ers, the rulers of the darkness of this world, with 
spiritual wickedness in high places. But as near to 
me as the wicked one, as watchful and more power- 
ful than he, is the minister sent forth from on high, 
to whose charge and safe-keeping I am committed, 
and who brings into the conflict the strength of the 
Omnipotent. He discerns the approach of the wick- 
ed one, and comprehends all his wiles, and meets 
him on his own battle-ground, and foils him there- 
more fruitful in good suggestions than the opposing 
spirit is in those that are evil. Surely it can not 
seem incredible to us that such spiritual agencies 
should exist and operate around and within us. 
Such a truth is not more mysterious than the work 
of the Spirit of God, whereby he quickens and re- 
news every saved soul. That agency is also unseen, 
unfelt, and known only by its results. In truth we 
live in a world in which the visible is neither the 



most powerful nor the most prominent agent. What 
are we ourselves but agencies, which, because we are 
possessed of an invisible spirit, exercise a control 
over all material things — that which is visible of us 
being the subjects and servants of that which is un- 
seen? Such, then, is the intelligent, active, and 
efficient ministry which God hath appointed for us, 
because he who was made a little lower than the 
angels hath been crowned with glory and honor. 
They worship him, and they serve his Church. Nor 
do they feel degraded by such a service, for lowly 
and poor though the little ones be, angelic minds are 
in such harmony with the mind of God that it is 
their highest pleasure to minister to those whom 
Jesus girts himself to serve, and for whom he will- 
ingly gave his life." (Wilson.) — Do always be- 
hold the face of my Father. Most commentators 
take these words for a designation of the very high- 
est angelic powers, who have always access to the 
presence of God, in a similar manner as Asiatic 
monarchs are accessible to only a few of their sub- 
jects, and these the most influential and powerful 
ones. (Esth. i, 14.) But it is more correct to con- 
sider the expression simply as referring to holy spir- 
its that are not separated from God, as men are. 
"The angels," says Stier, "are in heaven, and yet at 
the same time on earth ; for heaven is not locally 
circumscribed, and where angels are, there is heaven 
and the face of God, which they always behold. 
They behold always and every-where God's counte- 
nance, while they are, at the same time, like God 
himself, tenderly concerned for the little ones in- 
trusted to their care. (Ps. cxiii, 5, 6.)" 

Verse 11. The conjunction for states the reason 
why the little ones are the objects of heavenly care, 
and this is, at the same time, the strongest reason 
why they must not be despised. The train of rea- 
soning is this: "You, if standing in any friendly re- 
lation to God, are yourself a little one — if possessing 
any interest in the Savior, you were a lost one — if 
you are now saved, necessarily that was your con- 
dition. It behooves you to remember the hole of the 
pit out of which you have been dug, and not to be 
high-minded. If the profession you make of disci- 
pleship be not altogether a falsehood and hypocrisy, 
how can there arise such disputes and divisions 
among you as to preeminence and greatness? The 
Son of man came to save you when lost. And 
if now you have a sure footing on that rock on which 
whosoever buildeth shall never be put to shame, to 
what do you owe that position, and how are you able 
even for a moment to retain it? It is this salvation 
by Christ which creates and sustains in me the sen- 
timent of brotherly love. I can not despise any of 
his little ones, and therefore will shun all causes of 
offense whereby they might be grieved or injured. 
They become dear to me because they are proved to 
be so to Christ. If he has set his seal upon them aa 
his, they become mine also in the ties of a patient 
and ever-during affection. If to me it should be an 



448 



MATTHEW XVIII, 15-20. 



argument wherefore I ought not to be careless of 
the interests of those whom angels have been sent 
forth to minister unto — if, as children of the su- 
preme King, they are so royally attended and served, 
it is an argument weightier with me still that the Son 
of man came to save them — that they have a far 
more royal servitor, who has girt himself and has 
washed their feet. For this Son of man is he whom 
all the angels worship — the Lord himself — the crea- 
tor of the angels, and who, in his love, commissions 
them on their errands of mercy — even he who stood 
at the top of Jacob's ladder in his radiant glory, 
gracious even as thus revealed, and sending his 
winged messengers to fulfill his generous purposes — 
but more graciously manifested now that he has be- 
come man, the Son of man — that he has himself 
descended that ladder, not merely to convey some 
needed message to the poor and perishing, but to 
become himself one of them. This is his coming to 
the lost. He not merely willed and commanded that 
they should be saved, but himself came to do it." 
(Condensed from Wilson.) 

Verses 12, 13. This parable is given (Luke xv, 
4, etc.) in another connection and more expanded, 



(for which reason see the notes there.) Here we 
would merely say that in Luke the parable is spoken 
before the Pharisees, who fancied that they were not 
in need of repentance — here before the New Testa- 
ment shepherds, whose special duty it is to seek 
what is lost, after the example of the chief Shepherd. 
Bengel remarks, very properly, that the words "if so 
be that he find it" mean that the shepherd seeks, in- 
deed, what is lost, but does not always find it. Grace 
is inviting, but not irresistible. 

Verse 14. Lange translates, correctly: "Even so 
there is no decree before your Father that," etc., 
adding that this passage denies, most positively, the 
existence of any Divine decrees fixing the reproba- 
tion of a single soul. — It is significant that it is 
said here, "Before your Father" — not, as in verse 
10, " My Father." This phraseology implies the in- 
junction that the disciples, as the children of God, 
should be like their Heavenly Father in tenderly 
caring for the little ones. The connection with the 
preceding is this: Just as it is not the will of the 
shepherd that a single one of his sheep be lost, so it 
is not the will of God that a single one of these little 
ones be offended. 



B. OF EVANGELICAL CHURCH DISCIPLINE, AND CHRIST'S PROMISE TO THOSE THAT 

MEET IN HIS NAME. 

In the preceding section the Lord had taught his disciples how they must become like 
children in humility, and how this humility manifests itself in such love as does not 
despise or offend the little ones. The idea of offenses forms the transition to this section. 
While it was said in the preceding section, "Do not trespass against thy brother," another 
aspect of this holy brotherly love is now presented ; namely, if thy brother trespass 
against thee, how will this thy love show itself then? Thou art not at liberty to ignore 
his sin or to approve of it, but in duty bound to set his fault truthfully before him that 
he maybe restored; if, however, all efforts fail to win him back, he is no longer to be 
regarded as a Christian brother. 

Having the Church of the future, the great communion of all that shall believe in 
him before his eyes, while addressing his disciples, the Lord proceeds to introduce the 
subject of binding and loosing, and promises his continual presence to his Church. In 
conformity with the principles laid down in verses 15-17, every Christian society or 
Church must settle difficulties that may exist or arise between its members, reforming, if 
possible, the offender, and exercising such discipline as the peace and the purity of the 
Church require. But as in all other affairs of the kingdom of God the unity of the spirit 
is indispensably necessary, so also here; by this unity the Church grows strong, for united 
prayer brings down heavenly blessings, and where such prayer is offered in the name of 
Christ, there the Lord constantly manifests his gracious presence. 

"Verses 15— 30. 

(15) Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him. his 
fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy 
brother. (16) But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, 
that iu the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. 
(17) And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the Church: but if he neglect 
to hear the Church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican. (18) 



SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF CHRIST'S CHURCH. 



449 



Yerily I say unto you, "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven ; 
and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (19) Again I 
say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching auy thing that 
they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. (20) 
For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst 
of them. 



Verse 15. Moreover, if thy brother shall 
trespass against thee. By the trespasses here 
spoken of are not to be understood public, scandal- 
ous offenses. To regulate the treatment of these, 
we have another Scriptural rule in 1 Tim. v, 20: 
" Them that sin rebuke before all, [or, as the words 
may be rendered, Them that sin before all rebuke,"] 
that others also may fear." The fact that the Church 
is dealing with an offense proves that it is already 
beyond the reach of private dealing, and can not be 
removed by personal remonstrance. The trespass 
which is to be made the subject of private dealing 
and remonstrance is one of such a kind as may be 
conclusively determined and settled by the offender 
and the man offended. It does not come necessa- 
rily under the jurisdiction of the Church. It is not 
a scandalous offense, but one which is inconsistent 
with true Christian life, and one of which I happen to 
be personally cognizant. I am not to make a scandal 
of it. It may be a personal offense against me, and 
not against the brethren at large. — Go and tell 
him his faflt — literally, convince him forthwith of 
his fault. Do not wait till he come to thee, but go 
at once to him in the zeal of love and meekness 
of spirit, and try to convince him in this spirit of the 
wrong he has done. Take pains to gain thy brother, 
to raise him up again, and what is said in Ps. cxli, 
5, and Prov. xxvili, 23, will either be realized at 
once, or, if not, thou hast at least done thy duty. 
Brotherly reproof has been laid down in Lev. xix, 
17, 18, as a duty of love. — Between thee and him 
alone; that is, without any other persons, whose 
very presence might exert an unfavorable influence 
by wounding his pride. To tell a man his faults by 
himself requires courage, and makes on the re- 
proved the impression of sympathy and love, where- 
by his heart may be won. The opposite course of 
conduct — to speak of a man's faults in his absence — 
argues want of love, and cowardice. John Wesley 
says in his sermon on "The Cure of Evil Speaking:" 
"It should be well observed, not only that this is a 
step which our Lord absolutely commands us to take, 
but that he commands us to take this first step be- 
fore we attempt any other. No alternative is al- 
lowed, no choice of any thing else; this is the way: 
walk thou in it. It is true, he enjoins on us, if need 
requires, to take two other steps ; but they are to be 
taken successively after this step, and neither of them 
before it." — Thou hast gained thy brother, by 
this wise and proper procedure, where so much was 
at stake. 



29 



Verse 16. But if he will not hear thee. His 
unwillingness may arise from two causes. Either he 
may not be convinced that the offense with which I 
charge him is an offense at all, or he may be de- 
termined not to give it up because he loves it. Nor 
does it necessarily follow that every thing which I 
believe to be an offense is really such. When I go 
to take the mote out of my brother's eye, it may be 
that there is a beam in my own eye, which hinders 
me from seeing clearly. It does not, therefore, fol- 
low that when I have gone alone, and charged my 
brother with an offense, and found him deaf to my 
remonstrances, that he is absolutely wedded to his 
sin. It may not be really an offense, or it may be 
only I that fails to convince him that it is. The 
text, however, assumes that the trespass is a real 
one. Yet my brother is not necessarily bound to 
believe me when I say that it is. If he is not at 
once convinced, it is my duty to prove to him his 
offense, and this is the second step in the healing 
process. — Take with thee one or two more. The 
persons thus to be used as witnesses or counselors 
ought to be men whom the offending brother es- 
teems and loves. — Here, also, as in the first step, 
our duty is plainly defined. So much, and neither 
more nor less — this, and not something else — -we are 
commanded to do. The time when this second step 
must be taken is likewise clearly defined — neither 
sooner nor later, after the first step has signally 
failed. — " It is important to notice what it is that 
these witnesses are called in to establish. It is not 
the fact that a certain thing has been done, but the 
fact that it is an offense or trespass. My brother, 
for example, may have been angry with me, and 
spoken unadvisedly with his lips. I go and remon- 
strate with him for this offense, and he refuses to 
hear me, and justifies his conduct. My brother does 
not dispute it, but he refuses to regard it as an 
offense. It is then and in these circumstances that 
I am to adduce my witness, not to establish the fact, 
but to establish my judgment regarding its nature. 
I am to return to him with these witnesses, in order 
to establish my verdict. The use of their testimony, 
added to my own, is to convince him that he has 
erred — that his plea of justification ought not to be 
sustained. He might, with some show of reason, 
resist my unaided testimony; for his witness may be 
assumed, in the first instance, to be as good as mine, 
and it may be alleged that neither he nor I, as the 
offender and the offended, are the best evidence as 
to the moral character of the action in question. I 



450 



MATTHEW XVIII, 15-20. 



am then to bring one or two more, who have no 
further interest in the matter than their common 
concern for the purity of Christ's house, to pro- 
nounce their judgment on the nature of the action, 
and, if possible, to convince him that he has sinned. 
It is here worthy of being noticed that I am not 
directed to do what very often is done in such cases, 
to the injury of Christian brotherhood — that when I 
have gone and spoken to my brother of his offense, 
and he has refused to hear me, I may then go and 
speak of it to whom I please, with a view at once 
of exposing his trespass and of vindicating myself. 
This course of action is not the brotherly treatment 
which the text commands and inculcates. I am not 
at liberty to go to one or two and make my state- 
ment of the case to them, and engage their sympa- 
thies in my behalf, and obtain their favorable opin- 
ion, and then glory over my brother's infirmity. I 
am warranted to do nothing in the matter directly 
for myself. My business is solely to remove this 
offense from my brother. My remonstrance and 
appeal must be repeated in his presence alone, and 
before these witnesses whom I have brought with 
me. Hearing the case there and thus, they are to 
judge of it, and give their verdict whether this be 
an offense which ought to be removed. Such a 
course of action, if my brother be really pure- 
hearted, and wish to free himself from all iniquity— 
from becoming a stone of stumbling and a rock 
of offense, will, in ordinary cases, be effectual. 
While my brother might, perhaps reasonably enough, 
refuse to listen to my testimony, he will scarcely dis- 
pute that of Christian brethren, who are competent 
to judge, and in circumstances to judge impartially. 
He will rather call in question his own previous 
judgment than their more deliberate and unimpas- 
sioned verdict. He must either be very sure that he 
is right, or thoroughly wedded to his offense, if the 
matter do not terminate here. Even yet, however, 
if he do not after all confess, and repent of his tres- 
pass, I am not warranted to give him up. There is 
another step which it is demanded of me to take. I 
must in no wise suffer sin to be upon my brother. 
It is assumed in this whole process that my one 
object is to remove this." (Wilson.) 

Verse 17. And if he shall neglect to hear 
them, tell it unto the Churcti. The word Church 
is found no where in the Gospels except here and in 
chap, xvi, 18. "In the passage before us," says 
Trench, in his " Synonyms of the New Testament," 
"it is applied to a single body of believers, united in 
one another and in Christ, and thus forming a com- 
munity by themselves, with all the privileges, ordi- 
nances, and means of grace essential to salvation, 
so that if every other Church in the world should be 
cut off, in this one would be left the germ of all that 
would be needed to evangelize and convert the world. 
In Matt, xvi, 18, the word ChvrcJi is used to express, 
in the abstract, that system of powers and agencies, 
human and Divine, by which the kingdom of heaven, 



the religion of Jesus, is to sustain, extend, and per- 
petuate itself in the world, so that the gates of death, 
the powers of evil, shall not prevail against it. It is 
also used, though very rarely, and never by our Sav- 
ior or in the Gospels, to designate the great body of 
the faithful throughout the world, [as one whole.] 
In this sense it is used by St. Paul in Col. i, 18. 
And he is the head of the body, the Church!' It 
ought to be borne in mind that the term Church is 
never used in the New Testament to designate a 
building, or a class of religious functionaries, or a 
system of doctrine or of worship distinguishing one 
portion of Christians from another portion. It is 
also true what Archbishop Whateley says, that " the 
Churches founded by the apostles were all quite in- 
dependent of each other, or of any one central 
body." Our Lord gives us here the characteris- 
tics of his Church, that is, a society of those that 
are united in his name. From the fact — for which 
the Savior provides — that some of its members give 
now and then offense, we must draw two inferences: 
1. That there is sin and offense found even among 
those that are united in the name of Christ ; 2. That 
the Head of the Church commands a separation of 
the incorrigible from the body of believers. — The 
question has been raised here whether this com- 
mand of Christ to tell it unto the Church is properly 
obeyed, if cases of discipline are disposed of not by 
the assembly of the whole membership, but by a 
number of persons selected for administering disci- 
pline. This question must, of course, be answered 
in the affirmative. The membership, as a body, like 
all other public bodies, has its constituted represent- 
atives. It is not necessary to adduce examples of a 
use of language which is so common. That which 
the government of a people does is represented as 
the deed of the people. Not to speak of the incon- 
venience of calling the whole membership together, 
there are cases which can not with propriety be 
laid before the whole membership consisting of 
males and females, old and young. — But if he 
neglect to hear the Church; that is, if he disre- 
gards the admonitions and counsels of the Church 
also. The term is stronger than " not hearing," im- 
plying something of contumacy. — Let him be unto 
thee as a heathen man and publican. Let him be 
looked upon as without the pale of the Church. 
This, however, does not include a breaking off of 
civil or social intercourse, but only the suspension 
of Church relationship, the loss of membership and 
the privileges connected therewith, exclusion from 
the sacrament, etc. The Church is not only author- 
ized but positively commanded to declare as out of 
its pale such transgressors as remain impenitent in 
spite of all efforts to reclaim them. This is required 
by the honor, peace, and purity of the Church : but 
her efforts to save the soul of the expelled member 
should by no means cease. Like the heathen and 
publican, he becomes a subject of missionary effort; 
and when he manifests genuine penitence, he may 



SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF CHRIST'S CHURCH. 



451 



and ought to be received again into the fellowship 
of the Church. On the importance of the exer- 
cise of Scriptural discipline Mr. Wilson remarks: 
"There is ever a tendency to fall away from the ex- 
ercise of strict and holy discipline. Yet from such 
a course there is certainly enough in the experience 
of the past to deter the Church. Where discipline 
ceases to be exercised, the Church declines, and is 
'nigh unto cursing.' Nourishing within her bosom 
that which she knows to be offensive, she is by grad- 
ual but sure process transforming herself into a 
mere worldly society, and she must either deliver 
over unto Satan those who offend or become herself 
a synagogue of Satan. When this hedge has been 
broken down, the Church becomes identified with 
the world. In estimating the effect of discipline, 
therefore, we are not to look merely to its influence 
on those who are directly subjected to it. It may 
be that it will not save them and deliver them from 
their offense ; but it discovers and casts out the dis- 
tempered from among the flock, and so far prevents 
the infection from spreading, and thus bringing dis- 
ease and death among them all. It is God's great 
sanitary law for preserving the health of his people." 
(Compare notes on last clause of verse 18, chap, xvi.) 
Verse 18. In what sense the power bestowed upon 
Peter, and through him to the whole apostolic college, 
is here extended to the whole Church unto the end of 
time, we have shown in our comment on xvi, 19. 
The legislative part of this power was confined to 
the apostles ; but as the laws enacted by the apostles 
must be acknowledged and carried out as the only 
rule of practice by every community of true believ- 
ers, the Church must necessarily possess the adminis- 
trative part of the power of binding and loosing. In 
other words, as far as the Church binds and looses 
in conformity with the apostolic laws, so far its acts 
are ratified in heaven. Stier expresses nearly the 
same in the following words: "It happens with the 
binding and loosing just as with the hearing of 
prayer. It is valid in heaven only because it is the 
witness of what was already valid in heaven, just as 
prayer is heard because, by the impulse of the Spirit 
in faith, it has already come forth from the supreme 
counsel and will. All binding and loosing is accom- 
plished by prayer, for the admonition is given in the 
love of praying faith, and the excluding rebuke is 
administered in the same love." Mr. Wilson re- 
marks: "It is well known that Popery has laid hold 
of and perverted this passage. It lies at the founda- 
tion of her tyranny over the souls of men. Pre- 
tending an infallibility in her councils, and the Di- 
vine sanction to all her decrees, she has in this, as in 
most other instances, converted the mystery of god- 
liness into a mystery of iniquity. The foundation of 
civil liberty lies in a written law, to which both rulers 
and subjects are bound to conform. So it is in the 
Church. God has revealed not to ministers only, 
but to all the subjects of his kingdom, his truth. To 
this both ministers and people are subject. Nothing 



is divine which does not emanate from this source, 
and is not thus attested to be God's. Nothing is 
bound or loosed in heaven which the Word does not 
bind or loose. Here is the foundation of Christian 
liberty; and here is the safety with which we can 
admit that the Church's judgments are of binding 
force and efficacy in heaven itself. Let us not de- 
ceive ourselves into the belief that the error here lies 
all one side. It is true that all councils of men have 
erred, and it is true that there is a danger in Church 
rulers announcing their own judgments as those of 
God. But the error, on the other side, we believe, is 
equally prevalent and equally fatal — the error of 
looking npon all Church censures as merely human, 
and to be regarded no otherwise than as they may 
bear upon our temporal interests. The great ma- 
jority of our people, and especially such of them as 
are subjects of ecclesiastical discipline, regard these 
judgments as the admonitions and warnings of men 
merely. They do not perceive God speaking to them 
in such judgments, and do not recognize the majesty, 
and power, and holiness of Christ in them. This is 
one chief reason why the discipline of the Church is 
so seldom efficacious. It were well worth while to 
endeavor to restore it to the place it once held — not 
to be" overmuch afraid of accusations of Popish 
tyranny and infallibility, but faithfully to exhibit the 
standing of this ordinance in the Word of God — to 
vindicate its authority, and to show the guilt involved 
in despising it." 

Verse 19. Owen and others restrict the prom- 
ise, here given, to the administration of discipline, 
of which the Lord had been speaking. The mean- 
ing would then be : Their administrative acts shall be 
ratified in heaven, because if they invoke the Divine 
counsel to direct their judgments — which is presup- 
posed — their prayer will be granted. We admit that 
this verse, as well as the following, may have a pri- 
mary and special reference to the office-bearers of 
Christ's Church, when gathered together for the exer- 
cise of Church government. The proper administra- 
tion of discipline being an indispensable condition of 
the prosperity of the Church, and, at the same time, a 
very difficult task, there is an especial need of united 
prayer for the presence and directing wisdom of Him 
who knows all things, to suggest to his servants the 
truth, to direct their minds, and to guide them to 
such determinations as he will bless and sanction. 
It is, therefore, very encouraging for the Church to 
view the promise here given in immediate connec- 
tion with the preceding .erses. Nevertheless, the 
promise of a gracious answer to united prayer and 
of Christ's presence in the midst of those that are 
gathered together in his name, is not to be restricted 
to the administration of discipline. We prefer to 
find the connection with the preceding verses in 
this: The Lord had just spoken of his Church in 
its apostolic purity and authority. But foreseeing 
that his nominal Church would lose its apostolical 
character, so that her administrative acts would be 



452 



MATTHEW XVIII, 15-24. 



by no means ratified in heaven, and that, conse- 
quently, its place would be taken by the small num- 
ber of genuine Christians, he assured his disciples 
that the efficacy of the acts of his Church is not de- 
pendent on the numbers composing it. The Church 
is here conceived of in its humblest form, consisting 
of two or three members. One person can not form 
a Church, but every plurality of persons that par- 
take of the same higher principle of life, form the 
Christian Church. (1 John i, 3.) "Whatever two or 
three true disciples — two of you — agree upon to ask 
for shall be granted unto them. The "on earth" cor- 
responds to the "my Father which is in heaven," 
the Church on earth being united with the Father in 
heaven by the Spirit, who prompts the petition. " The 
harmony of two hearts in prayer indicates that the 
same Spirit is in both. This union in prayer is the 
innermost and highest unity of the people of God. 
It is not an agreement of the lips, but of the heart, 
and of the Spirit of God in the heart of each. So 
much does sin divide and separate men, that when it 
dwells in the heart of any there can not be this one- 
ness and agreement. So sure a token is this highest 
harmony of the presence and indwelling of the Spirit 
of God, that when two unite together, and can truly 
pray in unison for any thing, this is from God, and 
is valid before God. . . . We remark, further, that 
as the fact of agreement seems essential to the ful- 
fillment of the full measure of the promise, so the 
fact of being gathered together is made a condition 
no less essential. Jesus will have it, not only that 
there shall be unity of aim and desire, but, in order 
to experience the fullness of the blessing, he will 
have this unity visible. It is doubtless true of the 
saints scattered over the earth that there is among 
them not only a general harmony in the petitions 
which they present at the throne of grace, but that 
in this duty of prayer, specially and above all other 
ways in which their religion manifests itself, this 
unity is to be discovered. Insomuch that it is true 
of many who differ much from one another in the 
forms through which they administer the affairs of 
the Church, and even in the expression they give to 
the doctrinal propositions which constitute its theol- 
ogy, that they agree throughout, and are of one ac- 
cord and one heart when they are put in the position 
of asking any thing from their Heavenly Father. 
Yet there is something lacking which all Churches 
should aim at and labor for, even that they should 
be gathered together — that they should be visibly 
one, even as in heart and hope they are one. The 
blessing attendant upon the accordance of two or 
three gathered together is exemplified in the case of 
the first disciples of whom we read, that these all 
continued with one accord in prayer and supplica- 
tion. And when the clay of Pentecost was fully 
come, they were all with one accord in one place, 
and suddenly there came a sound from heaven, and 
they were all filled with the Holy Ghost. Surely it 
is not irrational still to expect the blessing of an 



outpoured Spirit, with power and heavenly riches, to 
quicken, and renew, and fill us with peace and joy, 
and the spirit of wisdom, and the power of utter- 
ance, and to give us manifestations of Divine truth, 
and near communion with the Lord. If it is not so 
in our day, it can not result from the faithlessness or 
slackness of God concerning his promise, but from 
the want of a perfect accordance regarding those 
things which we shall ask. But a blessed time is 
yet in reserve for the Church, more glorious even 
than that brief season of jubilee, and this time can 
not now be far distant, when the Lord shall say, 
Arise, and shine, for thy light is come, and the glory 
of the Lord is risen upon thee, and when the world 
shall know that God hath sent his Christ. But the 
manifested unity of believers is necessary to this 
result. They who now are separated not only by 
distance of locality, but separated by distances ap- 
parently far more insuperable, shall then be gath- 
ered together, not indeed in the same place, but 
their souls shall be gathered into one communion, 
they shall form one visible body; and thus assembled, 
Christ is in the midst of them, in the majesty of his 
power and the fullness of his grace. He shall have 
on his vesture a name written, King of kings and 
Lord of lords, and he shall vindicate this designa- 
tion by causing all kings to fall down before him, 
and all nations to serve him, and he shall have do- 
minion from sea to sea, and from the river to the 
ends of the earth." (Wilson.) — Ant thing that 
they shall ask. Whatever is in any way connected 
with the wants of the Church can become an object 
of the believer's prayer. A possibility of abusing 
this glorious promise given by the Lord to his Church 
does not exist, because it is the Spirit of Christ that 
inspires and calls forth the agreement upon the 
thing desired and the prayer for it. Where these 
conditions are not complied with, there the words 
of the Lord are inapplicable. That the promise has 
no reference to any selfish prayer, which two or 
more may unite in offering, as John and James did, 
(Mark x, 35,) is self evident. 

Verse 20. Fob where. Christ's presence de- 
pends neither on any special locality, as in the Old 
Testament, nor in the greater or less number of 
those -assembled. See 1 Cor. i, 2: " All that in every 
place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord." 

— Two OR three. According to Jewish notions, 
there must at least ten persons be assembled in a 
synagogue, that they may have a well-founded hope 
that the Shekinah of the Divine presence will be 
granted, and their prayer be heard and answered. 
The rabbinical writers say: "A smaller number God 
despises." The Lord names here the smallest pos- 
sible assembly, two or three, and grants them, by his 
presence, the privileges and powers of a Church 

— Are gathered together. It is true that there 
is no time and there are no circumstances when 
Christ is absent from his people. His promise is, 
" Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the 



SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF CHRIST'S CHURCH. 



453 



world." But he has given special promises to the 
congregation of his disciples, and from what we read 
of the experience of the saints of old, as well as 
from what has come within the range of our own 
observation, we are entitled to conclude that it is 
within his house, and in the assembly of his saints, 
that he makes the clearest manifestation of his 
glory, and pours forth the richest effusions of his 
grace. Hear, for example, the testimony of David : 
"How amiable are thy tabernacles, Lord of hosts! 
My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth, for the courts 
of the Lord ; my heart and my flesh crieth out for the 
living God. Blessed are they that dwell in thy house ; 
they will be still praising thee." (Ps. lxxxiv.) "As 
the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth 
my soul after thee, God! My soul thirsteth for 
God, for the living God: when shall I come and ap- 
pear before God? My tears have been my meat day 
and night, while they continually say unto me, 
Where is thy God ? When I remember these things, 
I pour out my soul in me : for I had gone with the 
multitude; I went with them to the house of God, 
with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude 
that kept holiday." (Ps. xlii.) It was manifestly as 
the result of his own personal experience that he 
declared, " The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more 
than all the dwellings of Jacob." ■ — In my name, im- 
plies according to my direction, in my honor, in re- 
liance on my merits and intercession, with the pur- 
pose to find me. Well does Olshausen remark: "In 
verse 19 the Father is spoken of — in verse 20 the 
Son. As the Father reveals himself only in and 
through the Son, and as the Son only does what he 
is taught by the Father, (John viii, 28,) the works of 
the Father and of the Son are identical — the works 
of the true and living God. Meeting and praying 
in the name of the Father, without the Son, is im- 
possible. Such prayer is a prayer in one's own 
name, and this is no prayer at all : for he that de- 
nies the Son, the same has not the Father." — There 
am I in the midst of them. "There is a certain 
sense in which Jesus is present with all men and at 
all times. Wherever we are, by night or by day- 
whatever we do, or think, or speak — Jesus is a pres- 
ent observer of all. Nothing escapes his cognizance, 
and by thus searching all things, he becomes quali- 
fied for the discharge of that last grand duty which 
is devolved upon him as Mediator, to judge the 
world in righteousness. And it were well that we 
remembered continually that we are never hid from 
the presence of him who is now our witness, and 
will one day be our judge. It is very plain, how- 
ever, that when in the text Jesus gives the promise 
of his presence, he gives it not as something which 
they should dread and tremble at, but as that which 
was peculiarly fitted to comfort and animate them. 
It was in this sense that God of old time was pres- 
ent with his people in their journeyings through the 
wilderness. He was with them as a guide in all the 
way, as a minister of their daily sustenance, as a 



shield against their most powerful enemies. It is the 
same kind of blessings which Jesus here promises to 
his people, even to be with them in all the way of 
their pilgrimage, to sustain, and comfort, and defend 
them, and to manifest himself unto them in another 
way than he does unto the world — to show unto 
them his glory and the power of his grace. He 
gives the soul a nearness of access unto himself — 
draws forth its desires, and inflames them with ad- 
miration and love — exhibits his own infinite graces, 
and beauty, and fullness — opens the eye of faith to 
behold his unspeakable preciousness — brings into 
the mind the sayings of his holy Word, with such 
sweet consciousness of their truth, that their hearts 
burn within them as they talk with him — enlarges 
and purifies their affections, and pours into them the 
refreshing streams of his own love, and thus estab- 
lishes and maintains a communion with himself all 
the more near and intimate that it is directly with 
the inner man, at once melting the soul with the 
glow of his love and awing it to humble reverence by 
the exhibition of his glory. Still further, the promise 
implies a readiness on the part of Christ to do for 
his people what they ask. This will be at once ap- 
parent, if we examine, for a moment, the connection 
of the text with the preceding verse. The statement 
in the text, indeed, is given as a reason why the dis- 
ciples should rely with confidence on the promise 
made to them. As if he had said: You may rest 
perfectly certain that your requests shall be attended 
to and fulfilled by my Father, for I am present to 
hear them offered, and, in the discharge of my medi- 
atorial service, I present them before the throne on 
high; the Father heareth me always, and the prayers 
of my people shall not be disappointed. It is plain, 
then, that the promise of the text is one of assist- 
ance, that it includes the idea of Christ's presence 
as Mediator and prevailing Intercessor, making 
known the wants of his people, pouring them into 
the ear of the Father, and obtaining, on the ground 
of his own merit, a favorable answer to all their re- 
quests. But, again, the whole richness of the prom- 
ise has not yet been unfolded. There is something 
like an emphasis in the way in which it is written. 
I am 'in the midst' of them. Jesus is not merely 
beside his people, observing their condition, and 
ready to tender his aid in their difficulties ; he is 
not only manifested as near to them all, to inspire 
them with confidence and hope; he is in the very 
midst of them, mingled with the assembly, and 
equally near to every person who composes it. And 
this naturally suggests the thought, and confirms the 
doctrine, that Jesus is not only with his people for 
the purpose of examining into their wants and con- 
ferring upon them those blessings of his salvation 
which are common to all believers, but, moreover, 
that with tender consideration he regards the utter- 
ances of every individual heart. He will not break 
the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax. It 
is his delightful office to ' lift up the hands that hang 



454 



MATTHEW XVIII, 21-35. 



down, and to confirm the feeble knees.' It is the 
part of him who is meek and lowly in heart to ' ap- 
point unto them that mourn, beauty for ashes, the 
oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise 
for the spirit of heaviness.' It is his to say to the 
timid soul, 'Fear not, for I am with thee; be not 
dismayed, for I am thy God;' to those who are 
tempted, to whisper the glad assurance, ' My grace 
is sufficient for thee, my strength is perfect in weak- 
ness.' It is his to show to the ignorant the treasures 
of his wisdom, and to say of the backsliding peni- 
tent, ' Bring forth for him the fairest robe, and let 
the fatted calf be killed, for this my son was dead 
and is alive, he was lost and is found.' For every 
diversity of condition in which his people are placed, 
Jesus has something appropriate to bestow, and he 
is in the midst of them for the very purpose of pro- 
viding for their special wants, and soothing the dis- 
eases and healing the plagues of every soul. Con- 
fide, then, believer, in this merciful Savior, 'in 
whom dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead.' 
Open up your hearts to communion with him. Let 
him know your spiritual diseases — fear not to ex- 
press to him your heart's desires — and thus all your 
plagues shall be healed, and your souls filled with 
peace and joy unspeakable It is, moreover, of im- 
portance to bear in mind that this promised pres- 
ence of Jesus is not transient and temporary — is 
not reserved for some rare and solemn occasions. 
The expression of the text is very emphatic. I am 
in the midst of them — a much more decisive state- 
ment than if it had been expressed in the future, I 
shall be with you. For it amounts to this: It is al- 
ways a present truth — I am with them. In no age 
of the world, in no country shall this be untrue. No 
where shall my people be gathered together in my 
name, but it is true concerning them at that time 
and in these circumstances that I am in the midst 
of them. There are, in every congregation, more 
or fewer who, in some measure, fulfill the conditions 
of the promise, who meet together as disciples. 
And to them Christ proves his faithfulness. The 
assembly is the most delightful place of resort to 
them, for it is their meeting-place with Christ. They 
feel it to be refreshing and profitable for their souls. 
They receive out of Christ's exhaustless stores. It 



is seldom that the Sabbath is to them a day lost, and 
if there be such times of drought and barrenness, 
none are so prepared to admit as they that they have 
lost a precious opportunity; not because Christ is 
faithless, but because they have not met as disciples. 
Nor does the experience of others afford less con- 
vincing proof of the faithfulness of Christ to his 
promise. When we say that Christ's promise in the 
text is to disciples, it is needful to guard against 
the inference that it is vain for others to wait upon 
his ordinances. Christ, it is true, has said that he is 
in the midst of his disciples; but this, so far from 
excluding others from such an assembly, contains 
an ample encouragement for them to come. Christ 
is there preeminently, peculiarly, powerfully, gra- 
ciously there. This is the very place, then, to meet 
him, and to behold his glory and the power of his 
grace. Christ is in the midst of his disciples to 
strengthen and refresh them ; he is there to con- 
vince and convert the unbeliever. The king is 
there with his quiver full of arrows, and it is 
there especially that he pierces the hearts of his 
adversaries. He is there to wound, that he may 
bind up and heal. None of us are without the ex- 
perience of having been often gathered together 
with the multitude that keep holiday, and go to the 
house of God. How does it stand with us in re- 
spect to the experimental fulfillment of this prom- 
ise? Have we met with Christ? Has he been in 
the midst of us? Have we seen his power and his 
glory in the sanctuary? If not the guilt is all on 
our side — it is all accumulated on our heads. And 
it is an overwhelming iniquity to have spent one 
profitless Sabbath within the courts of the Lord's 
house. The king, by the proclamation of the text, 
has invited us to come and meet with him in his 
court, that he might make us partakers of his grace, 
and to show us all his riches and power, and we 
have slighted the invitation, and thus insulted his 
majesty and his goodness. There can be no doubt 
that Christ is there, and if we have not met him and 
been satisfied with his presence, it is because we 
have not been there. Our bodies may have been, 
but our spirits have not waited upon him. And the 
communion of Christ with his people is that of 
spirit with spirit." (Condensed from Wilson.) 



C. THE GOSPEL LAW OP FORGIVENESS, ILLUSTRATED BY THE PARABLE OP THE 

UNFORGIVING SERVANT. 

Although forgiveness had not been directly mentioned in the preceding remarks of 
the Savior, yet the injunctions given in verses 15-17 about the treatment of erring breth- 
ren were evidently based on it. The brother that asks forgiveness is to be forgiven ; but 
the Lord did not say how often. To this, thought Peter, there must be a limit. While 
Peter's question seems to imply that it was altogether optional with the injured party 
to forgive to a certain extent, and then to withhold forgiveness, the Lord declares that 
this is by no means the case, since he who is indebted for every thing can advance no 
claim himself. "The key-note of the whole discourse is in verse 28 : ' Pay me what thou 
owest.' 1 This is the offense — this demand, so inconsistent with the position and profession 



SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF CHRIST'S CHURCH. 



455 



of a Christian. The fact that he has been forgiven an infinite debt destroys all claim he 
can assert against his fellow-men. Himself being wholly bankrupt, he can not demand 
pa3 7 ment of his own debts. Nothing can be due to him who owes more than his all to 
another. And if his own debt be really canceled, his books must be cleared of all claims 
against others. He stands himself free because of an infinite forgiveness, and there must 
be therefore no limit to the forgiveness he extends to others. The fact of his redemption 
supersedes and destroys all his personal claims. Being a creature of grace, he must be 
gracious. By his position as a Christian he has abandoned the right of self-assertion — 
of claiming any thing as his own." (Wilson.) 

"Verses 21— 35. 

(21) Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin 
against me, and I forgive him ? till seven times ? (22) Jesus saith unto him, I say 
not unto thee, Until seven times : but, Until seventy times seven. x (23) There- 
fore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would take ac- 
count of his servants. (24) And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought 
unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents. 2 (25) But forasmuch as he had 
not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all 
that he had, and payment to he made. (26) The servant therefore fell down and 
worshiped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. 
(27) Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, 
and forgave him the debt. (28) But the same servant went out, and found one of 
his fellow-servants, which owed him a hundred pence : 3 and he laid hands on him, 
and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest. (29) And his fellow- 
servant fell down at his feet, and besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and 
I will pay thee all. (30) And he would not : but went and cast him into prison, till 
he should pay the debt. (31) So when his fellow-servants saw what was done, they 
were very sorry, and came and told unto their lord all that was done. (32) Then 
his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, thou wicked servant, I for- 
gave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: (33) Shouldest not thou also 
have had compassion on thy fellow-servant, even as I had pity on thee ? (34) And 
his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, i till he should pay all 
that was due unto him. (35) So likewise shall my Heavenly Father do also unto 
you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses. 



1 Some prefer the reading, Seventy-seven times, and find 
in it an allusion to Gen. iv, 24. 2 This sum may be men- 
tioned simply to express an indefinite, immeasurable 
amount — as we say, a thousand millions. If the He- 
brew talent of silver is meant, it would not be less than 
fifteen millions ; if the Hebrew talent of .gold is meant, 
it would amount to more than two hundred millions of 
dollars. Gerlaeh thinks that the Syrian talent is meant, 
in which case it would amount only to about two million 
dollars. 3 Pence — that is, denarius — a Roman silver 
coin, equivalent to the Attic drachma, or 15-17 cents. 
The whole debt amounted to about fifteen dollars. 
4 " Debtors in ancient times were put in prison not only 
for safe-keeping, but also for the purpose of inflicting 



pain on the prisoner. In the early times of Rome there 
were certain legal tortures — a chain weighing fifteen 
pounds, and a pittance of food barely sufficient to sus- 
tain life, which the creditor was allowed to apply to the 
debtor, in order to bring him to terms ; and no doubt 
they often did not stop here. In the East, too, where 
there is a continual suspicion that those who may ap- 
pear the poorest and who affirm themselves utterly 
insolvent, are actually in possession of some secret 
hoards of wealth, torture, in one shape or another, was 
often applied, as it is even to the present day, to mako 
the debtor reveal these hoards; or his life is made as 
bitter as possible for the purpose of wringing the money 
demanded from the compassion of his friends." (Trench.) 



456 



MATTHEW XVIII, 21-35. 



Verse 21. According to the Jewish rule, the limit 
of forgiving an offender was three times. Peter 
perceived that the law of love which Christ laid 
down for his Church required more. He proposes 
the sacred number seven as the limit. This number 
may have been named in reference to the falling 
and rising again of the righteous in Prov. xxiv, 16. 
(Compare Lev. xxvi, 18-28.) 

Verse 22. Our Lord's design in answering him, 
Not until seven times, but until seventy times 
seven, is evidently to teach Peter that in forgiving 
we must not count at all, and that under no provo- 
cation have we a right to retain resentment, or to 
cherish a desire to retaliate. Our Lord forbids an 
unforgiving temper, at the root of which is always a 
desire to render evil for evil, " an eye for an eye, a 
tooth for a tooth." (Compare notes on chap, v, 
38-41.) If we consider the injunction of our Lord 
in this light, there is no need of qualifying by vari- 
ous conditions what the Lord himself did not choose 
to qualify. 

Verse 23. Therefore. That ye may be fully 
impressed with the great guilt of an unforgiving 
temper, hear the following parable. ■ — Is the king- 
dom OF HEAVEN LIKENED UNTO A CERTAIN KING. 

This is the first of the parables, in which God ap- 
pears in the character of a king. — His servants. 
Although called dovXoc, they were not slaves, but 
officers of high rank, the disbursers of the king's 
money, as appears from the enormous amount of 
the indebtedness. — Which would take account — 
literally, who wished to take up an account with. 
This sets forth the nature of God's retributive jus- 
tice. God will reckon with us, and he reckons with 
us, whether we are willing or not; he arouses the 
conscience, proclaims the sentence of the law, and 
reproves. (Ps. li, 21.) God acts so, however, for 
the purpose of pardoning us, (Isa. i, 18,) if we pen- 
itently ask his forgiveness, and thus this first ac- 
count differs from the impending last, (xxv, 19.) 

Verse 24. One was brought unto him. The 
sinner, in his carnal security, does not come unto 
God of his own accord. — Which owed him ten 
thousand talents. This enormous amount is well 
adapted to express the idea intended by the parable, 
that the indebtedness of the sinner to his God is so 
great that he can never expect to pay it with his 
own means. The wrong done can not be undone; 
the good left undone can not be made up by a sub- 
sequent reform. The indebtedness is the greater 
the more he has received at the hands of God, like 
the servant in the parable. 

Verse 25. His lord commanded him to be sold. 
This was done according to the law of Moses. (Lev. 
xxv, 39; 2 Kings iv, 1; Ex. xxii, 3.) "The simli- 
itude is, however, rather from Oriental despotism ; 
for the selling was, under the Mosaic law, softened 
by the liberation at the year of jubilee. The im- 
prisonment, also, and the tormentors, favor this 
view, forming no part of the Jewish law." (Alford.) 



— And payment to be made. The debt is to be 
paid. That the proceeds from the sale are not suf- 
ficient does not alter the command. God reveals 
himself unto men first as a holy and righteous God 
in his law and sentence of condemnation, and this 
must be felt by them. — The selling of the wife and 
children is a completing feature of the parable, but 
may incidentally teach us that the consequences of 
our sins are not confined to us, but drag those into 
ruin — e. g., poverty, disgrace, etc. — that are nearest 
and dearest to us. Whoever has a spark of feeling 
left sees in this very fact the worst feature of sin. 
What must be the feeling of a father that has to 
confess, I have made my wife and children miser- 
able and wretched by my wickedness; and especially 
on the day of judgment, when his children tell him, 
in the language of despair, that they are lost through 
the influence of him through whom they received life! 

Verse 26. The servant fell down and wor- 
shiped him. The customary reverence paid to a 
king in the Orient. — " Lord, have patience with 
me, and I will pay thee all, is characteristic of 
the extreme fear and anguish of the moment, which 
made him ready to promise impossible things, even 
mountains of gold, if he only might be delivered 
from the present danger. " When words of a like 
kind find utterance from the lips of the sinner, now 
first convinced of his sin, they show that he has 
not yet attained to a full insight into his relations 
with his God ; that he has yet much to learn espe- 
cially this, that no future obedience can make up 
for past disobedience, since God claims that future 
as his right, as only his due; it could not, then, even 
were it perfect, which it will prove far from being, 
make compensation for the past. We may hear, 
then, in the words, the voice of self-righteousness, 
imagining that, if only time were allowed, it could 
make good all the shortcomings of the past. The 
words are exceedingly important, as very much ex- 
plaining to us the later conduct of this man. It is 
clear that he had never come to a true recognition 
of the immensity of his debt. Little, in the sub- 
jective measure of his own estimate, was forgiven 
him, and therefore he loved little, or not at all. It 
is true that by his demeanor and his cry he did 
recognize his indebtedness, else would there have 
been no setting of him free; and he might have 
gone on, and, had he been true to his own mercies, 
he would have gone on, to an ever-fuller recognition 
of the grace shown him; but, as it was, in a little 
while he lost sight of it altogether." (Trench.) 

Verse 27. Then the lord of that servant was 
moved with compassion. "The severity of God 
only endures till the sinner is brought to recognize 
his guilt. It is, indeed, like Joseph's harshness 
with his brethren, nothing more than love in dis- 
guise, and, having done its work, reappears as grace 
again, granting him more than even he had dared 
to ask or to hope, loosing the bands of his sins and 
letting him go free. His lord 'forgave Mm the 



SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF CHRIST'S CHURCH. 



457 



debt,' and thus this very reckoning with him, which 
at first threatened him with irremediable ruin, might 
have been the chiefest mercy of all, bringing, in- 
deed, his debt to a head, but only so bringing it that 
it might be put away. So is it evermore with men. 
'There can not be a forgiving in the dark. God will 
forgive, but he will have the sinner to know what 
and how much he is forgiven. He summons him 
with that ' Come now, and let us reason together,' 
before the scarlet is made white. (Isa. i, 18.) The 
sinner shall have the sentence of death in him first, 
for only so will the words of life and pardon have 
any true meaning for him." (Trench.) 

Verse 28. But the same servant went out. 
"How striking and instructive," says Trench, "is 
that word 'going out' — slight, as it seems, yet one 
of the ke}'-words of the parable. For how is it that 
we are ever in danger of acting as this servant? 
Because we 'go out' of the presence of our God; 
because we do not abide there, with an ever-lively 
sense of the greatness of our sin and the greatness 
of his forgiveness. By the servant's going out is 
expressed the sinner's forgetfulness of the greatness 
of the benefits which he has received from his God." 
< — And found one of his fellow-servants. How 
easy it is to find a debtor if we seek one! From 
the insignificance of the debt, it would appear 
that this fellow-servant was his inferior in rank; 
but the first officers of State, as well as the day- 
laborers, are the N servants of the king. Special em- 
phasis is given to their common dependence on the 
king, that the hardness of heart of this wicked serv- 
ant may appear in the clearest light. — Can this 
wicked servant represent a really-pardoned sinner? 
Calvinistic theologians do not admit that whosoever 
has truly received the pardon of his sins can ever 
forfeit that pardon again. But how can it be de- 
nied that persons that have been truly converted 
really fall into the sin of which this wicked servant 
was guilty? On the other hand, it is hardly con- 
ceivable that the servant in question should have 
undergone any change of heart, especially as the 
time intervening between his pardon and his meet- 
ing his fellow-servant is represented as short, and 
the parable does not intimate that he had changed 
meanwhile for the worse. Wnile we, therefore, un- 
hesitatingly maintain the possibility of a total and 
final falling away from grace, we must, at the same 
time, admit that this wicked servant is no repre- 
sentative of a pardoned sinner, the scope of the 
parable being not to teach the whole plan of sal- 
vation, but merely to set forth, in its strongest light, 
the absolute necessity of a forgiving disposition. — 
Which owed him an hundred pence. What a trifle 
in comparison with the debt which had been just re- 
mitted to him ! We are reminded thereby how little 
man can offend against his brother compared with 
the amount in which every man has offended against 
God; it is as a drop of water to the boundless 
ocean. — And he laid hands on him, and took him 



by the throat. By the Roman law the creditor 
was allowed to use personal violence toward his 
debtor. This act is expressive of the most unfeeling 
harshness. — Pay me that thou owest — literally, 
pay, if thou owest any thing. If thou owest any 
thing — and this is the case — thou must pay; and 
for this reason I seize thee. The justice of the debt 
itself is not denied in the parable, but the principle 
is laid down that he that stands in need of mercy, 
or has obtained mercy, must show mercy in turn. 
This is beautifully illustrated by an anecdote which 
we read in Wesley's Life. Oglethorpe, the Gov- 
ernor of Georgia, said once, in a great passion, in 
the presence of Wesley: "This good-for-nothing 
servant does constantly wrong, although he knows 
that I never forgive." " Then I hope," said Wesley, 
"that you may never do wrong." 

Verse 29. The misery and entreaties of a fellow- 
man ought to have moved, before all others, him 
that was in the same condition himself. His fellow- 
servant entreats him in the same position and in 
the same words as he himself had done a short time 
before. This itself ought to have reminded him of 
the grace shown to himself, and disposed him to 
mercy. His fellow-servant, confessing the debt, 
promises also payment, and the small indebtedness 
makes it probable that he would have kept his prom- 
ise. Even this feature of the parable admits of a 
general application. Injuries done to our fellow- 
men can in most cases be repaired, while a dis- 
charge of our indebtedness to God is always out 
of the question. 

Verse 30. And he would not. So hard-hearted 
and cruel is man apt to be when he is ignorant of 
his own need of forgiveness, or forgetful of forgive- 
ness received. — But went. He went dragging his 
debtor along, till he could hand him over to the 
jailer. This shows that the violence exhibited at first 
was not owing to a transient excitement. 

Verse 31. So when his fellow-servants saw 
what was done, they were very sorry. " They 
were sorry — their lord (v. 34) was wroth; to them 
grief, to him anger, is ascribed. The distinction is not 
accidental, nor without its grounds. In man, the 
sense of his own guilt, the deep consciousness that 
whatever sin he sees come to ripeness in another, ex- 
ists in its germ and seed in his own heart, the feeling 
that all flesh is one, and that the sin of one calls for 
humiliation from all, will ever cause sorrow to be 
the predominant feeling in his heart, when the spec- 
tacle of moral evil is brought before his eyes; but in 
God the pure hatred of sin, which is, indeed, his love 
of holiness at its negative, finds place." (Trench.) 
— And came and told unto their lord all that 
was done. As the parable speaks of a human king, 
who does not know every thing that his servants do, 
information of the deed must be brought to him, 
and this is done by the other servants. If we apply 
this trait of the parable to God, the antitype of the 
human king, its meaning is, that the prayers of the 



458 



MATTHEW XVIII, 21-35. 



righteous accuse the unrighteous and unmerciful 
before God. Their prayer is the supplication of 
insulted humanity, and loudly appeals to God's stern 
law. For the merciful prayers are constantly rising 
up to God. "Woe unto him whom the tears and sighs 
of the wronged and oppressed constantly accuse 
before God ! Such tears avail much with God. 

Verses 82, 33. thou wicked servant, I for- 
gave thee all that drbt, [as soon as, and] BECAUSE 
thou desiredst me. It was self-evident that a simi- 
lar conduct was his solemn duty. The unmerciful 
supplies God with weapons against himself. Our 
own conduct is the rule according to which God 
deals with us. (Matt, vii, 2.) 

Verse 34. And his lord was wroth, and deliv- 
ered him to the tormentors. " According to that 
word, 'He shall have judgment without mercy, that 
hath showed no mercy.' (Jam. ii, i3.) Before he 
had dealt with him as a creditor with a debtor, now 
as a judge with a criminal. ' The tormentors' are 
not merely the keepers of the prison as such; but 
those who also, as the word implies, shall make the 
life of the prisoner bitter to him ; even as there are 
'tormentors' in that world of woe, whereof this 
prison is a figure — fellow-sinners and evil angels — 
instruments of the just yet terrible judgments of 
God. But here it is strange that the king delivers 
the offender to prison and to punishment not for his 
ingratitude and cruelty, but for the very debt which 
would appear before to have been entirely and with- 
out conditions remitted to him." (Trench.) The 
question whether sins, once forgiven, return on the 
sinner through his after offenses, is a needless one. 
He that falls out of grace relapses into the state 
of condemnation, and is, consequently, subject to all 
the demands the Divine law has against him. Stier 
remarks: "We see here that the remission of our 
sins is not. irrevocable, but with those who fall away, 
the words of Ezekiel (xviii, 24; xxxiii, 13) will be ver- 
ified. On that account the king, in his sentence, re- 
turns to the rigor of the law." — Till he should pat 
all that was due unto him; that is, till he should 
have paid. Full payment must be made before he 
was to be released, and as the former was, in the na- 
ture of the case, impossible, his confinement was of 
endless duration. Olshausen takes a different view 
of the passage, considering it as teaching, with other 
passages, that after death there is a deliverance of 
some from prison. The following is the substance 
of his strange comment : " This hard-hearted serv- 
ant willingly acknowledged [where?] his fault, and 
thereby manifested a disposition which showed that 
he was not out of reach of forgiving grace. As he 
had committed no wrong, from the legal stand-point, 
by collecting what was due unto him by force, his 
punishment was according to the Gospel standard, 
(Matt, vii, 2,) [?!] not according to that of the law, 
and he was imprisoned that he might learn that only 
a merciful disposition could set him free, and read- 
mit him into the kingdom of God. According to 



1 Pet. iii, 19, and Matt, xii, 32, there is for some a 
deliverance from prison after death." This argu- 
ment calls for no refutation. Very forcible is the 
remark of Stier: "There is no more prospect for 
such a heart, that is not melted by love, to be soft- 
ened by torments than for the wretch under the 
torture to procure the last farthing." 

Verse 35. So likewise shall my Heavenly 
Father do ; that is, with equal severity my Heav- 
enly Father will treat the unmerciful and the unfor- 
giving. It is the uniform teaching of the Word of 
God that the Christian, after he has found pardon by 
faith in the blood of the Lamb, stands daily in need 
of Divine mercy. He, therefore, that shows mercy 
will daily find mercy at the hands of God. In this 
sense the words refer as well to the present life as to 
the day of judgment. (Comp. Matt, v, 7.) But 
whoever is not willing to forgive his brother his 
trifling offenses, will receive at the hands of God no 
remission of his great and many transgressions, and 
has to suffer the full punishment due unto them. 
The forgiveness must be "from the heart," conse- 
quently full and perfect. — " If this parable," says 
Lavater, "were found in some old document; if 
some parchment-roll were discovered amid the treas- 
ures of a royal library containing this parable ; if the 
reply of Jesus (v. 22) and the whole parable were 
put in the mouth of some Greek or Roman philoso- 
pher, what a shout of praise would arise on all sides! 
But what the poor Nazarene says, though it has been 
reechoed a thousand times, is judged to be of no ac- 
count. Who can read these words of Jesus without 
blushing? Ye forgiving and unforgiving, can you 
read them without emotion? Can the offender de- 
spair if the offended party is a Christian ? Can the 
latter still meditate revenge ? Which of us has of- 
fended but seven times? Who has, I do not say 
seventy times seven, but seven times, forgiven fully 
and from the heart ? 0, all ye who daily pray with 
me, or ought to pray, ' Forgive us our debts as we 
forgive our debtors,' have you, from these words of 
the Lord, learned to forgive ? Inexpressible sorrow 
ought to fill our hearts on considering how these 
words of the Lord, who speaks here in the name of 
truth, justice, and equity, are trifled with. The 
whole of this passage is as clear as noonday. The 
king and the beggar, the philosopher and the illiter- 
ate, all understand it, if they wish to understand it. 
What is forgiving? Who is to forgive? How? 
How often ? What has he that forgives to hope for? 
What has he to look for that is unwilling to forgive? 
All these questions, so important for good and wise 
men, are answered in this passage plainly, intelligi- 
bly, satisfactorily. In the same manner we must for- 
give, as we wish God to forgive us. As we wish that 
God may forgive us a thousand times, if we have 
sinned a thousand times, so we must forgive a thou- 
sand times, if we have been offended a thousand 
times. God is infinitely merciful toward those that 
are so toward their fellow-men. Let every one that 



CHRIST'S EXPOSITION OF THE MARRIAGE RELATION. 



459 



is prone to anger, to revenge, ask himself: Do I 
forgive, as I wish that God may forgive me? With 
what measure shall it be measured unto me? With 
what judgment shall I be judged, if God judge me 
as I judge others?" — Further homiletic suggestions 
are not necessary, as we have given them in connec- 
tion with the exegetical part. The homiletic treat- 



ment is manifold. The following appears to us the 
plainest and most correct : The threefold reckoning : 
1. The reckoning king, or the remission of an im- 
mensely-large debt; 2. The reckoning servant, or the 
forcible exactment of an insignificantly-small debt; 
3. The second reckoning of the king, brought on by 
the conduct of the relentless servant. 



CHAPTEE XIX. 
§42. CHRIST'S EXPOSITION OF THE MARRIAGE RELATION. 

Verses 1—13. (Compare Mark x, 1-12; Luke ix, 51.) 

(1) And it came to pass, that when Jesus had finished these sayings, he departed 
from Galilee, and came into the coasts of Judea beyond Jordan ; (2) and great 
multitudes followed him ; and he healed them there. (3) The Pharisees also came 
unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away 
his wife for every cause? (4) And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not 
read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, (5) 
and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to 
his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? (6) Wherefore they are no more 
twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put 
asunder. (7) They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing 
of divorcement, and to put her away ? (8) He saith unto them, Moses because of 
the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives : but from the 
beginning it was not so. (9) And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his 
wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery : 
and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery. (10) His disci- 
ples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to 
marry. (11) But he said unto them, All men can not receive this saying, save they 
to whom it is given. (12) For there are some eunuchs which were so born from 
their mother's womb : and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of 
men : and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the king- 
dom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it. 



Verse 1. He departed from Galilee. By this 
expression we have to understand our Lord's final 
departure from Galilee. But before this took place, 
immediately after what Matthew had recorded in the 
preceding chapter, we have to place our Lord's go- 
ing up to Jerusalem secretly to the Feast of Taber- 
nacles, which John records in chapter vii, 2-10; 
and which has been regarded as identical with his 
final departure from Galilee, mentioned here and in 
the parallel passages. (Mark x, 1; Luke ix, 51.) 
But this supposition is irreconcilable with the fol- 



lowing points of difference: "1. In Luke Jesus 
leaves Galilee for the last time, going up to Jerusa- 
lem to suffer; in John he goes thither to a feast, 
some six months before his death. 2. In Luke he 
goes with an unusual degree of publicity, accompa- 
nied by the apostles, and sending messengers before 
him to make ready for him; in John he went up 
unto the feast, not openly, but, as it were, in secret. 
3. In Luke he goes slowly, and apparently made a 
wide circuit, passing through many villages ; in 
John he goes rapidly and directly, not leaving Gal- 



460 



MATTHEW XIX, 1-12. 



ilee till his brethren had gone, nor showing himself 
in Jerusalem till about the midst of the feast." 
(Andrews.) The Synoptists omit all that is recorded 
by John from chapter vii, 2, to chapter x, 21. (See 
Synoptical Table, from No. 100-107.) As nothing 
is said by John of any return to Galilee after the 
Feast of Tabernacles, it is inferred, by Robinson and 
other harmonists, that he remained at Jerusalem, or 
in its vicinity, till the Feast of Dedication. But this 
silence is by no means decisive, inasmuch as John's 
object is here to report some important discourses 
of our Lord, adding only those historical facts that 
are necessary to explain them. Mr. Andrews, after 
examining thoroughly all the circumstances that 
must be taken into consideration, comes to the con- 
clusion that our Lord returned to Galilee after the 
Feast of Tabernacles. His stay there was, of course, 
only temporary. Immediately after his return we 
have to place what Luke says: "It came to pass, 
when the time was come that he should be received 
up, he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem." 
By this we have to understand that he now went to 
Jerusalem to finish his work — to die — and then as- 
cend to God. There is, it is true, an apparent dis- 
crepancy between Luke, on the one hand, and Mat- 
thew and Mark, on the other, with regard to the 
route which our Lord took in going up to Jerusa- 
lem. According to Luke he purposed to go through 
Samaria to Jerusalem, but Matthew and Mark, after 
stating that he departed from Galilee, add that "he 
came into the coasts of Judea beyond Jordan" or 
"into the coasts of Judea by the farther side of 
Jordan." But this discrepancy is not irreconcilable. 
We may well conceive that, his messengers being 
rejected on the borders of Samaria, the Lord passed 
eastward to the Jordan, and thus entered Perea, and 
went up through Perea to the Feast of Dedication. 
Matthew and Mark again omit a considerable por- 
tion of Gospel history, which is, in part, filled up by 
John, chap, x, 22, to chap, xi, 57, but more fully by 
Luke, from chap, ix, 52, to chap, xviii, 15. (Comp. 
Synoptical Table, from No. 109-140.) The harmon- 
izing, in point of chronological order, of what Luke 
records in this large portion of his Gospel, with what 
the other Evangelists record, is the most difficult 
task of the harmonist. Mr. Andrews's arrange- 
ment, though it also is beset with unanswerable dif- 
ficulties, appears to us, on the whole, the most prob- 
able. Here we give only the results of his re- 
searches. In Luke we shall examine each point, 
and give the reasons for and against the arrange- 
ment we have presented in the Synoptical Table. 
Here we need only remark that, whatever order of 
events we may adopt, we must assume that Luke, in 
this portion of his Gospel, does not relate all the 
events in strict chronological order. — And came 
into the coast of Judea deyond Jordan. Inas- 
much as no part of Judea proper lay beyond — that 
is, east of the Jordan — the meaning is either that he 
entered Judea by the way of Perea, or, if we adopt 



the reading in the parallel passage of Mark, " He 
cometh into the coasts of Judea and the farther side 
of Jordan" — which reading is approved by Lach- 
man, Tischendorf, and Meyer — the Evangelist in- 
tended to say that our Lord's ministry, after leaving 
Galilee, was in Judea and Perea. 

Verses 3-6. Is it lawful fob a man to put 
awat his wife for every cause? that is, for any 
cause or charge whatever. This question had ref- 
erence to the Mosaic law of divorce in Deut. xxiv, 1. 
The inquiry, What should be considered as an ade- 
quate cause of divorce? was left by Moses to be de- 
termined by the husband himself. He had liberty to 
divorce her if he saw in her the nakedness of a 
thing ; that is, any thing displeasing or improper, as 
may be learned by comparing the same expression 
in Deut. xxiii, 14, 15 — any thing so much at war 
with propriety and a source of so much dissatisfac- 
tion as to be, in the estimation of the husband, suffi- 
cient ground for separation. There was among the 
Rabbins a division of opinion concerning the mean- 
ing of this term. The school of Hillel contended 
that the husband might lawfully put away the wife 
for any cause, even the smallest, while the school of 
Shammai explained the phrase nakedness of a thing 
to mean something criminal. The question is put 
so as to commit our Lord either to the interpretation 
of Hillel or to that of Shammai. But neither was in 
the right, and, therefore, Jesus goes in his reply not 
only beyond their disputes, but also behind the law of 
Moses, to the fundamental reason on which the law 
of marriage and divorce must rest. The error of 
the school of Hillel consisted in this, that they con- 
founded moral and civil law. It is true, as far as 
the Mosaic statute or the civil law was concerned, 
the husband had a right thus to do; but it is equally 
clear that the ground of legal separation would not 
absolve a man from his amenability to his con- 
science and his God. The school of Shammai, 
though they were right in viewing the Mosaic stat- 
ute in its higher moral aspect, erred in ignoring that 
the statute was, in itself considered, designed to be 
merely a civil, not a moral law. Our Lord, by im- 
plication, denies the moral character of the Mosaic 
statute, but. in a way not to offend their Jewish prej- 
udices. From the constitution of the sexes, as 
shown in the act of man's creation, (Gen. ii, 24,) he 
declares, first of all, the priority and sacredness of 
the marriage relation beyond all others. Not by the 
law of Moses, but long before that, by the very act 
of creation, God ordained the law which is to be 
binding in this relation, and what God has joined 
together, let not man put asunder. — Have ye not 
read ? In this reference of the Lord to the first two 
chapters of Genesis we have the highest confirma- 
tion of the authenticity and the Divine authority of 
the Pentateuch. — That he which made them at 

THE BEGINNING MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE. The 

creation of one human pair shows that the marriage 
tie is to be restricted to one, and no more, on either 



CHRIST'S EXPOSITION OF THE MARRIAGE RELATION. 



461 



side. This truth is corroborated by the following 
considerations: 1. Of the numerical proportion of 
the two sexes which has existed through all ages, 
from the creation of the first pair to the present mo- 
ment ; 2. Of the immense evils that have ever arisen, 
and that, in the nature of the case, must ever arise 
from polygamy; 3. Of the unequivocal teaching of 
the Bible on the subject. Paul states, in the fewest 
words and in the clearest manner, the doctrine of 
the Bible on the subject, when he says: "Let every 
man have his oion wife, and every wife her own hus- 
band." Though polygamy was practiced in patri- 
archal and Jewish times, it was never sanctioned by 
God. ■ — And said, For this cause shall a man 
leave father and mother. The words quoted were 
spoken by Adam. Being a prophetic utterance' — for 
the relation of father and mother had not yet come 
into existence — they are attributed by our Lord to 
God himself. — And they twain shall be one_ 
flesh. The words ol 6vo (twain) are wanting in 
the Hebrew, but are in the Samaritan Pentateuch 
and the LXX, and the fact that our Lord uses them 
is positive proof that they existed originally also in 
the Hebrew. " The essential bond of marriage con- 
sists in the unity in the flesh, not in that of the soul, 
by which latter, indeed, the marriage state should 
ever be hallowed and sweetened, but without which 
it still exists in all its binding power for this life, 
(xxii, 30; Luke xx, 35; 1 Tim. iii, 2.) Beyond the 
limits of this life, the matrimonial unity is abolished 
by the death of the body. And herein lies the just- 
ification of a second marriage, which in no way 
breaks off the unity in spirit with the former part- 
ner, now departed." (Stier.) — What therefore 
God has joined together, let no man put asunder. 
In perfect keeping with the God-ordained, specific 
nature of the marriage state, Jesus rejects thus the 
principle of divorce unqualifiedly as a human put- 
ting asunder of what God has indissolubly united. 
The only exception to this rule is mentioned in verse 
9, because in that case a dissolution has virtually 
taken place. — The Christian Church, by adopting 
these words into all its formularies of solemnizing 
marriage, ought not to recognize the validity of any 
divorce, except for the one reason stated by our 
Lord. 

Verses 7, 8. Mark states the conversation of the 
Pharisees with Jesus in a somewhat different order. 
(On the points of difference see the notes on Mark.) 
The substance of Christ's answer is in both cases the 
same. In justification of Moses, he reminds them 
that Moses suffered divorce to be sanctioned, only in 
consequence of the hardness of the people's heart. 
The jvoman was in the time of Moses, as she is still in 
all non-Christian countries, little better than a slave. 
Had it not been for the permission of divorce, and 
the legal forms by which Moses restrained it, and 
thus guarded, to some extent, the rights of the wife, 
she would have been exposed to the most cruel treat- 
ment, or even to death from the violence of the dis- 



satisfied husband. The moral condition of the Is- 
raelites was such that Moses could not make the 
civil regulations of the nation come up to the divine 
law. — Our Lord here intimates, as Dr. Morison, in 
his Notes, remarks, an important principle. " God, 
in his dealings with man, adopts his specific laws 
and regulations to the necessities of man's condi- 
tion : hence a succession of dispensations, each 
adapted to the existing state of things, and prepar- 
ing the way for something better. . . . This graded 
principle of adaptation to man's condition and capa- 
bilities in the laws which are designed for his use, 
even by Divine Wisdom, must always be borne in 
mind, by those who would study the laws of Moses, 
in the light of the highest philosophy. Law is al- 
ways given, as St. Paul says of the Jewish law, 
(Gal. iii, 19,) because of transgressions, and not 
that which is perfect when judged by the rules of 
absolute rectitude, but that which is the best that 
men are able to bear at the time, is the law which is 
dictated by the highest wisdom."' — The distinction 
between the moral law of God and the civil laws of 
a country is of great practical importance. Even in 
the Mosaic dispensation a pious Israelite could not, 
without moral guilt, make use of a civil law, given 
to the nation at large, because of their hardness of 
heart. Much less is the Christian justified in doing 
what the civil law permits if it is contrary to the 
moral law of God. The Christian citizen in a slave 
State, for instance, is no more justified by the laws 
of his State in buying and selling men, women, and 
children than he would be justified in other immoral 
practices which may be permitted by the eivil law 
of the land. On the other hand, the Christian 
Church may learn from Christ's decision concern- 
ing the Mosaic enactment of divorce the position 
she is to take with regard to those civil laws that 
may not be in harmony with the divine law. She is 
not called upon forcibly to interfere with the insti- 
tutions of the country. Every attempt of the kind 
would be an unauthorized pulling up of the tares. 
(The reader may compare Owen's remarks, on page 
371.) "Jesus has never acted the part of a civil 
lawgiver; he has enacted no civil laws, no laws that 
are to be enforced to the letter under all circum- 
stances, but he is the lawgiver for the spirit." (01- 
shausen.) — But from the beginning it was not 
so; that is, in the state of paradise it was different. 
The first instance of polygamy that we meet with 
occurred among the descendants of Cain, the first 
murderer. (Gen. iv, 19.) 

Verse 9. Here the conversation with the Phar- 
isees closes, and the following words were spoken by 
Jesus to the disciples in the house, who asked him 
further on this subject. (See Mark x, 10.) 

Verse 10. This remark of the disciples and the 
Lord's reply are peculiar to Matthew. The scruple 
of the disciples arises not so much from the only 
justifying cause of divorce, which our Lord had 
named, as from the inference they drew from the 



462 



MATTHEW XIX, 13-15. 



indissolubility of the marriage relation. This rela- 
tion appears unto them, in consideration of the 
hardness of heart of men, a great risk, and an un- 
married life preferable. 

Verse 11. This sating; namely, the remark of 
the disciples that it was best not to marry. — All 
men can not keceive. Only those can carry it out 
to whom it is given. Who those are is explained in 
the next verse. 

Verse 12. For. In confirmation of what he had 
said in verse 11, the Lord enumerates now three 
different cases of celibacy. The term "eunuchs" 
must be taken figuratively, and denotes here all that 
live in a state of celibacy. The word is taken in 
this figurative sense also in other writings. — 1. 
There are some eunuchs which were so born 
from their mother's womb; that is, all that are 
naturally incapacitated for the marriage state. — 2. 
There are some eunuchs which were made 
eunuchs op men. As the term has a figurative 
meaning in the first and the third case, it may be 
understood figuratively also in the second. The 
Lord refers not only to eunuchs by bodily mutila- 
tion, but to all such as against their own inclination 
are prevented from marrying by the caprice of men, 
or through unjust regulations imposed upon society, 
us, e. g., the priests of the Church of Rome, monks, 
nuns, soldiers, etc. — 3. There be [literally, there 
are] eunuchs which have made themselves eu- 
nuchs; that is, those that abstain from marriage 
voluntarily and from pure motives. Unnatural self- 
mutilation, which incapacitates for marriage, can 
not be meant here, since the natural desire could 
not cease thereby. Origen interpreted the passage 



literally, and emasculated himself in order to pre- 
clude slanderous reports, to which he was exposed 
in his capacity of a teacher of many young Chris- 
tian ladies. He acknowledged his error, however, 
in subsequent life. Moreover, the Lord gives here 
no command, but merely says that there are such as 
voluntarily abstain from marrying, and overcome all 
desire for sexual intercourse for the kingdom of 
heaven's sake — not for the purpose of meriting the 
kingdom of heaven, or to attain to a high degree of 
holiness, as the Church of Rome teaches, in opposi- 
tion to the Word of God, but in order to labor the 
more effectually for the kingdom of God, as the 
apostle Paul did, and as is often deemed necessary 
in the case of missionaries. Those that have such 
a divine calling for a state of celibacy receive, also, 
the necessary grace to live accordingly. Therefore 
the Lord adds, He that is able to receive it, 
[that is, he that is able to abstain voluntarily from 
the marriage state,] let him receive it; that is, 
let him do so; he is permitted, not commanded, to 
do so; the grace necessary to it will be imparted to 
him. The Lord, by thus restricting unmarried life 
to the three given cases, where a man is either com- 
pelled to remain single against his own inclinations, 
or where he remains unmarried according to the 
will of God and from his own free choice, in order 
to devote himself the more fully to the cause of 
God's kingdom, leaves no excuse for those that re- 
main unmarried either through cowardice or caprice, 
through avarice or love of ease and independence, 
through contempt of the other sex, or through licen- 
tiousness. An unmarried life chosen for such rea- 
sons is contrary to the established order of God. 



§43. JESUS BLESSES LITTLE CHILDREN. 

Our Lord is now at Ephraim. (See Synoptical Table, No. 141.) Matthew and Mark 
relate, from this point on, for the most part, events in the same order as Luke. Nearly 
all the harmonists agree in placing the bringing of the little children to Christ next in 
order to the discourse on the law of marriage. There is a natural fitness in this sequence. 
Our Lord had just delivered some thoughts of profound wisdom on the subject of mar- 
riage, in reply to questions which the captious Pharisees had put to him, for the purpose 
of entrapping him in some theological inconsistency. All around him is excitement, and 
the terrible events of his approaching suffering are gathering thick about him. His 
attention is arrested by mothers, and perhaps fathers, with the children in their arms, 
pressing their way through the crowd to him for his blessing upon them. Eeproving his 
disciples, who were going to repulse them, he utters one of the sweetest, broadest j>rom- 
ises of the Gospel, takes them in his arms, looks at them with tenderest compassion, and 
blesses them. The great teachers of past ages directed their attention to the wealthy, 
not to the poor; to adults, not to children; to those distinguished by splendid talents, 
not to those of ordinary powers. Christ preaches to the poor, and takes helpless infants 
in his arms. "When we behold him doing this, too, in this period of his history, we feel 
deeper chords touched in our hearts than when we see him hush the furious tempest, or 



JESUS BLESSES LITTLE CHILDREN. 



4C3 



raise the buried dead. It is one of the sublimest passages in the glorious biography of 
our blessed Redeemer. The record of this incident is full of comfort, because every thing 
that Christ did during his sojourn on earth is the reflex of what he is constantly doing in 
heaven for his Church ; and we can, therefore, safely infer from it that he sustains also to 
the smallest children a real life-union, blesses them, and opens the kingdom of heaven 
unto them. 

"Verses 13—15. (Compare Mark x, 13-16; Luke xviii, 15-17.) 

(13) Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should put his 
hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them. (14) But Jesus said, 
Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me ; for of such is the 
kingdom of heaven. (15) And he laid his hands on them, and departed thence. 



Verse 13. Then were there brought unto him 
little children. Luke (chap, xviii, 15) uses the 
word Ppetyos — an infant, a babe. The same word 
is used in Luke ii, 12, 16; Acts vii, 19; 1 Peter 
ii, 2. From this it appears, as it does also from 
their being carried, (-pocr^tpecr^a/,) that they were 
smaller than the child mentioned in Matt, xviii, 2. — 
That he should put his hands on them, and prat. 
Mark and Luke say, " That he should touch them." 
It was customary among the Jews to lay hands on a 
person's head on whose behalf a prayer was offered. 
When Joseph brought his two sons, Ephraim and 
Manasseh, to his father Jacob for his farewell bless- 
ing, the dying patriarch put his hand on the head 
of each in pronouncing his benediction. (Gen. 
xlviii, 14-20.) From 2 Tim. i, 6, we learn that the 
imposition of hands was practiced by the apostles in 
conferring spiritual gifts. — And the disciples re- 
buked them. We are not told on what ground they 
repulsed them. They may have thought it was be- 
neath their Master's dignity to notice little children, 
or they were too small to receive any benefit from 
him; or it was because they did not wish to be in- 
terrupted. Whatever the reason may have been, it 
was something very displeasing to our Lord. (Mark 
x, 14.) 

Verses 14, 15. But Jesus said. According to 
Luke, "Jesus called them unto him, and said." It 
would seem that those who carried the children were 
discouraged by the conduct of the disciples. Before, 
however, the parents were called, he addressed those 
who were laying obstructions in their way in the 
words: Suffer little children, and forbtd them 
not, to come unto me; that is, to receive a blessing 
from me. "An infant was to the eye of Christ an 
object of stupendous importance, a subject of im- 
measurable potentialities, a life for endless develop- 
ment and wondrous destinies. He saw the oak in 
the acorn, the waving harvests in the little seed." — 
For of such is the kingdom of heaven. Of such 
must here refer to real children, not to persons 
of a like disposition, since the truth that the king- 
dom of God belongs to adults of a childlike dis- 
position, was evidently no reason why the disciples 



should not forbid the children to come to Jesus. 
The cause must be sought in the children them- 
selves. — In these words the Lord positively de- 
clares that all children that die while they are un- 
accountable are entitled to the bliss of heaven, and 
for the same reason while on earth, to member- 
ship in his Church, in the same manner as chil- 
dren under the old dispensation were entitled to 
Church-membership. There can be no reasonable 
doubt that "the kingdom of heaven" is here, as in 
other passages, to be taken in its twofold meaning; 
namely, as the visible kingdom of grace on earth, 
or the Church of Christ, and as the invisible king- 
dom of glory in heaven; for the condition of those 
that are here spoken of necessarily implies that if 
they have part in the one, they are entitled also to 
the other. That unaccountable children inherit the 
kingdom of glory by virtue of the justification of 
life, which by the righteousness of one has come 
upon all, when they die, before they are guilty of 
actual transgressions, is admitted by all that believe 
that Christ has died for all men. From the uncon- 
ditional salvation of children that die in a state of 
unaccountability, it plainly follows that children in 
that state on earth are entitled to be received into 
the Church of baptism; for if the congregation of 
the first-born, whose names are written in heaven, 
consists not only of adults that entered heaven 
through repentance and faith, but also of children 
that were incapable of exercising these graces be- 
fore they entered heaven, why should their incapac- 
ity to believe and repent debar them from- member- 
ship in the Church on earth? For even in the case 
of adults faith is only the means or condition, not 
the meritorious cause of salvation. Both are saved 
through the universal redemption by Jesus Christ, 
the second Adam, as the apostle shows at full length 
in the fifth chapter of Romans. If a child that can 
not yet believe can have part in Christ, the head, it 
can also have part in his mystical body, the Church. 
There is, however, connected with this view the 
somewhat difficult question, If dying infants go to 
heaven, does this not imply that they sustain in life 
a real, not a merely relative or nominal, connection 



4G4 



MATTHEW XIX, 13-15. 



with Christ; and is a real spiritual union between 
the infant child and Jesus Christ conceivable with- 
out spiritual life imparted to the child before by the 
Holy Spirit? Is, for this reason, the fundamental 
law of the kingdom of God, "Except a man be born 
again, he can not enter into the kingdom of God," 
not applicable as well to the infant as to the adult? 
The affirmative answer returned to this question 
has, on the one hand, given rise to the unbiblical 
dogma that the new life necessary to infants, also, 
for an entrance into heaven is imparted through 
baptism, on which point we shall say more toward 
the close of our remarks. On the other hand, it 
has been maintained, more recently: As all children 
are born into this world with a corrupt, sinful na- 
ture, owing to their descent from Adam, so they are 
all unconditionally born again through the second 
Adam, Jesus Christ; or, in other words, all infants 
have for Christ's sake, through the operations of the 
Holy Spirit, their nature so renewed from their birth 
that they are thereby not only qualified for heaven, 
if they die, but need, also, no second regeneration 
in subsequent life, if they do not lose this grace thus 
received in their infancy. "It is inconsistent with 
God's impartial love," it is said, "to suppose that 
the renewing of the Holy Ghost is granted to those 
children only that die in their infancy; and that in 
the others that grow up natural depravity must nec- 
essarily develop, so that they must afterward be re- 
generated through faith and repentance." To this 
view we object, on the following grounds: 1. If all 
children, without exception, were born again imme- 
diately after their natural birth, the saying of Christ, 
in John iii, 3, applied to children, would be very 
strange and dark; and if we understand Christ to 
speak of regeneration in subsequent life, the passage 
would teach the necessity of a second regeneration 
in advanced life. 2. This view of a renewal of the 
whole race, effected in infancy, is contradicted by 
experience, although we are not disposed to deny 
the possibility that a child, from the first dawn of 
self-consciousness, may yield itself to the influence 
of the Holy Spirit, so as to be preserved from in- 
tentional sins by God's preventing grace. 3. If the 
Holy Spirit is assumed to effect more in the salva- 
tion of infants that die than in those that grow up 
to years of discretion, the reason of it lies in the 
difference of the circumstances under which it 
pleases God to save them. We can not conceive 
of regeneration taking place in a child before it 
has awakened to self-consciousness. This takes 
place in the case of the dying infant in the hour 
of death, when the spirit leaves the body; and as 
there can be no opposition to the operations of the 
Holy Spirit in the soul of such a child, it can not 
be but that such a child, dying in its innocence, is 
regenerated at the very moment when the soul 
leaves the body and awakes to self-consciousness. 
In the case of the child that grows up, Divine grace 
is the same, but the circumstances are different. 



Here regeneration can not take place before the 
soul assents to it, and it is this in which consists 
the difference between conditional and uncondi- 
tional salvation. With the first dawn of self-con- 
sciousness and the feeling of moral responsibility 
the justification of life is granted to the child, ac- 
cording to the circumstances to which it is ordained, 
either for the enjoyment of bliss in heaven or for 
the acceptance of grace for this life. Though, for 
these reasons, the view of a real regeneration that 
runs parallel with the universal depravity of human 
nature appears untenable, yet there is this truth at 
the bottom of it: that in the same manner as every 
human being has inherited spiritual death through 
Adam's sin, the germ of spiritual life, or the suscep- 
tibility of it, is implanted in every one from his 
birth, without any efforts on his part, solely for the 
sake of the righteousness of the second Adam, and 
through his grace, so that every man has offered by 
the second Adam a perfect remedy for the injury 
sustained through the first Adam from his very 
birth. "The life," says John, "was the light of 
men; and that was the true light, which lighteth 
every man that cometh into the world." (John 
i, 4, i). ) The same idea is expressed by Paul, when 
he says, "As by the offense of one judgment came 
upon all men to condemnation, even so by the right- 
eousness of one the free gift came upon all men 
unto justification of life." (Rom. v, 18.) The just- 
ification of life, or the new life awakened by the 
Holy Spirit, can, indeed, not manifest itself in the 
infant child; but who is, therefore, prepared to deny 
that grace can affect the infant child as well as sin? 
Why should the infant be incapable of having the 
principle of spiritual life in itself before it is con- 
scious of it? If the children (iraidia or Pp£<f>v) 
brought to Jesus had been incapable of receiving 
any spiritual blessings at his hands, would the Lord, 
who never did any thing that was useless, have laid 
his hands upon them and blessed them? — We must 
not bring our remarks to a close without examining 
into the bearing which these words of Christ and 
his action have on infant baptism. The children 
were brought to Christ, not to be baptized, but that 
he should lay his hands on them and pray; that is, 
procure and impart unto them a spiritual blessing. 
It must, moreover, be borne in mind that the words 
"of such is the kingdom of heaven" were spoken be- 
fore Christian baptism was instituted. The cause of 
infant salvation is thus not their baptism, but, as we 
have shown, their unconditional redemption through 
Jesus Christ. But this very redemption and its re- 
sults, the operation of the Holy Spirit upon every 
man from his birth, is the foundation on which in- 
fant baptism rests; for baptism is nothing else 
than the sacramental acknowledgment of the share 
which every child has in the universal redemption 
through Jesus Christ. It is a sign and seal that, in 
virtue of the redemption by Christ, the children of 
Adam, as children, are in favor with God already ; 



ANSWER TO THE INQUIRY OF A RICH YOUNG MAN. 



465 



that they are heirs of eternal life in consequence of 
the merits of Christ, not in consequence of baptism. 
In so far as infant baptism is the expression of 
God's forerunning grace — and the whole Christian 
religion rests on forerunning grace — and in so far 
as baptism represents incipient salvation, the entry 
into the visible kingdom of God, and points as a 
sacrament of promise to the final completion of this 
salvation, so far infant baptism, and not that of 
adults, represents the full idea of baptism. For 
baptism rests, even in the case of adults, after all, 
on the unmerited grace of God, which has been 
purchased for all men through Jesus Christ; and in 
this sense the addition in Mark must be understood ; 
namely, "Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom 
of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein." 
It is self-evident that in the case of adults a con- 
scious assent and a ready reception of the Divine 
grace through repentance and faith are necessarily 
required, while in the case of infants their partici- 
pation in the covenant of grace is merely passive. 
Inasmuch as the infant is not yet guilty of any 
actual transgression, and inasmuch as original sin 
for the sake of the righteousness of the second 
Adam is not imputed unto the infant, there is, evi- 
dently, nothing in it that could incapacitate it for 
the covenant of grace. For this very reason the 
infant is, through baptism, to be taken out of the 
world, which lieth in wickedness, and to be intro- 
duced into the family of God. The child is not to 
be a heathen first and a Christian afterward, but its 
life is to be developed from its very incipiency under 
Christian influences. A child of believing parents, 
a child that is born in the Church, is already in the 
kingdom of God. Baptism is its birthright, that 
can not lawfully be withheld from it. It has a 
claim on the Church and the Church on the child. 
It is the solemn duty of its believing parents, and 
of the Church, to awaken in this child, by prayer, 



instruction, and example, the consciousness of the 
grace of God, of which it has become a partaker, 
and to develop it into healthful life by the aid of 
the Holy Spirit. The duties of Christian parents 
to their offspring are beautifully described by Dr. 
Olin in the following words: "The Lord intends the 
Christian family to be a school of Christ — to live in 
a holy atmosphere, in which the children shall be 
bathed and baptized, and nurtured, as in a divine, 
genial element. He would have them put on the 
Lord Jesus Christ with the first garments of their 
childhood, and drink in Christian sentiments from 
the mother's loving, beaming eyes as they hang 
upon the breast. He intends them to learn religion, 
as they learn a thousand other things, from the 
spirit and tone of the family — from its vocal thanks- 
givings and songs of praise — from its quiet, joyous 
Sabbaths — from the penitent tear, the humble car- 
riage, the tender accents, the reverent look and at- 
titude of the father when, as a priest, he offers the 
morning and the evening sacrifice. The new im- 
mortal that has fallen down into the midst of the 
Christian family is to be taken into the soul of its 
piety, to be sanctified by its prayer and faith, and 
to form a part of that reasonable and acceptable 
offering in which, morning and evening, the godly 
parents lay all that they are and that they have 
on the altar of sacrifice. This, with faithful and 
diligent instructions, and restraints adapted to the 
different periods and exigencies of childhood and 
youth, is the nurture of the Lord — the right train- 
ing, which, under our gracious economy, insures 
the early piety of the children of really Christian 
families. They grow up Christians; they are sanc- 
tified from the womb. Even their childish prattle 
savors of divine things, and they pass on to the 
attainments of mature piety by gradations so easy 
and imperceptible that it may not be possible to fix 
the day of their espousals to the Savior." 



§44. ANSWER TO THE INQUIRY OF A RICH YOUNG MAN, AND DISCOURSE 

THEREUPON. 

Verses 16— 30. (Compare Mark x, 17-31; Luke xviii, 18-30.) 

(16) And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing 

shall I do, that I may have eternal life? (17) And he said unto him, Why callest 

thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God : but if thou wilt enter into 

life, keep the commandments. (18) He saith unto him, "Which ? Jesus said, Thou 

shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou 

shalt not bear false witness, (19) Honor thy father and thy mother : and, Thou shalt 

love thy neighbor as thyself. (20) The young man saith unto him, All these things 

have I kept from my youth up : what lack I yet ? (21) Jesus said unto him, If thou 

wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have 

30 



466 



MATTHEW XIX, 16-30. 



treasure in heaven : and come and follow me. (22) But when the young man heard 
that saying, he went away sorrowful : for he had great possessions. (23) Then said 
Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter 
into the kingdom of heaven. (24) And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel 
to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom 
of God. (25) "When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, 
Who then can be saved? (26) But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With 
men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible. (27) Then answered 
Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee ; what 
shall we have therefore ? (28) And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, 
That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall 
sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the 
twelve tribes of Israel. (29) And every one that hath forsaken houses, or breth- 
ren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's 
sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life. (30) But many 
that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first. 



Verse 16. And, behold, one came, etc. This in- 
dividual was a young man, rich, and the ruler of a 
synagogue. From Mark we learn that he came run- 
ning, and kneeled to Jesus in the way, while the latter 
was about departing from that part of the country. 
All these circumstances were well calculated to make 
a sensation, and this the Evangelist expresses by 
" behold." It is worth noticing with what humility, 
what freedom from prejudice and fear of men, he 
does public homage to Jesus, expressing thereby 
even a willingness and readiness to become a dis- 
ciple of the Savior. — Good Master, what good 

THING SHALL I DO THAT I MAT HAVE ETERNAL 

like ? Here the readings vary. Codd. B D, and 
some important versions, read, ditidaicaXe, ri aya&bv 
iron'jco), (Master, what good thing shall I do?) and 
in the next verse, ri p.e kpura^ Trepi rov dyadov, (What 
doest thou ask me about the good?) Griesbach, 
Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Alford have adopted 
this reading. — He was conscious of having done 
a good many good things already, yet he did not feel 
fully satisfied and secure of eternal life. There lay, 
however, as the sequel shows, a double error at the 
bottom of his question. He imagines to obtain or 
inherit eternal life, 1. By his works; 2. By doing an 
extraordinary work which is to complete his imagin- 
ary righteousness. The question, What good (thing) 
shall I do? in its general import, is graver and 
more momentous than all other questions, more so 
than all problems of science. Whoever has never 
propounded this question to himself is still fast 
asleep in sin and carnal security. Dr. Krummacher 
remarks, "How far does this wealthy, influential 
young man excel many of his peers in rank and 
position, who have lost all faith in the supernatural, 
and who make it their highest boast to deny every 



thing that is spiritual and divine!" But although 
eternal life was the object he sought, and although 
the things of this world did not satisfy him, yet he 
was not willing to give them up. On the other 
hand, he was not so completely blinded by self- 
righteousness as to believe that a mere conventional 
morality was sufficient to secure eternal life for him. 
It was, evidently, a deeply-felt want that induced 
him to come to Christ in the way described. He 
was not satisfied with the outward observance of the 
law, although he had no adequate conception of the 
depravity of human nature and of the spirit of the 
law. 

Verse 17. Why callest thou me good? or, ac- 
cording to the other reading, Why askest thou me 
about the good? Stier prefers the common read- 
ing, and takes the other for an early gloss or cor- 
rection, on the ground that while the reading "Why 
callest thou me good?" may, very naturally, have 
been considered by some transcriber to be objection- 
able and unintelligible, no one would have dared to 
substitute it for the true reading. The young man 
had addressed Jesus according to the fashion of his 
times, "Good Master," or "Excellent Teacher." 
The Lord designs to teach this youth, who enter- 
tained not the least doubt of his ability to do many 
good things, the unwelcome truth that no mere 
man — and for a mere man the young man took 
Jesus, notwithstanding the high veneration which 
he entertained for him — is good; that without God 
no one is good in the full sense of the word; that he 
must, therefore, first become good before he can do 
good works; and that God alone, the only fountain 
of the good, can make him good. For this purpose 
he wisely emphasized the word "good" in his reply, 
which implies all this, but by no means any denial 



ANSWER TO THE INQUIRY OF A RICH YOUNG MAN. 



467 



of his own sinlessness; for he says not "I am not 
good," or "only One is good — my Father" — and such 
his reply wonld have been had he intended to deny 
his sinlessness. He calls himself (John x, 12) the 
good Shepherd, which is more than "good Master," 
and insists (John viii, 46) on his sinlessness, and, 
thereby, indirectly on his divinity. Rationalists 
may choose between the two following syllogisms: 
No one is perfectly good except God. Christ is not 
God, therefore he is not perfectly good. Or, no one 
is perfectly good except God. Christ is perfectly 
good, therefore Christ is God. While Jesus, who 
knew no sin, says, with a humility that is the very 
opposite of the pride of self-righteousness, " No one 
is good, but One, that is God," and thereby vails, 
as it were, his sinlessness, he affirms, at the same 
time, his divinity by his own sinlessness, which even 
those are compelled to acknowledge who deny his 
divine claims. — In order to impress still more 
deeply on the young man the mortifying truth that 
he was himself not good, the Lord adds, but if thou 

WILT ENTER INTO LIFE, KEEP THE COMMANDMENTS. 

The young man is referred to the Divine command- 
ments, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. The 
more earnestly a man strives to keep the command- 
ments as God desires them to be kept, the more 
fully he will be convinced that he can not keep 
them by his own strength. Thus, the law is our 
schoolmaster, to bring us unto Christ. At the same 
time the Lord teaches us that faith and grace do 
not make void but establish the law. 

Verses 18, 19. He saith unto him, Which? 
The young man, according to the tenor of his 
question, (verse 1G,) expects to be referred to com- 
mandments of a peculiar kind — to some great and 
meritorious work — and requests, accordingly, further 
information about the commandments meant by the 
Savior. The pharisaic distinction between great 
and small commandments comes here plainly in 
view. Mark and Luke omit this characteristic 
question, and give the words of the Lord at once, 
" Thou knowest the commandments." The report 
of Matthew is the fullest and most accurate. — The 
Lord refers to the commandments of the second Ta- 
ble, because, 1. We can more easily attain to a cor- 
rect knowledge of our conduct toward our fellow-men, 
whom we see, than toward God, whom we do not see, 
and by this means learn best to understand our moral 
or religious condition ; 2. Those commandments are 
mentioned first, which forbid things that are univers- 
ally condemned by the conscience. This naturally 
leads to the humiliating question : Is man, who needs 
such commandments for the regulation of his con- 
duct, good by nature? Is he not by nature a mur- 
derer, adulterer, thief, and liar at heart, a child 
without reverence, a man without love ? 

Verse 20. All these things have I kept, etc. 
A certain outward righteousness this young man 
evidently had. As if wondering and amazed at the 
easiness of the terms, he replies in a tone which 



1 shows how little he understood what it was to ob- 
serve the commandments in their thorough and spir- 
itual application, as Jesus has explained them in his 
Sermon on the Mount. Yet by adding, What lace 
I yet ? he confesses an uneasiness, a conviction that 
something is still wanting to secure his peace. That 
there was a great inward struggle going on in his 
heart, appears from the remark of Mark, (x, 21,) 
"And Jesus beholding him, loved him," and from the 
sorrowful state of mind in which he left the Lord. 
"The self-righteous are not all of one kind. The 
young man in question belongs to the better class, and 
forms, without being aware of it, the intermediate link 
between the Pharisee and publican, whose contrast is 
set forth in Luke, (xviii, 10-12.) Legal righteous- 
ness, a keeping of the laws according to one's best 
knowledge, is not worthless in itself. Who would 
not rather see such a young man than a profligate 
person or an open transgressor? But mere morality 
does not satisfy the heart, nor pacify the conscience 
The greatar the effort has been to keep the law, the 
more irresistible is the question, ' What lack I yet?' " 
(Stier.) 

Verse 21. If thou wilt be perfect. Jesus does 
not contradict the young man's statement, does not 
question his veracity, does not even directly expose 
the hollowness of his supposed good works, but com- 
plies with his request to show unto him what he was 
still lacking, by pointing out a particularly-good 
work ; but this good work revealed the fatal defect 
in the young man's character, and was well adapted 
to bring him to a proper knowledge of himself — to 
the painful knowledge that, instead of having kept 
all the precepts of God's law, he was not even pre- 
pared to fulfill the very first, from which all the oth- 
ers flow, loving the creature more than the Creator. 
— Sell that thou hast. "It is self-evident," says 
Stier, " that the compliance with this command is 
not a general rule for all the wealthy that desire to 
be saved; and it is equally clear that the mere part- 
ing with one's property is in itself without value and 
merit. (1 Cor. xiii, 3.) It is here required as a test 
and preparation for what is immediately afterward 
required of him. — And come and follow me. But 
although this requirement was a particular test in 
a particular case, yet it must not be overlooked that 
it is based on the general duty of unconditional self- 
denial and surrender to Christ. The Gospel re- 
quires of every man a readiness to consecrate to 
God whatever he demands, be it much, or little, or 
all. The one thing that the young man lacked was 
not that he had not sold all his goods and given 
them to the poor, but that there was something 
which he valued more than his allegiance to God. 
In this sense the demand of our Lord is of general 
application. "It is a command, not a counsel — nec- 
essary, not optional — but particular, not universal, 
accommodated to the idiosyncrasy of his soul to 
whom it was addressed. For many followed Jesus 
to whom he did not give this command. He may be 



468 



MATTHEW XIX, 16-30. 



perfect who still possesses -wealth ; he may give all 
to the poor who is very far from perfection. Our 
Lord's words laid an obligation on the man who 
offered himself of his own accord, and that so un- 
reservedly. If the Lord had said, Thou art rich, 
and art too fond of thy riches, the young man would 
have denied it; wherefore, instead of so doing, he 
demands immediately a direct proof." (Bengel.) 
What our Lord required of the young man was, more- 
over, a very necessary condition of discipleship in 
that day, as appears, also, from the additional clause 
in Mark: "And take up the cross." What could 
a young man, then, do with his riches as a follower 
of Christ? Must they not have been, almost of ne- 
cessity, a fatal incumbrance? For, by the invita- 
tion to follow Jesus, we have evidently to understand 
here a call, like the other apostles, to leave all and 
devote himself exclusively and permanently to the 
service of Christ in the ministry of the Gospel. 

Verse 22. " The young man must have deeply 
felt the truth of the words of Jesus ; for as Jesus 
neither had nor claimed legal authority over him, 
and as the Old Testament did not require such a 
surrender, he might have declined compliance with- 
out uneasiness. But this he could not do. The 
Spirit that accompanied the words of Jesus had 
found its way into his heart, darkness had given way, 
and he saw, in the light of the Spirit, the true way 
of the new birth: hence his painful struggle. But 
the fetters that tied him were so strong that he could 
not break them, and thus the gate of the kingdom 
of God, that had just now opened, closed again be- 
fore his tearful eyes." (Olshausen.) Whether this, 
his sorrow, produced subsequently repentance, godly 
sorrow — as most of the German commentators sup- 
pose — the New Testament does not state, and we, 
of course, do not know. The words of Jesus (verse 
23) would rather indicate the contrary. 

Verse 23. The remarks of the Savior, subse- 
quent to the departure of the young man, have more 
light shed upon them by the report of Mark. Lange 
describes the affecting scene occasioned by this inci- 
dent very vividly, in the following manner: "Jesus 
was touched with the distress and danger of the 
young ruler, who went away from him sorrowful. 
He wished to improve the occasion for his disciples 
also ; it was calculated to advance them in their 
self-knowledge. For this reason he looked signifi- 
cantly round about, and said, 'How hardly shall 
they that have riches enter into the kingdom of 
God.' This word was so new and strange to the dis- 
ciples that they were greatly astonished at it. It 
seemed unto them to be in conflict with the Old Test- 
ament promises of temporal blessings for the just, 
with their own notions of the glory of the new king- 
dom, yea, with the fact that the Lord had some 
wealthy individuals among his disciples. Their 
amazement induced the Lord to express himself 
more fully. 'Children,' said he, according to Mark, 
' how hard is it for them that trust in riches to 



enter into the kingdom of God.' In these words 
lay the assurance that it was not the possession of 
wealth as such that he condemned. The trust which 
the rich put in their possessions is what makes it so 
hard for them to enter into the kingdom of God. 
This qualifying explanation, however, does not take 
away the serious import of the word. On the con- 
trary, the manner in which the Lord speaks imme- 
diately afterward again of the rich, warrants the 
inference that it is really extremely hard for them to 
give up their pernicious confidence in their riches." 

A RICH MAN SHALL HARDLY ENTER INTO THE 

kingdom of heaven. The following comparison 
with the camel, by which not only a difficulty but 
an absolute impossibility is expressed, proves that 
the Lord does not speak of the outward possession 
of wealth as such, but of the frame of mind which 
is engendered by the acquisition and possession of 
wealth. At the same time the Lord's words teach 
plainly that a frame of mind which unfits for heaven 
is intimately connected with the possession of wealth, 
that it is extremely difficult for the rich to free him- 
self from such a state of mind, and that without do- 
ing so he can not enter into the kingdom of God. 
"The cause of this," says Heubner, "lies in this, 
that riches not only strengthen worldly-mindedness, 
weaken the love of the invisible, prevent the crucify- 
ing of the flesh, but invite also to pride and haughti- 
ness by the honor and influence which they confer. 
How few rich men are made uneasy and appre- 
hensive by these plain words of Christ, that their 
riches might hinder them from going to heaven! 
The more praiseworthy are those wealthy Christians 
who devote their riches to the furtherance of the 
cause of Christ." But although the possession of 
riches is attended with peculiar and great dangers, 
impediments, and trials, it must, at the same time, 
not be overlooked that the same is the case with- 
poverty, and that the real cause which unfits for 
heaven must be sought in the heart of man, not in 
his outward circumstances. The poor man that 
''will be rich," (1 Tim. vi, 9,) that sets his heart 
upon riches which he does not possess, can no more 
enter into heaven than the rich who trusts in the 
riches which he possesses. " In the kingdom of God 
every member is only a steward of God, has nothing 
that he calls his own, having surrendered every thing 
to God. This surrender the Lord makes the condi- 
tion of entering into heaven. For this reason the 
word 'rich 1 has a very extensive signification. 
The beggar may be 'rich' in his sins and lusts, 
while the man of wealth may be poor." (Olshausen.) 
Verse 24. It is easier for a camel, etc. 
Commentators have deemed this figure too strong, 
and have, therefore, attempted alterations. Instead 
of Kafi-qkov some prefer the reading ndfiiXov, found in 
a few minuscles, and translate "a rope" or "a cable." 
But while, according to Meyer, the existence of such 
a word as KdfxiXoc is more than doubtful, the pro- 
verbial use of "camel" occurs also in chaps. 23, 24, 



ANSWER TO THE INQUIRY OF A RICH YOUNG MAN. 



4G9 



and the Talmud uses "elephant" for the same pur- 
pose. Others, again, to soften the expression, un- 
derstand by the "eye of a needle" a small side gate, 
through which men passed, but too small for the 
camel to pass through. But against this Lange ob- 
serves : "The difficulty of the preceding verse is ev- 
idently represented here as an absolute impossibility, 
and for impossibility no expression is too strong. 
The only question, therefore, is, In what relation 
does the difficulty of verse 23 sta d to the impossi- 
bility in verse 24? In verse 23 a rich man is spoken 
of, that can tear himself loose from his possessions, 
however hard the task may be, while verse 24 speaks 
of a rich man that is not willing to tear himself 
loose. The camel, a beast of burden, is a very fit 
emblem of the rich man, while the eye of a needle, 
as one of the smallest of orifices, represents most 
fitly the entrance into the kingdom of heaven." 

Verse 25. The exceeding amazement of the 
disciples, and their question, Who then can be 
saved ? plainly show that they had correctly appre- 
hended the difficulty of the rich to enter into the 
kingdom of heaven. The cause of this difficulty is 
man's strong innate attachments to objects of time 
and sense. Even the poorest is strongly attached to 
the little he has, and no one is willing to part with 
what he has. The disciples have correctly appre- 
hended their Master's words as requiring an uncon- 
ditional surrender of self and every thing earthly. 
This appears plainly from the answer which the Lord 
made to their question. — Chrysostom assigns the 
following as the cause of the disciples' amazement: 
" Because they were deeply concerned for the salva- 
tion of their fellow-men, they trembled on account 
of their Master's declaration for the whole world." 

Verse 26. But Jesus beheld them. The same 
is also stated by Mark, (chap, x, 27.) This look of 
Jesus was both calming and reproving. — With men 
this is impossible. Man's natural strength is un- 
able to overcome the impediments of conversion and 
salvation. (Compare Rom. viii, 3.) But what is 
impossible for man in his own strength becomes pos- 
sible by the help of God, which is offered unto him. 
And, inasmuch as this Divine help is a moral help, 
or assistance, that works in man, and in union with 
man's will — no physical irresistible force from with- 
out — it is evident that these words, " With God all 
things are possible," are identical in meaning with 
the words, (Mark ix, 23,) "All things are possible to 
him that believeth." 

Verse 27. Then answered Peter. The disci- 
ples were well aware that the foregoing remarks of 
their Master were intended for them also. Recol- 
lecting what sacrifices he and his fellow-disciples had 
made, Peter, in answer to what our Lord had prom- 
ised the young man, in verse 21, exclaims, "Behold, 
we have forsaken all and followed thee; what 
shall we have therefore? The answer of Christ 
shows that he recognizes the expectation of a re- 
ward by his disciples as proper. He encourages 



them, also, on other occasions, by the promise of 
great rewards in heaven. (Luke vi, 23.) While he 
however thus admits the propriety of their expecta- 
tions, and promises to all believers the richest rec- 
! ompense of reward, he strikes, at the same time, by 
his concluding remark in verse 30, and the following 
parable of the laborers in the vineyard, at the root 
of the Jewish error of seeking reward on the ground 
of merit. 

Verse 28. Ye which have followed me. The 
twelve thrones promised here show that the apostles 
are meant. By confining the promise to those that 
follow — that is, shall have followed — Jesus, Judas is 
prophetically excluded. So in Luke xxii, 28-30. 
Notwithstanding the apostasy of Judas, however, 
the number of the thrones is not diminished; an- 
other shall receive the office of the traitor, and God's 
plan about his kingdom can not receive any detri- 
ment from the wickedness of a mortal. — In the 
regeneration (-na?uyjeveaia) does not belong to " ye 
which have followed me," as the common version has 
it, but must be connected with "ye also shall sit," 
and the verse ought to read, accordingly, I say unto 
you, that ye which have followed me, shall sit in the 
regeneration, etc. By "regeneration" here most of 
the German and some English and American com- 
mentators, as Alford and Owen, understand the 
renovation of the earth ; that is, the new earth, in 
which righteousness shall dwell. Most of the 
English expositors, however, understand the whole 
promise figuratively as applying to the position of 
the apostles in the kingdom of grace ; that is, the 
Christian Church. Dr. Whedon advocates this view 
very ably, as follows: "In the inauguration of the 
apostles, in chap, xvi, 19, the Lord appointed them 
rulers of his Church, after his ascension, under the 
symbols of the keys, and binding, and loosing. Here 
he affirms the same appointment under the imao-e 
of thrones and judging. The parallel passage in 
Luke xxii, 28-30, is explanatory of this, and should 
be diligently compared. Ye which have followed 
me is explained by Ye which have continued with 
me in my temptations. In my temptations is anti- 
thetical with in the regeneration. The temptations 
denote the scenes of our Lord's earthly ministry; 
the regeneration, the state of things after his ascen- 
sion. As this regeneration is a plain antithesis to 
the temptations, the latter term needs a brief analy- 
sis. These temptations, first, were primarily our 
Lord's own trials in his humiliation state. Their 
center was his own person. But, second, they ex- 
tended to those who followed him; namely, his dis- 
ciples and believers. And, third, they characterized 
that period and state of things as a scene of humil- 
iation and subjection. Antithetically to all this, the 
regeneration was at. and after our Lord's resurrec 
tion. It was primarily centered in our Lord's own 
renovated person; for he then put off his servant 
form and put on his immortality. He ascended on 
high upon Ms throne of glory, yet to rule over his 



470 



MATTHEW XX, 1-16. 



Church in heaven and earth. Second, that renova- 
tion overspread and included his followers, especially 
his twelve apostles. By the pentecostal spirit they 
were endowed with power from on high. They en- 
tered upon the possession of the kingdom appointed, 
(Luke xxii, 29;) they received and exercised the 
power of the keys of that kingdom ; they ascended 
their twelve apostolic thrones as the viceroys of the 
Lord in his glorification. Thirdly, the Church was 
renewed and regenerated from the old to the new 
dispensation. The types and shadows had departed, 
the reign of the kingdom of God with power ivas 
begun." All this is good and true; but that the 
promise in question was not fulfilled in the manner 
and at the time stated by Dr. Whedon appears 
plainly, from the fact, as Owen well remarks, that 
the time from Christ's, resurrection to the death 
of the apostles was not the time of their reward, 
but of their trials and persecutions. An appeal 
to profane writers as to the meaning of the term 
■jraMyyevscla is of no avail, since an idea foreign to 
their spiritual vision was ascribed to it by the in- 
spired penmen. Gerlach gives to the promise a 
primary and secondary signification, and para- 
phrases the passage thus : " You shall be the teach- 
ers and rulers of my Church to the end, and on 
the judgment-day my assistants in judging the 
world." — Ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, 
judging. The sitting on thrones is to be taken fig- 
uratively, whatever view we may take of regencfra- 
tion, and the judging is not to be restricted to 
judicial acts proper, but is to be understood in the 
general sense of reigning. By the twelve tribes 
of Israel must be understood not the twelve tribes 
of Israel after the flesh, but the spiritual Israel, the 
totality of the children of God, of which the Israel 
after the flesh was only a type. 

Verse 29. And every one that has forsaken. 
Mark says, "For my sake, and the Gospel's," and 
Luke, "For the kingdom of God's sake." Every 



one, without exception, that has left this or that ob- 
ject, that was dear to him, for the Lord's sake, shall 
not suffer any loss, but be abundantly compensated 
for it. Lange observes: "The relations of kin and 
family stand between 'homes' and 'lands,' whence 
it seems to follow that 'homes' is not to be under- 
stood literally, but figuratively, meaning nationality, 
native country, and the faith of fathers and ances- 
tors." That "the forsaking of the wife" does not 
imply a dissolution of the matrimonial relation is 
plain from what the Lord had said but shortly before 
on this subject. — Shall receive a hundredfold, 
etc. ; that is, a hundred times as much in value as 
they had given up for Christ. The number "hund- 
red" is an indefinitely great one, and must, of 
course, not be understood literally. Luke says, 
"manifold more," confining this part of the promise 
to the present life. For every sacrifice of earthly 
relations and earthly good which the believers make 
for the cause of the kingdom of God they receive 
the most ample compensation, primarily, of course, 
in spiritual blessings. Who can doubt that the apos- 
tles and martyrs, yea, all real children and servants 
of God, enjoyed — notwithstanding the temptations 
which Mark significantly couples with the bless- 
ings — even on earth more true happiness than other 
men? But in many instances the Christian re- 
ceives ample compensation, also, in temporal bless- 
ings for the sacrifices made in his Master's cause. 
Godliness has the promise of the present life as well 
as of the life to come. 

Verse 30. This saying, which the Lord used also 
on another occasion, (Luke xiii, 30,) is explained by 
the following parable, at the close of which it is re- 
peated. Its meaning and bearing on what precedes 
we shall examine in our introductory remarks on 
the following chapter. We would, therefore, here 
say only, many that are first "with regard to time, 
talents, outward appearances, and in their own opin- 
ion," shall be last, and vice versa. 



CHAPTER XX 



§45. THE PARABLE OF THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. 

The object of this parable is, as we intimated at the close of the preceding section, 
and as the opening conjunction for indicates, both to illustrate and to confirm the closing 
sentence of verse 30. Our first question, therefore, is: In what relation does verse 30 
of chap, xix stand to what immediately goes before ? Peter's question, " What shall we 
have in return for our forsaking every thing and following thee?" was answered by the 
Lord with the promise of an ample reward, both in this life and that to come. But as 
the apostle's question was based, to some extent, on the idea of human merit, the Lord 
adds a significant but : " But many that are first shall be last, and the last shall be first;" 
and proceeds to explain, by this parable, how the first may be last; namely, by working 



THE PARABLE OF THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. 471 

merely for wages, or, what amounts to the same, by appealing before God to their merits, 
and exalting themselves above others, whose merits they consider inferior to their own. 
Thus the parable sets forth two truths; namely, that God fully compensates every man 
for what he does, and that those who work only for wages and imagine they have 
higher claims on God than others, receive their penny — that is, their stipulated 
temporal rewards — but lose eternal life, which is the free gift of Divine grace, not the 
reward of merit. These are the two leading ideas of the parable, its substance and 
center. The details can with safety be interpreted only so far as their interpretation 
serves to elucidate these fundamental ideas. (See Thirdly in our introductory remarks to 
Chap. XIII, page 357.) 

This is the basis on which that profoundest of all the German expositors, Dr. Stier, 
builds his interpretation, that appears to us the only correct one. He says: " In order to 
understand and interpret this parable correctly, which has always received a good deal 
of attention, and has, especially in our days, been distorted, yea, fairly abused, in lengthy 
dissertations, it is above every thing else necessary to know what the Lord means by the 
penny, or hire. We maintain that all who understand eternal life or the bliss of heaven by 
it, grievously err and miss the scope of the whole parable. That eternal life can not be 
meant by it, appears conclusively from the three following considerations: First, eternal 
life is never represented in the Scriptures as hire due by contract, as is evidently the case 
with the penny, according to verses 2 and 13. The contract is, as we see, fulfilled by the 
contracting parties, and the disj^osition or worthiness of the hired laborers does no-t come 
at all into consideration. On such conditions no one goes to heaven. Secondly, the 
murmuring party received their hire, but are dissatisfied with it. That these do not be- 
long to the number of the elect is plainly said at the close of the parable. If they did 
belong to them, the whole parable would contradict this its conclusion, for all the called 
would ultimately be saved. The abrupt, almost angry, dismissal, ' Go thy way,' (v. 14) — 
the original v-ayz is still more expressive — is perfectly inconsistent with the idea that 
heaven is meant here. The blessed of the Father (xxv, 34) are quite differently ad- 
dressed. The words, Take that thine is, in connection with the ungracious dismissal, 
remind one forcibly of what Abraham tells the rich man, (Luke xvi, 25,) and have 
essentially the same meaning, although the words themselves are spoken under different 
circumstances: 'What thou hast stipulated for thou receivest, and with this depart ; I do 
not desire thy further services nor thy presence.' The enjoyment of heaven without the 
favor of God is an impossibility. No murmurer can go to heaven, and whoever goes 
there can not murmur. Luther also, though he would rather ignore the penny as some- 
thing unessential, says: 'If we would interpret strictly, we must understand the penny 
of the tempoi^al good, and the favor of the householder of the eternal good. The mur- 
muring laborers trot away with their penny, and are damned.' Melancthon main- 
tains still more positively that eternal life is not to be understood by the penny. A 
single glance at what has been said is sufficient to convince us that the penny is, in- 
deed, a temporal blessing distinct from eternal life, but not necessarily confined to things 
of an earthly nature. It is evidently the same reward, enjoyment, or compensation to 
which Peter's question refers, (xix, 27.) God, both according to grace and justice, con- 
nects a compensation or reward with every service man renders unto him, so that no one 
serves God for naught. Who has ever suffered any harm by being a follower of that 
which is good? (1 Pet. iii, 13.) Who has not found sufficient reward therein? All 
that serve the Lord have even in this life their reward, notwithstanding the persecutions 
which they have to suffer. But the penny is very different in kind. While some find 
in it, from the very start, a gracious reward and an earnest of the gift of eternal life, 
others claim it as their due, as the wages of their service, and lose thereby eternal life." 

To this interpretation of the penny it is objected that, since it was paid at the close 
of the day, it must mean the reward of heaven. But this objection has no force. For 



472 MATTHEW XX, 1-16. 



the paying of the hire in the evening is a feature which the complement of the parable 
necessarily required. Day-laborers are paid in the evening. The penny, no matter what 
it means, appears as the compensation for the labor performed. 

This leads us to the second question ; namely, what have we to understand by the day 
with its twelve hours? What by the earlier or later hours of the first and the last? On 
this point Alford agrees in substance with Stier, although he rejects the latter's interpret- 
ation of the penny. Alford understands by the day the '■'■natural period of earthly work" 
and says that "the various hours of hiring serve to spread the calling over the various 
periods, and to show that it is again and again made." Stier more accurately defines the 
day with its hours thus : " The natural day with its twelve hours is nothing else than the 
parabolic representation of the manifold relations existing between the first and the 
last. It refers, indeed, more particularly to the earlier calling of Israel, with whom 
God made the covenant of works, but includes also all other references to any real or 
imaginary precedence. The parable does not symbolize any thing that takes place for 
all, in every respect, in the manner described, but something that takes place in the 
course of time, often and in various ways, though its primary reference is to the calling 
of the Jews and Gentiles. The limit in the interpretation of the parable is the warning 
representation of all that are called, with some real or imaginary advantages over others, 
and connect therewith the idea of meritoriousness. To find any thiug beyond this limit 
in the individual features of the parable is erroneous." To refer each of the various 
hours at which the laborers were engaged to a particular period in the historical develop- 
ment of the kingdom of God — either from the beginning to the end of the world, or dur- 
ing the New Testament dispensation — as manj r of the earlier Fathers and some more 
recent expositors have done, is trifling, and leads to inexplicable difficulties. The 
scope of the parable contemplates evidently only the contrast presented by the call 
of the first and last. As the Lord desired to warn his disciples against the idea that 
their services were meritorious, what was more natural for him than to do this by 
explaining unto them the great error of the Jews, which consisted in this, that they 
considered the early calling of their ancestors as a great merit on their part, and mur- 
mured when the heathen converts were put on an equal footing with them? (Comp. 
Acts xi, 1, etc.; xv, 1, etc.) This reference of the parable to the calling of the Gentiles 
is well set forth by Mr. Watson, who says : " The Gentiles were to be brought into the 
Church, and made ' fellow-heirs,' being placed on a perfect equality with Jewish believers 
as to the privileges and spiritual blessings of the Gospel, so that there should be 'no dif- 
ference;' and to this several of the parables of our Lord look forward, his design being 
to prepare the apostles for it, and gradually to undermine those Jewish prejudices which 
still held possession of their hearts. These Gentiles were last in general estimation, and 
in their destitution of instruction, and yet they became first — the Gentile Church, in 
fact, ultimately superseding not only the Jewish Church, as it existed under the law, but 
the Churches of Jewish Christians, who, in a short time after the destruction of the Jew- 
ish polity, became extinct by absorption into the Gentile Churches. Though the believ- 
ing Jews might naturally suppose that they ought to have eminence and distinction in 
the Church which Christ was about to set up, even if other people might be called into 
it, yet they had no reason to murmur at God's goodness to the Gentiles, in making them 
equal, and in some respects superior. The grace of the Gospel in all its fullness, as prom- 
ised, was granted unto them. There was in the case no breach of the covenant stipu- 
lation, but there was nothing in that to prevent the exuberant goodness of God from 
flowing forth to the Gentiles also. And if, in process of time, he should make the Gen- 
tile Churches even first in that instrumentality by which the world was to be illuminated 
and converted, this was a pure matter of grace and sovereign appointment, not to be en- 
vied, but to be acquiesced in and adored." — The only question remaining is, how far 
this parable may be applied to the various calls which a man receives during his lifetime. 



THE PARABLE OF THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. 473 

Such an application has forced itself upon the Church so generally and naturally that we 
do not feel at liberty to reject it altogether ; and for this reason a practical application 
of the various features of the parable will be made in the exposition of each verse. Yet 
it can not be denied that this application conflicts more or less with the correct interpret- 
ation of the parable. The different hours can but partially be applied to the personal 
calls of Divine grace which men experience at the different periods of life. If, for exam- 
ple, the laborers that were hired first are made to represent those who have been engaged 
in the service of God all their life .long, amid sore trials and great difficulties, it would 
be very wrong to ascribe unto them also the disposition of their representatives. The 
real scope of the parable is, in fact, quite different from what it becomes if the hours are 
applied in the manner indicated. While in the parable itself the disposition of the first 
laborers is the main point, the leading idea in the application is, that God calls men from 
their infancy in various ways into his service, and promises to each a rich reward. That 
the laborers who entered into the vineyard at the eleventh hour were preferred to those 
who had worked the whole day, was owing to the self-exaltation and mercenary char- 
acter of the latter. How absurd would it be to infer from this that there are no degrees 
in the kingdom of glory, and that it is indifferent whether a man serves God from his 
infancy or turns to God only at the close of his life! This erroneous view is, however, 
avoided by a correct interpretation of the penny, and it is worthy of note that, according 
to this interpretation, the application to the lifetime of every individual conflicts less 
with the real scope of the parable, than according to any other. 

Verses 1—16. 

(1) For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, which 
went out early in the morning to hire laborers into his vineyard. (2) And when he 
had agreed with the laborers for a penny 1 a day, 2 he sent them into his vineyard. 
(3) And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the 
market-place, (4) and said unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatso- 
ever is right I will give you. And they went their way. (5) Again he went out 
about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise. (6) And about the eleventh 
hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand 
ye here all the day idle ? (7) They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. 
He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that 
shall ye receive. (8) So when even was come, 3 the lord of the vineyard saith unto 
his steward, Call the laborers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last 
unto the first. (9) And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, 
they received every man a penny. (10) But when the first came, they supposed 



1 The Roman denarius, a silver coin, varying from 
fifteen to seventeen cents. (See chap, xviii, 28.) It 
was the daily pay of a Roman soldier under Tiberius, a 
few years before this parable was uttered, and the daily 
wages of a laborer among the Jews. Polybius, (II, 15,) 
in illustrating the exceeding fertility and cheapness of 
the country, mentions that the charge for a day's en- 
tertainment in the inns of Cisalpine Gaul was half an 
as — one-twentieth of a denarius. This we may, there- 
fore, regard as liberal pay for a day's work. 2 By day 
is here meant the natural day, from the rising to the 
setting of the sun. The chronological day the Jews reck- 
oned from sundown to sundown. (Lev. xxiii, 32.) Before 
the exile there was only one more division into morning, 



noon, and evening. The division into hours the Jews 
seem to have adopted during their exile. These hours, 
however, were not of equal length all the year round, no 
more than the watches of the night. But the actual length 
of the day was divided into twelve equal parts, (hours,) 
and the actual time of the night into four watches ; that 
is, four equal parts. The longest da.y in Palestine has 
fourteen hours and twelve minutes, the shortest, nine 
hours and forty-eight minutes. The third hour, there- 
fore, answered nearly to our nine o'clock, A. M., the 
sixth to our noon, the ninth to our three o'clock, P. M., 
and the eleventh to our five in the evening. 3 By the 
Mosaic law (Deut. xxiv, 15) the wages of a hired serv- 
ant were to be paid before night. 



474 



Matthew xx, i-ie. 



that they should have received more ; and they likewise received every man a 
penny. (11) And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman 
of the house, (12) saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast 
made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day. 
(13) But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong : didst 
not thou agree with me for a penny? (14) Take that thine is, and go thy way : I 
will give unto this last, even as unto thee. (15) Is it not lawful for me to do what 
I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? (16) So the last 
shall be first, and the first last : for many be called, but few chosen. 



Verse 1. For the kingdom of heaven" is like. 
Because the term "kingdom of heaven" generally 
refers to the new dispensation, most commentators 
maintain that by the first hired laborers not the 
Jews but the apostles must be understood. But 
there is no force whatever in this reasoning, because 
the vineyard, the theme of this parable, was a well- 
known symbol of the Church of God under the old 
dispensation. The kingdom of God is very appro- 
priately compared with a vineyard "because its fruit 
is delicious, but the labor it requires very hard." — 
Which went out early in the morning. On this 
Stier remarks: "The invitation was given early, and 
all might have made use of it; if they were not 
present at the first invitation, or if they did not 
heed it, it was their own fault, and they alone were 
responsible for any losses which they might sustain 
from coming so late into the vineyard. This we con- 
ceive to be true, though the laborers excuse them- 
selves on this point in verse 7." — To hire laborers. 
This hiring symbolizes God's invitation or call to 
come and work in his Church, whether made by the 
ministry of the Word, or by the secret working of 
his Spirit on the human heart, or by special provi- 
dences. The similitude of the points of the parable 
must, however, not be pressed too far. While men 
hire laborers, that is, agree to pay them a certain 
sum for a specified amount of labor to be performed 
by the latter, so that each of the parties receives his 
equivalent for what he gives or does, God never 
hires, that is, he receives no equivalent from men 
for what he promises unto them, and he has, more- 
over, an undisputed claim on man's time and serv- 
ices as his Creator and Preserver. The rewards 
which he promises to those that obey him are of 
free grace, not of merit; and this very mercenary 
spirit, that fancies to have claims upon God for serv- 
ices rendered, etc., is sternly rebuked by the whole 
parable, and, if fostered and persevered in, finally 
excludes, as we are plainly told, from eternal life 
altogether. — The laborers hired are not only the 
teachers in the Church, but the whole membership; 
every believer has a work to do in the Church of 
God, both by his profession and by the example of 
his deportment; and God requires of every one 
faithfulness in his calling. 



Verse 2. And when he hap agreed with the 
laborers for A pennt a day. Man, in his inter- 
course with his fellow-man, has a perfect right to 
demand an equivalent for what he does or gives; 
not so in his dealings with his God, though God 
does not demand service of man without offering a 
reward. 

Verse 3. And saw others standing idle in the 
market-place. The market-place of the world is 
here opposed to the kingdom of God. Whoever has 
not yet commenced to labor in the kingdom of God, 
in obedience to the drawing of God's grace, is an 
idler, no matter what else he may do. " However 
busily occupied a man is, however hard he works, 
day and night, if he does not work in a Divine call, 
if he does not look upon God as his employer, if he 
does not devote his labors to the best interests of 
the kingdom of God, he is an idler." (Draeseke.) 

Verse 4. Whatsoever is right I will give you; 
that is, what is just and equitable. "No amount is 
here agreed upon. While the first laborers were 
hired for a specified sum, these are satisfied with the 
householder's declaration that they are to be dealt 
with in justice and equity." (Lange.) "Nations as 
well as individuals are at different times called into 
the fold of Christ; one nation has the Gospel 
preached before another, and even of those who 
from their birth are in the bosom of the Christian 
Church, one attains in early years, another in the 
years of manhood, and a third one again in the de- 
clining years of old age, to a saving knowledge of 
his Savior." (Lisco.) 

Verse 5. Again he went out about the sixth 
and ninth hour. On this verse Luther remarks: 
"Some of the Fathers have applied this to the 
preachers from the beginning to the end of the 
world; the first hour represents, accordingly, the 
times of Adam, the third those of Noah, the sixth 
those of Abraham, the ninth those of Moses, the 
eleventh those of Christ and of the apostles. Such 
talk will do, if a man has nothing else to preach 
about." It is equally fanciful to understand, as 
Lange does, "by the first hour the times of the apos- 
tles and Jewish Christians, by the third those of the 
first converts from heathenism, by the sixth and 
ninth the age of Constantine, and by the eleventh 



THE PARABLE OF THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. 



475 



hour the times immediately preceding the millen- 
nium." 

Verses 6, V. And about the eleventh- hour he 
went out. "The gracious, good lord can not but 
make another effort at the very last hour. Those 
whom he now finds unemployed he evidently cen- 
sures; 'why have you stood all the day idle? why 
have you slighted my earlier invitations? Are you 
determined to lose also the last hour, and with it 
the whole day?'" (Stier.) — No one has hired us. 
Stier comments on this passage as follows: "What 
a bold answer, since the householder had called 
from the first hour of the day, and charges them, 
therefore, not undeservedly, with idleness! Christ 
does not represent this excuse as valid, and before 
God it will certainly be rejected. To human eyes 
the case seems, indeed, often different. We say, of 
this or that man, 'Would to God that he had learned 
it earlier! but his education was wrong, he was in 
bad company, his religious instructor was a ration- 
alist.' When such an individual hears the Divine 
call, so as to heed it, his first impression is, that he 
had never been called before. But when the Spirit 
fully enlightens him he justifies himself no longer. 
He feels and confesses that God has called him 
from his tender infancy, but that he has disre- 
garded the Divine call, and that the blame of dis- 
regarding it is altogether his own. The heathen, 
indeed, can truthfully make this plea, but no one 
that groweth up under the benign influences of the 
Gospel. But God in his infinite goodness repeats 
his call to the very last hour; he entreats men not 
to stand idle, and the persons invited at the last 
hour are such as are fully aware of what they have 
deserved by their protracted idleness, and that it is 
mere grace that another opportunity is given unto 
them to work in God's vineyard; they have confi- 
dence in the Lord, and willingly accept now his 
invitation; they do not make the frivolous plea, that 
the day is too far spent, that it is not worth while 
now to commence. Even the eleventh hour is still 
a precious hour of grace, for some evidently the 
last, solemn hour of decision; but we ought to con- 
sider that every call that we hear may be the last 
for us." (Stier.) Owen, however, applies these 
words differently, and says: "They had not re- 
mained idle through indolence, but because no man 
had required their services. They were industrious 
and willing to work, whenever the opportunity was 
offered them. They had tarried in the market to 
an unusually-late hour, in hopes that, even then, 
some one would employ them, and pay them the 
proportionate wages of the day. It is necessary to 
take all these circumstances into account in reach- 
ing the full meaning of this parable in its spiritual 
application. But no one must suppose, from this, 
that the tardiness to accept the invitations of the 
Gospel, which with some persons extends even to 
the eleventh hour, is excusable or a safe prece- 
dent." 



Verse 8. With this verse commences the second 
section of the parable, the paying off of the labor- 
ers and the justification of the principle, according 
to which this was done. Whi]° the invitation re- 
peated at the different hours of the day is princi- 
pally intended to set forth the self-righteous, merce- 
nary disposition of those who think that because 
they have worked longer than others they are en- 
titled to higher rewards, the comparatively-higher 
compensation of those that had wrought only one 
hour is mainly designed to teach us both that God 
rewards only of grace, that with God man can have 
no merit, and that God does not look so much at 
the amount of labor performed as at the disposition 
of the laborers. The laborers hired at the eleventh 
hour are preferred to all the others, because they ad- 
vanced no claims of merit. They received more 
than they had earned or expected. Their receiving 
their pay first is a trait of the parable intended to 
bring out the disposition of the first laborers in its 
strongest light. In like manner the paying off in 
the evening and the mention of the steward are 
mere drapery, and it leads to confusion to make the 
steward represent Christ, and the paying off the 
final judgment. As we have said before, not the 
adjudging of eternal life, but the bestowment of 
temporal rewards, though of a spiritual nature, are 
symbolized by the penny. "That the lord orders his 
steward to commence with the last means, in gen- 
eral, that all the laborers are to be paid most liber- 
ally, without respect to the amount of labor per- 
formed, or the length of time spent in the vineyard. 
Moreover, there are really only two classes recog- 
nized by the lord, according to their dispositions; 
namely, those who look upon themselves, on account 
of their merit, as the first, and those that humbly 
regard themselves as the last. As the Lord, how- 
ever, takes delight in humility alone, which he 
wished to prove and to confirm, in order to bestow 
on it afterward something better than the penny, he 
makes prophetically the last first and the first last, 
yet orders, at the same time, that the penny be 
paid to all from last to first." (Stier.) 

Verse 10. They supposed that they should 
have received more. This sets forth their spirit 
of self-righteousness. They fancied to have, by dint 
of merit, claims on God's special consideration. 
This they plainly tell the goodman in verse 12. 
Their motto is, The more work, the more merit, and 
consequently the greater reward ; but they find 
themselves disappointed. God judges and acts oth- 
erwise than man. He takes no pleasure in selfish, 
envious laborers. Even those that have worked all 
the day, that is, who in obedience to the first call 
of Divine grace have devoted their whole life to the 
service of God, have no legal claims on God for re- 
ward, but every thing they receive is of free grace; 
and the more a man groweth in grace, the more he 
progresses in holiness, the more this becomes his 
ruling conviction. 



476 



MATTHEW XX, 1-16. 



Verse 11. They murmured against the good- 
man of the house. "Instead of being thankful, 
they murmur on receiving their pay, and that even 
against the householder, whose liberality and good- 
ness of heart they had just witnessed. It is no 
cause of rejoicing to them that others are the re- 
cipients of such distinguished favors. On the con- 
trary, this very fact excites their discontent; for if 
the others had received only their proportionate 
pay — three-fourths, one-half, one-fourth, and one- 
twelfth of a penny — they would have been satisfied. 
But as all, even those that had wrought only one 
hour, received each a penny, they foolishly expected 
to have their pay raised in the same proportion." 
(Stier.) On the term " goodman" Owen remarks: 
"It is the same as the word translated householder 
in verse 1. The word "good" has here no moral 
signification, but is used in an obsolete sense as an 
appellation of civility and respect." 

Verse 12. These last have wrought but one 
hour — literally, have made, as we also say, " to 
make an hour or a day." The whole is the lan- 
guage of contempt for their fellow-laborers, as the 
following, and thou hast made them equal unto 
US, WHICH have borne the burden and heat of 
the day, is that of boast and self-exaltation. The 
word translated heat, literally signifies a burning, 
scorching heat, and is sometimes put for the scorch- 
ing wind, the sirocco. "How like is this language 
to that of the elder son, (Luke xv, 29,) and thine 
own, when thou art full of envy, because others are 
put on an equal footing with thee, or are preferred 
unjustly, as thou thinkest! Attach no importance 
to thy labors for the kingdom of Christ thyself, then 
Christ will attach the greater weight to them. 
Charge nothing to him, if thou workest more than 
others, and he will set the more to thy credit." 
(Richter's Bible.) There are men that look upon 
labor as a burden, and work only for pay — of this 
kind are the first here — while others work without 
any mercenary motives, out of obedience, and with 
implicit confidence in God's goodness; to this class 
belong the last. (Compare verse 9.) 

Verses 13, 14. But he answered one of them, 
probably him who had expressed his discontent in 
the name of the others. — Friend. This term is 
used in chap, xxii, 12, with reference to the guest 
who had no wedding-garment; and in chap, xxvi, 
50, it is applied to Judas Iscariot. It is no term 
of friendship, but an expression of mere civility. — 
I do thee no wrong. " God's strict justice does 
no man wrong. What a laborer earns he certainly 
receives. Even merely outward virtues, without any 
intrinsic value, as, e. g., the temperance or chastity 
of the miser,' never go without their reward, health 
and a long life." (Heubner.) — Take that thine 
is. Thou hast what belongs to thee. — And go thy 
way — intimating that he must give up the idea of 
receiving more. Does this language not remind us 
of Luke xvi, 25? — I will give unto this, etc. 



"God has the sovereign power and perfect right to 
reward as he sees fit. No man has a right to com- 
plain of God's .government. God has the right to 
dispose of us according to his good pleasure. Our 
duty is to obey." (Heubner.) 

Verse 15. Is thine eye evil, because I am 
good ? The eye is put here for the person, because 
the sight of the prosperity of others is the usual in- 
citement to envy. — ■ Because I am good. God thus 
ascribes what he had done to the last laborers to his 
sovereign goodness, leaving no room whatever for 
any merit on their part. 

Verse 16. So the last shall be first and the 
first last. In chap, xix, 30, this sentence reads, 
" Many that are first shall be last, and the last shall 
be first." The difference of the wording is easily 
accounted for. Verse 30 in chap, xix speaks of the 
possibility of the first becoming the last; this verse 
speaks of this possibility as realized, as is shown in 
the preceding parable. For this reason it is said, 
So; the last become, of God's free grace, the first, 
and the first, that is, those who first followed the 
call, and, therefore, believe that they have claims 
on extraordinary rewards, become, by their own 
guilt, the last. It is said of all of those first 
that are described in the parable that they be- 
come last, but not because they were first called, 
but because of the disposition which they man- 
ifested. It can not, therefore, be asserted of all 
that are called first that they become last. In con- 
trast with those first ones, who are characterized 
by the delusion of possessing great merits and their 
contempt for others, appear the last as of a quite 
different disposition, knowing of no merits of their 
own, and trusting implicitly to the goodness and 
veracity of the Lord. — For many be called. This 
refers primarily to the first called, who, notwith- 
standing the long time spent in God's service, were 
found, at last, unfit for heaven. But, from the 
peculiar case of those that, in spite of their calling, 
do not enter heaven, for the reason set forth in the 
parable, the Lord takes occasion to announce the 
general truth that out of the great number of the 
called comparatively but few will approve themselves 
in the end worthy; that is, elect or chosen. This 
sentence is illustrated by the Lord on another occa- 
sion in the parable of the marriage of the king's 
son, (Matt, xxii, 1-14,) wherein we are taught that 
there are, in addition to self-exaltation and a mer- 
cenary spirit, some other causes which keep many of 
the called, in the end, out of heaven. This much, 
however, is certain, from the two parables and from 
the whole tenor of the Scripture teaching, that it is 
not an arbitrary decree of God that makes the elect, 
but that every one who is called has the ability and 
duty to make his election sure. (2 Pet i, 10.) In 
order to do this it is necessary, before every thing 
else, to waive all claims to merit. " Many are 
called to work in God's vineyard; but few retain 
that temper of spirit, that humility, that entire sub- 



AMBITIOUS REQUEST OF THE MOTHER OF THE SONS OF ZEBEDEE. 



477 



mission to the righteousness of God, that utter de- 
nial of any claims as of right on their own part, 
which will allow them, in the end, to be partakers 
of his reward." (Trench.) On the other hand, we 
must be careful not to understand the parable so as 
if the last had been put on an equal footing with 
the first, on account of extraordinary faithfulness 
and zeal displayed in the short time spent in the 
vineyard. Nothing can be more diametrically op- 
posed to the scope of the parable. There is a par- 
able to this effect in the Talmud of Jerusalem, which 
reads as follows: "A king hired many servants. 
There was one among them who did his work re- 
markably well. What did the king do? He called 
him and took a walk with him. When evening 
came the laborers gathered to receive their pay, and 
the excellent laborer received a full day's pay. On 
seeing this the others murmured, saying, We have 
worked all day, but this one only two hours, and he 
has received as much as we. The king said unto 
them, He has done more in two hours than you in 
the whole day." This is, undoubtedly, an imitation 
of our Lord's incomparable parable, conceived in 
the self-righteous spirit of pharisaism. 



HOMILETIG SUGGESTIONS. 
The labor in the kingdom op God and its 

REWARD. 

I. Labor is required op all; for 
1. The Lord calls laborers 



(1.) Early in the morning — the morning and the 
third hour are the spring of life; 

(2.) At noonday — the sixth and ninth hours are 
the age of manhood ; 

(3.) And still in the evening — the eleventh hour 
is old, declining age. 

2. He reproves the idlers. 

II. God is just toward all his laborers. 

1. To every laborer is promised what is right; that 
is, ample reward. 

2. Each receives his penny in the evening; each 
receives an equal reward for his labor. The last are 
in this respect not more favored than the first. The 
disparity of the amount, etc., of labor performed is 
balanced by the good fortune of the first to have 
been all day in the vineyard, while the last suffered 
a great detriment by standing so long idle in the 
market-place. 

III. The reward, which man receives of God 

FOR SERVING HIM BOTH IN TIME AND ETERNITY, IS 
ENTIRELY OF FREE GRACE. 

1. It is grace on the part of God to call men 
into his vineyard, and to promise them a fixed 
reward. 

2. Eternal life can not be earned by any thing 
that man can do or suffer, but is, in every instance, 
the free gift of God. 

IV. Those, also, that have wrought long and 

MUCH FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD WILL BE AT LAST 

rejected — -1. If they think that they can earn 
heaven by their works; 2. If they in pride and 
envy exalt themselves above others. 



46. CHRIST FORETELLS ONCE MORE HIS SUFFERINGS AND DEATH- 
AMBITIOUS REQUEST OF THE MOTHER OF THE SONS OF ZEBEDEE. 



THE 



Verses l 1 ?— 28. 



(Compare Mark x, 32-45; Luke xviii, 31-34.) 

(17) And Jesus going up to Jerusalem took the twelve disciples apart in the 
way, and said unto them, (18) Behold, we go up to Jerusalem ; and the Son of man 
shall be betrayed unto the chief-priests and unto the scribes, and they shall con- 
demn him to death, (19) and shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to 
scourge, and to crucify him: and the third day he shall rise again. (20) Then came 
to him the mother of Zebedee's children with her sons, worshiping him, and desiring 
a certain thing of him. (21) And he said unto her, "What wilt thou ? She saith unto 
him, Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the 
other on thaleft, in thy kingdom. (22) But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not 
what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be bap- 
tized with the baptism that I am baptized with? They say unto him, We are able. 
(23) And he saith unto them, Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, and be baptized with 
the baptism that I am baptized with : but to sit on my right hand, and on my left, is 
not mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father. 



478 



MATTHEW XX, 17-28. 



(24) And when the ten heard it, they were moved with indignation against the two 
brethren. (25) But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes 
of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise au- 
thority upon them. (26) But it shall not be so among you : but whosoever will be 
great among you, let him be your minister; (27) and whosoever will be chief 
among you, let him be your servant: (28) Even as the Son of man came not to be 
ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. 



Verse 17. And Jesus going up to Jerusalem; 
namely, from Ephraim, where he had sought a tem- 
porary refuge. (John xi, 54.) See Synoptic Table, 
No. 135-145. On this last direct journey to Jeru- 
salem our Lord uttered his third plain prediction of 
his impending suffering and death, followed by only 
one more, two days before the Passover. (Chap. 
xxvi, 2.) Matthew says nothing of the impression 
which this sad disclosure made on the disciples. 
From Mark, (x, 32,) however, we learn that the 
Lord went in silent contemplation before his disci- 
ples, they following in amazement and fear. Ac- 
cording to Luke (xviii, 34) they still did not com- 
prehend the meaning of their Master's words. 
Unable to conceive how the Son of God, whose 
power over life and death, heaven and earth, they 
had so often witnessed, should not be able to resist 
all his enemies successfully, and to establish a Mes- 
sianic kingdom according to the Jewish conception, 
they could not understand the clearest statement. 
They had, as appears from the subsequent prayer 
of the sons of Zebedee, nothing before their eyes but 
the glory of the Messiah. — Took the twelve dis- 
ciples apart. Lange remarks on these words : 
''This taking apart means, in all probability, not a 
mere stepping aside and a momentary leaving of the 
crowd of pilgrims, who went to the feast, but refers 
to the stay which Jesus made with his disciples in 
the wilderness near Ephraim. From this wilderness 
he joined, near Jericho, the caravan of Galilean pil- 
grims which went by the way of Jericho to Jerusa- 
lem, and the Evangelist describes here the moment 
when he stepped forth from out of the wilderness to 
join the caravan." 

Verses 18, 19. This prediction is more circum- 
stantial than the two former ones. (Chap, xvi, 21; 
xvii, 22.) — Jerusalem is named as the place where, 
for centuries, the typical sacrifices had prefigured 
the real sacrifice for the sins of the world, and of 
which the Lord says : " It can not be that a prophet 
perish out of Jerusalem." (Luke xiii, 33.) A 
double delivering, (irapaihriovat,) once rendered be- 
traying and the other time delivering, is here spoken 
of. The author of the first betrayal to the chief- 
priests is not named. But the second betrayal, or 
delivering to the Gentiles — that is, the Romans — is 
positively designated as an act of the chief-priests 
and scribes ; that is, of the Sanhedrim, and thus of 
the whole nation represented by the Sanhedrim. In- 



stead of the more general term hilling, it is said 
here: They shall condemn him; that is, pronounce the 
sentence of death upon him. His manner of death 
will.be determined by the heathens, and will consist 
in mocking, (Mark and Luke add, " Spitting upon,") 
scourging, and crucifying. "And all things that 
are written in the prophets concerning the Son of 
man shall be accomplished." (Luke xviii, 31.) 
(Comp. Isa. 1, 6; Ps. xii, 17.) Yet through this 
dismal darkness shines again the promise of his res- 
urrection, which, although not understood by the 
disciples, still made upon them the impression of 
final triumph. — This circumstantial prophecy of 
his death by the Lord shows, 1. That as prophet he 
was perfectly clear ; 2. As priest, perfectly willing ; 
and, 3. As king, perfectly certain of his final vic- 
tory. 

Verse 20. Then came to him the mother of 
Zebedee' s children. This was Salome, the sister 
of Mary, mother of Jesus. (See notes on Matthew 
xiii, 55, 56.) She had probably learned from her 
sons what Jesus had promised the apostles, (Matt. 
xix, 28,) and, as Lange thinks, also the prediction 
of his death, to which this scholar refers the "then," 
remarking, "Immediately after this fearfully-explicit 
prediction of his suffering and death by crucifixion, 
this woman came forward praying for the two high- 
est places of honor for her two sons. If we take 
this into consideration, her boldness appears in a 
less offensive light. Her prayer had even some- 
thing heroic about it, because she raised the flag of 
the firmest hope, when all others stood dejected and 
dismayed, and expressed the strongest conviction 
that her sons would unflinchingly stand by Jesus in 
his struggle for his kingdom." To this the ques- 
tion of the Lord seems really to refer; and the heroic 
character of this woman is confirmed by her contin- 
uing under the cross of Christ till he expired, and 
by her being one of the first that visited the sepul- 
cher of the Lord. — Worshiping him — "doing him 
homage as the Messiah." — And desired a certain 
thing of him — "that is, the unconditional promise 
that her prayer should be granted ; this form of ex- 
pression is common in the Oriental court style, (1 
Kings ii, 20.) But the Lord insists that she should 
explicitly state her prayer." (Lange.) According 
to Mark the two brothers made the request them- 
selves; but Matthew's account is fuller, and it is a 
very common practice to say of a person that he 



AMBITIOUS REQUEST OF THE MOTHER OF THE SONS OF ZEBEDEE. 



479 



does something himself that is done for him by 
others. According to both Evangelists the Lord's 
answer is directed to the two brothers. 

Verse 21. Grant that these my two sons, etc. 
The first place of honor was, among the Orientals, 
on the right, and the second on the left hand of the 
king. This prayer may have arisen from the fact, 
that the two brothers, in company with Peter, were 
on several occasions distinguished before the other 
disciples. Lange thinks that the near relationship 
and the particular love of Jesus for John had also 
its influence. — That such a strife for preeminence 
should have arisen among the disciples after their 
Master had shortly before enjoined upon them hu- 
mility as the indispensable requisite for even an 
entrance into his kingdom, (chap, xviii, 4,) yea, that 
the same strife should again arise even while they 
were eating the Passover, (Luke xxii, 24,) shows 
how deeply seated ambition is in the human heart. 
"How early did this desire for precedence take pos- 
session of the followers of Christ! and how baneful 
have been its effects whenever, in subsequent times, 
it has crept into the Church!" (Owen.) 

Verse 22. Ye know not what ye ask. Ye know 
not that the first posts of honor in my kingdom can 
not be attained to without sharing previously those 
sufferings that I have to go through. (Compare 2 
Tim. ii, 12; 1 Cor. iv, 8.) "They had no idea," 
says Lange, "what terrible places of honor they 
would have attained to if their request had been 
granted; that is, the places of the two malefactors 
that were crucified with Jesus, the one on his right, 
the other on his left hand. Ye know not what ye 
ask! said the Savior, shuddering at the dullness of 
his disciples, who, though forewarned time and again 
of their Master's fate, still persist in asking what is 
improper, dangerous, and pernicious for them." — 
Are ye able to drink of the cup? "The cup is 
a frequent Scripture image for joy and sorrow. (See 
Isa. Ii, 22; Matt, xxvi, 42.) It here seems to sig- 
nify more the inner and spiritual bitterness, resem- 
bling the agony of the Lord himself — the baptism is 
an important addition in Mark, being more the outer 
accession of persecution and trial — -through which 
we must pass to the kingdom of God." (Alford. ) 
— To be baptized with the baptism. The word 
baptize is used here figuratively for being over- 
whelmed with, immersed in, or poured upon by 
sufferings. — They say unto him, We are able. 
Though the answer evinces a spirit of too much 
self-confidence, the two disciples were sincere, and 
made good their promise. "The one of these breth- 
ren was the first of the apostles to drink the cup of 
suffering, and to be baptized with the baptism of 
blood, (Acts xii, 1, 2;) the other had the longest ex- 
perience among them of a life of trouble and perse- 
cution." (Alford.) 

Verse 23. Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, 
etc. These words contain no special prophecy of 
James's and John's martyrdom, but are spoken to 



all the disciples in general. The way to glory in 
the kingdom of God leads through suffering. (Com- 
pare Rom. viii, 17; 2 Cor. i, 5.) By such a way 
of suffering the Lord declared (Luke xii, 50) he 
himself had to go on to perfection, (Heb. v, 8, 9;) 
according to the life-union existing between Christ 
and every one of his followers, these must share his 
sufferings as well as his glory, and only where suffer- 
ings have had their effect glory can take place. (Rom. 
viii, 17; 2 Tim. ii, 11, 12.) To this inward and nec- 
essary connection between suffering and glory the 
Lord calls their attention, in order to make them un- 
derstand the nature of the conditions by complying 
with which alone the glory of the kingdom can be 
attained to. — But to sit on my right hand and on 
my left. By these words our Lord does not mean 
to intimate that he would gratify such a request 
with regard to any of his disciples. But, suiting 
his answer to the form of their prayer, he tells 
them : As to posts of eminence in my kingdom, they 
are not given according to the fashion of men; 
their bestowal is not optional with me, who, as the 
Son of man, must myself be made perfect through 
suffering before I can enter into my glory. The 
subordination of Jesus to the Father, which is 
taught here and elsewhere, is of an official char- 
acter. In his mediatorial, Messianic character, as 
the Son of man, Jesus is subordinate to the Father; 
but this conflicts by no means with his true Divinity 
and equality with the Father in being, which is 
taught in other passages. According to Lange, 
" Christ distinguishes here between the economy of 
the Father, the election to different degrees of glory, 
and the economy of the Son, or the redemption and 
the official calling into the service of the Church." 
Position, calling, influence in the kingdom of Christ, 
do not depend on man, but on God exclusively, ac- 
cording to inviolable laws and a higher necessity — 
ordained by Supreme Wisdom and Justice, they are 
given to those for whom they are prepared. "Who 
is foreordained for special posts of honor is also 
Divinely fitted out for them." (Stier.) 

Verse 24. The other ten apostles were, in all 
probability, absent during the whole conversation, 
(v. 20.) The same ambitious spirit, which had 
given rise to the request of Zebedee's sons, mani- 
fested itself in the displeasure awakened in the 
other disciples. For this reason the Lord addresses 
himself to them all, and tells them once more, that, 
in his kingdom, humility alone is true greatness — 
that ministering to all leads to reigning. If the 
Roman doctrine of the primacy of the Pope were 
correct, the Lord's answer to the ambitious request 
of Zebedee's sons would have been about as follows: 
Do you not remember that the first place which you 
covet has been bestowed by me, near Cesarea Phil- 
ippi, on Peter? He is the prince of the apostles, and 
my vicegerent. But how different is his answer! 

Verses 25-27. With the exercise of power and 
authority in this world the Lord contrasts the 



480 



MATTHEW XX, 17-28. 



spirit of MINISTERING and serving in his kingdom. 
In the kingdoms of this world power is founded on 
superiority, and every one, therefore, strives to be 
superior to his neighbor. In the kingdom of God 
it is not so, and t can not be so. Here only the 
greatest willingness to be the humblest servant of 
all capacitates and qualifies for greatness and pre- 
eminence. This is the great lesson which the Lord 
here teaches his disciples, and which he presently 
sealed by his own example. — That there are, how- 
ever, different positions in the kingdom of God, 
reason, experience, and Scripture unite in teaching, 
for which reason the Lord has established different 
offices in his Church. This was, qualifiedly, even 
the case during Christ's sojourn on earth. The re- 
lation of the seventy to him differed from that of 
the twelve, and of these, again, three — Peter, James, 
and John — stood nearer to him than the rest, while 
John alone leaned on his breast. 

Verse 28. Even as The connection lies in the 
idea that ruling in a godlike manner consists in 
giving, not in exacting, as is the case with human 
rulers. You must not crave to rule, but to minister, 
just as the Son of man, who did not come to be 
ministered unto; that is, to exercise power and 
authority after the fashion of men, as the Jews ex- 
pected of their Messiah. The not being minis- 
tered unto is still more explained by the positive 
but to minister, and this ministering goes even 
so far as to give his life as a ransom. The best 
comment on this passage the apostle gives, when 
he writes, " Who, being in the form of God, thought 
it not robbery to be equal with God: but made him- 
self of no reputation, and took upon him the form 
of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: 
and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled 
himself, and became obedient unto death, even the 
death of the cross." (Phil, ii, 6-8.) — The redeem- 
ing service which Christ has taken upon himself for 
mankind, his disciples can, indeed, not imitate, but 
they can enter into that disposition from which 
Christ's peculiar service proceeded, as the apostle 
teaches in the passage just quoted. This declara- 
tion of Christ, that he did not come to be ministered 
unto, that is, to reign as the princes of this world 
do, Lange, very properly, refers to the preceding 
announcement, that whosoever wishes to be chief in 
his kingdom must be the servant of all, and thus 
finds therein a warning against every thing hie- 
rarchical in his Church. " Christ does not wish to 
exercise authority over others for his own interests, 
for his own glorification, or by outward means. His 
desire is to minister unto men in love, in order to 
redeem them. The whole life of Christ is charac- 



terized by a ministering spirit, and his vicarious 
death fully discloses the object of his life. And his 
declaration, ' Whosoever will be chief among you,' 
etc., plainly teaches that the only lawful authority 
in his kingdom springs from willingness to minister 
unto others, and that all power should be exercised 
only in a holy, humble ministering unto the Church. 
Any other Church authority is hierarchical, and 
leads to despotism, whose germs it carries in itself, 
just as despotism, in turn, naturally allies itself 
with hierarchy, or itself acts in the spirit of hie- 
rarchy by domineering over the consciences of men. 
These powers — hierarchy and despotism — are the 
real organs of the kingdom of darkness, symbol- 
ized as such in the prophecies of Daniel and in the 
Apocalypse. But from these powers Christ has re- 
deemed the souls of his followers. It would, there- 
fore, be the most glaring contradiction to give to 
the organization of his Church the forms of despot- 
ism." — And to give his life— literally, his soul. 
(Compare John x, 18, where this act of Christ is 
declared to be voluntary.) The term "soul" is here 
significantly used as distinguished from the spirit. — 
A ransom — literally, the redemption-price that is paid 
in the place of a forfeited life, (Ex. xxi, 30,) prop- 
erty, (Lev. xxv, 24,) or liberty, (Lev. xxv, 47, 51,) 
so that the thing forfeited is thus regained. When 
Christ says that he gives his life a ransom for men, 
this can not mean any thing else than that his death 
was the price, by the payment of which alone men 
can regain what they have lost through sin. Christ 
gave his bodily life that our spiritual and eternal life 
might be restored unto us. That Christ teaches 
here really that his suffering and death are vicari- 
ous, an expiatory sacrifice, appears, also, from the 
Greek preposition avri, (for,) which means more than 
vnep, whose leading idea is "in behalf of" — while 
that of avri is in exchange for, in the place of. (See 
also 1 Tim. ii, 9, where redemption is also called 
avTilvrpov.)— Many. No stress is to be laid on 
this that "many" is used here instead of "all." 
Many forms here the contrast to the one life which 
is given — the one for many — and signifies the great 
multitude of the children of men. (See Rom. v, 
15-20; Col. i, 20; 1 Tim. ii, 6; Heb. ii, 9; 1 John ii, 2.) 
If it is objected that in the original the definite article 
is wanted here, as well as in Matt, xxvi, 28, and Heb. 
ix, 28, before many, and that many has, therefore, a 
different meaning from "the many" of such pas- 
sages as Rom. v, 15, 19, we answer that by "the 
many" all mankind are meant as contrasted with 
Christ, and by "many" only those who, by faith, ap- 
propriate to themselves the redemption accomplished 
by Christ for all. 



RESTORING SIGHT TO TWO BLIND MEN. 481 



§47. RESTORING SIGHT TO TWO BLIND MEN. 

The cause of Jesus had attracted general attention since the Feast of Tabernacles, and 
especially since the raising of Lazarus from the dead, and the interest increased in the 
degree as it became generally known what an importance the Sanhedrim attached to it. 
It created, therefore, a good deal of excitement when Jesus came out of his retirement in 
Ephraim. Crowds flocked to him from all sides, no longer doubting that he would now 
at once enter upon his contest with the Jewish hierarchy, and proclaim his kingdom. 
(Luke xix, 11.) None of the Evangelists state at what time of the day Jesus reached 
Jericho ; but it was most probably in the afternoon ; for from Luke xix, 5, 7, we may 
infer that he spent the night at the house of Zaccheus. (See Synoptical Table, Nos. 146 
and 147.) 

Three Evangelists relate the healing of a blind man as having taken place near Jer- 
icho, on his last journey to Jerusalem; but their accounts differ in two points; namely: 
According to Matthew two blind men were healed ; according to Mark and Luke only 
one; again, according to Matthew and Mark the healing took place when the Lord left Jer- 
icho, while according to Luke it took place while he was coming nigh unto Jericho. That 
Matthew speaks of two blind men and the other Evangelists only of one, occasions no great 
difficulty. (See note on chap, viii, 28.) One of the blind men may have been a more 
important person than the other, like the one of the two demoniacs. The very fact that 
Mark mentions his name seems to indicate that he was a well-known person at the time ; 
and neither Mark nor Luke say that not more than one individual was healed. Matthew, 
as an eye-witness, records what neither Mark nor Luke may have known. The other 
discrepancy has been attempted to be harmonized in various ways. The older harmo- 
nists assumed that two healings took place ; namely, that one man was healed by the Sav- 
ior on entering and two on his leaving the city. Ebrarcl adopts this opinion, saying that 
Matthew, "with his characteristic brevity in narrating miracles," combined the two heal- 
ings into one. But how shall we account for the conduct of the people, that, shortly 
after the first healing, should have rebuked the crying out of the two blind men, just as 
they had done before to the one man ? And, moreover, what is gained by the assumption 
that Matthew represents two different acts as one? Bengel supposes that one blind man 
cried to Jesus as he drew near the city, but that he did not cure him then, but on the 
morrow, on his going out of the city, cured him, together with the other, to whom, in the 
meanwhile, he had joined himself — the Evangelist relating by prolepsis, as is so often 
done in narratives, the whole of the event where he first introduces it. Another solution 
is that proposed by Watson, Owen, and other English expositors, after the example of 
G-rotius. Instead of, " As he was come nigh unto Jericho," (Luke xviii, 35,) they trans- 
late, "While he was yet near Jericho." But while lyyiZew means sometimes being near, 
and the preposition sl<; stands sometimes for &v, no instance has been pointed out yet that a 
verb of motion connected with a preposition implying motion, should signify rest in the 
same sentence. Jacobus supposes that Luke does not describe the first entry ; conjectur- 
ing that Jesus was in Jericho before, left it, according to Mark and Matthew, not in order 
to go to Jerusalem, but in order to return soon, and that at this return, described by 
Luke, the healing took place. The most probable of all solutions is this : According to 
Josephus and Eusebius, Jericho consisted, in those days, of an old and a new town. The 
old town lay more to the west. Eusebius, in whose days there existed even a third Jer- 
icho, says that then only ruins of the two former cities existed. Between the two parts 
of the city the two blind men are supposed to have been sitting, and to have been healed 
by Jesus, while he left the new and entered the old town. Matthew and Mark, natives of 
Palestine, speak only of the eastern new town ; but Luke, who wrote for the Greeks, 

speaks of the old town, which was a place of great commerce, and, as such, well known 

31 



482 



MATTHEW XX, 29-34. 



to the Greeks. Van Oosterzee, the expositor of the Gospel of Luke, in "Lange's Bible- 
work," thinks that the healing took place on entering the place, and that Luke followed 
an inaccurate report. He finds the admission of such a trifling inaccuracy irreconcilable 
only with that theory of inspiration which considers every letter of the sacred text as in- 
spired. Whoever reads, says he, the Gospel of Luke with an unprejudiced mind can not 
fail to perceive that this Evangelist, toward the close of the Lord's life, narrates events 
not with chronological exactness. Olshausen remarks on this passage : " The very differ- 
ence on such unessential points confirms the genuine historical character of the Gospels, 
instead of impairing it. An agreement on such unimportant points would be the very 
means to create' suspicion." And again, in the introduction to his Commentary, he says : 
" Setting out with the theory of an inspiration which supposes every word dictated by 
the Holy Spirit, the harmonists labored to bring about a perfect harmony both in things 
and words, by means however unnatural and violent. Wherever there was a difference 
in things or in words, the event or saying was readily doubled, even sometimes trebled. 
But by setting up the principle that the evangelical history must agree in each and every 
point, be it ever so casual and unimportant, an occasion was unnecessarily given to 
turn the undeniable discrepancies of the Evangelists into weapons against the Divine 
verity of the Gospel history. The best course is to admit at once the presence of dis- 
crepancies in the Gospel history, to seek to reconcile them where this can easily and nat- 
urally be done, but to have in no case recourse to artificial and unnatural interpretations. 
As in the productions of nature the greatest regularity is combined with the greatest 
liberty, so we have in the Gospel records perfect agreement in essentials, united with the 
greatest freedom in the treatment of unessentials. A literal agreement in the Gospel 
records would have created the suspicion of collusion. The Scripture, as it is, is both hu- 
man and Divine at the same time." These views are in substance the same with those 
we have laid down in our Introduction. (See p. 85.) Tholuck remarks justly: "He who 
renounces his belief in the Bible for no stronger reasons than the discrepancies of the 
Evangelists on unessentials are, is no greater loss to the Church of Christ than is the gain 
of him who is induced to believe in the Christian religion by no stronger arguments 
than the proof of an absolute identity of the Gospel narratives." 

"Verses 29-34. (Compare Mare x, 46-52; Luke xtiii, 35-43.) 

(29) And as they departed from Jericho, l a great multitude followed him. (30) 
And behold, two blind men sitting by the wayside, 2 when they heard that Jesus 
passed by, cried out, saying, Have mercy on us, Lord, thou Son of David. (31) And 
the multitude rebuked them, because they should hold their peace : but they cried the 
more, saying, Have mercy ou us, Lord, thou Son of David. (32) And Jesus stood 
still, and called them, and said, "What will ye that I shall do unto you? (33) They 
say unto him, Lord, that our eyes may be opened. (34) So Jesus had compassion 
on them, and touched their eyes : and immediately their eyes received sight, and 
they followed him. 



1 Jericho — the city of palms — -was eighteen Roman 
miles north-east of Jerusalem and seven west from the 
Jordan, in the tribe of Benjamin, (Josh, xviii, 21,) near 
the borders of Ephraim, (Josh, xvi, 7,) situated at the 
foot of the mountains which border the valley of the 
Jordan and Dead Sea on the west. It was destroyed by 
Joshua, but afterward rebuilt, and became the seat of the 
school of the prophets. (2 Kings ii, 5, 15.) The land 
around Jericho was exceedingly fertile, abounding in 



palm-trees and roses, and yielding large quantities of 
the balsam of Gilead, so highly prized in the Bast. After 
the captivity it was fortified. It was much embellished 
by Herod the Great, who had a palace there, and, being 
one of the principal cities of Palestine, there resided in 
it " a chief among the publicans," (Luke xix, 2 ;) that is, 
a higher custom officer. At present there is, on or near 
the site, only a miserable village, called Richa, or 
Ericha. ' J Begging alms of the people passing by. 



CHRIST'S TRIUMPHAL ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM. 



483 



Verse 30. " The cry with which these blind men 
sought to attract the pity of Christ was on their part 
a recognition of his dignity as the Messiah ; for 
'Son of David' was the popular designation of the 
Messiah. There was, therefore, upon their part, a 
double confession of faith — first, that he could heal 
them, and, secondly, not merely as a prophet from 
God, but as the prophet, as the one who should come, 
according to the words of Isaiah, to give sight to 
the blind. In the case of the man blind from his 
birth, (John ix,) we have the same confessions, but 
following, and not preceding the cure, and with in- 
tervals between, so that first, he acknowledges him 
as a prophet, (v. 17,) and only later as the Messiah, 
(v. 38.)" (Trench.) — It is remarkable that in the 
three accounts Matthew gives of sight being restored 
to the blind the title " Son of David " appears. 

Verse 31. And the multitude rebuked them, 
etc. "Some, undoubtedly with good intentions, 
others, possibly from enmity, but all to observe de- 
corum." (Gerlach.) From Mark x, 49, it would 
seem that the multitude were filled with reverential 
fear of Jesus. — But they cried the more. " Many 
admirable homiletic applications of this portion of 
the history have been made. Here, it has been 
said, is the history of many a soul: when a man is 
first in earnest about his salvation, and begins to 
cry that his eyes may be opened, that he may walk 
in his light who is the Light of men, when he begins 
to despise the world and to be careless about riches, 
he will find infinite hinderances, and these not from 
professed enemies of the Gospel of Christ, but from 
such as seem, like this multitude, to be with Jesus 
and on his side. Even they will try to stop his 
mouth, and to hinder an earnest crying to him." 
(Trench.) 

Verse 32. And Jesus stood still, etc. It is 
worthy of note that Jesus now suffers himself to be 
proclaimed the Messiah, what he had not done be- 
fore. (See chap, ix, 27.) — What will te that I 
shall do unto you? "Mark, who throughout tells 
but of the one, says 'he commanded him to be called. 
And he, casting away his garment,' to the end that 



he might obey with the greater expedition, and that 
he might be hindered by nothing, 'rose and came to 
Jesus.' This ridding himself of all which would have 
been in his way, is used often as an example for 
every soul which Jesus has called, that it should, in 
like manner, lay aside every weight and whatever 
would hinder it from coming speedily to him. (Matt, 
xiii, 44-46; Phil, iii, 7.) The Lord's question, 
'What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?' is, in 
part, an expression of his readiness to aid — in part 
uttered for the calling out into yet livelier exercise 
the faith and expectation of the petitioner. (Matt, 
ix, 28.) The man whose cry has been hitherto a 
vague, general cry for mercy, now singles out the 
blessing which he craves, declares the channel in 
which he desires that this mercy may run, and 
makes answer, 'Lord, that I might receive my 
sight' Only Matthew mentions the touching of 
the eyes which were to be restored to vision, and 
only Luke the word of power, the ' receive thy 
sight,' by which the cure was effected." (Trench.) 
Verse 34. And they followed him. Probably 
on his way to Jerusalem, in order to bear testimony 
of the miracle performed on them, and out of grati- 
tude to their benefactor. " This miracle of healing 
the blind men," says Owen, "has often been em- 
ployed to illustrate the spiritual blindness of men. 
the earnestness with which they must apply to 
Christ — who, by his Spirit, is always passing by — 
for his healing mercies, and the readiness of the 
Savior, on any such application made in penitence 
and faith, to put forth his healing power. Thou- 
sands have read this simple and touching story, as 
a truthful history of their own sad spiritual blind- 
ness, and its removal through the abounding grace 
of Jesus Christ. Thousands have sung, and we 
believe will sing to the end of time, the beautiful 
hymn: 

'Mercy, thou Son of David!' 

as the genuine expression of their own feelings, in 
view of the wondrous change wrought in them by 
the same Almighty Savior." 



CHAPTEE XXI. 



§48. CHRIST'S TRIUMPHAL ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM. 

This memorable event in our Lord's public life is minutely narrated by the four Evan- 
gelists. From John (xii, 1) we learn that Jesus came to Bethany six days before the 
Passover. According to Leviticus (xxiii, 5) the Passover properly commenced in the 
evening of the fourteenth day of the first month, Nisan ; that is, according to Jewish 
reckoning, with the evening which ushers in the fourteenth day. But in popular lan- 
guage, the day before the Paschal Supper came very naturally to be reckoned as the 
beginning or first day of the festival. Hence, counting backward and excluding the 



484 MATTHEW XXI, 1-11. 



fourteenth day, the sixth day, or the day of the arrival at Bethany, was the 8th of Nisan. 
This was our Friday, provided that our Lord was crucified in the year 783 of the city of 
Rome, (see General Introduction, p. 150 ;) for the 14th of Nisan fell in that year on 
Thursday. 

On the 8th of ISTisan, (Friday,) according to what appears to us the hest result of 
chronological research, Jesus, with his disciples and other pilgrims, set out from Jericho 
for Jerusalem ; and if we had no other account than that of the Synoptists, (Matt, xxi, 1; 
Mark xi, 1 ; Luke xix, 29,) we should conclude that the Lord continued his journey with- 
out any interruption, and arrived at Jerusalem in the evening of the same day. The 
road leads through a dreary wilderness, and the distance to Jerusalem is about seventeen 
miles. From what John says we must infer that our Lord with his apostles went on that 
day only as far as Bethany, spent there the next day, which was the Sabbath — at the 
close of which a supper was prepared for him in' the house of Simon, (John xii, 2) — and 
set out the day after — the 10th of Nisan — for Jerusalem. As most of the people who had 
accompanied Jesus from Jericho, on their way to the Passover, seem to have joined in 
this triumphal entry, we may suppose them to have encamped during the Sabbath be- 
tween Bethany and Jerusalem, while some may have gone to Jerusalem on Friday 
evening in advance of the others, and brought the news of Jesus' coming. This accounts 
for what John (xii, 12) says : " The next day much people that were come to the feast, 
when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm-trees, and 
went forth to meet him." 

Both friends and enemies waited with anxiety for Jesus' arrival at Jerusalem — the first 
that they might now speedily see him in his full glory, the latter that they might put him to 
death. The Lord himself foresaw distinctly his impending death by crucifixion. (Chaj>. 
xx, 18.) Of his own free will he went to meet it, according to the prophecies of the Old 
Testament, which declared the eternal purposes of God. (Matt, xxvi, 24; Luke xxiv, 26; 
xxvii, 46 ; 1 Cor. xv, 3.) As long as his and his Father's hour (Matt, xxvi, 45 ; Mark xiv, 
41 ; John xii, 27; xvii, 1) had not come, he evaded all the snares of his enemies, forbade 
his followers to proclaim his Messianic dignity, (Matt, xvi, 20,) and withdrew from the 
people when they wanted to make him king by force. (John vi, 15.) But when he was 
inwardly certain that the time had come that he should carry out the purposes of his 
Father, as foretold by the prophets, he went at Once to meet it without using his power 
to protect himself, (Matt, xxvi, 53, 54,) and became obedient to his Father even unto 
death. (Phil, ii, 8 ; Heb. v, 8.) In this light we must view also his solemn entry. It 
was nothing accidental, but had been foreordained of God, and was part of his Messianic 
office. "This entry of Christ," says Meyer, "was the final public and solemn proclama- 
tion of his Messiahship, which satisfied a deeply-felt want of the Lord's own heart, and 
was, at the same time, calculated to crush, by its subsequent development, the carnal Mes- 
sianic expectations of all his followers. It is the reverse of the Savior's previous forbid- 
ding the publication of his Messiahship, which, from the nature of the case, had necessa- 
rily once to take place, but which the Lord, for the wisest and best purposes, put off to 
the end of his earthly career, thus forestalling its abuse for political purposes." Of the 
same import is the following remark of Stier : " Christ's entry is for himself the solemn 
procession to the altar, for the people of Israel the last solemn announcement of his 
Messiahship, but for the whole future assembly of his true people- — -the daughter of Zion 
prophetically — an abiding, constantly-renewed memorial and image of his coming in 
lowliness and in grandeur — ' Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek !' — a type and 
earnest of his second coming in majesty and glory. (Matt, xxiii, 39.)" 

The absurd assertion of the antichristian critique, " that Jesus' entry was his last 
attempt to found a worldly Messianic kingdom," is sufficiently refuted not only by the 
uniform tenor of his previous conduct, rejecting sternly all insinuations and offers of that 
kind as coming from the evil one, but also by the form of the entry, which was well 



CHRIST'S TRIUMPHAL ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM. 



485 



adapted to remove every idea of earthly power and worldly glory, even amid the hosan- 
nas of his followers and the attending crowds, and to set forth the spiritual nature of 
his kingdom. His followers did not carry swords or spears, but branches of palm-trees, 
and he himself did not ride the war-steed of a king, but the colt of an ass, the symbol 
of peace. That the entry had no political character appears also from the fact that the 
Roman Government took no notice of it. 

" The entry into Jerusalem," says Heubner, " forms a memorable contrast with his 
subsequent suffering. Nearly all the details of the one event are in contrast with those 
of the other. In the one case Christ stands on the Mount of Olivet, the spot of his glory, 
looking over Jerusalem, which now did homage unto him ; in the other he was led to 
Golgotha, the place of a skull, surrounded by the graves and skulls of malefactors. 
Here he held his solemn entry, attended by shouting multitudes; there he is thrust out 
of the city, tied as a criminal, and led by officers. Here he was surrounded by numbers 
of friends and followers, ready to acknowledge him as their King, and to protect him ; 
there he was surrounded by a gang of enemies, who mocked, reviled, and maltreated 
him. Here his disciples serve him willingly, and feel themselves honored thereby; there 
they forsake him in dismay and despair. Here all vie with each other in honoring and 
beautifying his entry; there they spit in his face, and heap all kinds of ignominy upon 
him. Here they spread their garments in the way ; there he is stripped of his clothes, 
which are parted by casting lots, while he hangs naked on the cross. Here branches 
were strewed in the way, and he walks on beds of flowers; there he is scourged and 
crowned with thorns. Here he enters the city as king, riding upon a beast of burden; 
there he is compelled to bear his cross himself. Here the prophecy of Zechariah con- 
cerning the coming King is fulfilled ; there the awful prophecy of Isaiah concerning him 
that is desjnsed and rejected of men. Here he is saluted King amid shouts of hosannas; 
there he is rejected, condemned by the highest tribunal, and crucified as a false prophet, 
deceiver of the people, and blasphemer. In whose life is there such a contrast — such a 
sudden transition from joy and glory to the greatest humiliation and ignominy? And 
amid the high excitement of these rapidly-changing scenes Christ maintains a perfect 
equanimity, neither giving way for a moment to the importunities of his excited friends, 
nor overwhelmed by the apparent hopelessness of his cause." 

Verses 1—11. (Compare Mark xi, 1-10; Luke xix, 29-44; John xii, 12-18.) 

(1) And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, ' 
unto the Mount of Olives, 2 then sent Jesus two disciples, (2) saying unto them, 
Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and 
a colt with her : loose them, and bring them unto me. (3) And if any man say 
aught unto you, ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them ; and straightway he 
will send them. (4) All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken 
by the prophet, saying, (5) Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh 
unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass. (6) And 
the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them, (7) and brought the ass, 



1 Literally, house of figs. According to Barclay, (see 
"City of the Great King," p. 65,) it lay on the southern 
spur of the Mount of Olives, just before reaching the 
point from which Jerusalem is visible. 2 This hill is 
mentioned in Zechariah xiv, 4; 1 Kings xi, 7, etc. It 
is a high ridge lying east of Jerusalem, parallel to the 
city, and separated from it by the valley of the Cedron. 
It is still sprinkled over with olive-trees, but less thickly 
prubably than of old. The elevation is 2,556 Paris feet 



I above the sea and 416 Paris feet above the valley of the 
Cedron. Over this ridge the Lord came when he en- 
tered Jerusalem. Here he instructed his disciples about 
the destruction of the Temple and his second coming. 
Thither he repaired after the Last Supper, and thence he 
ascended up to heaven. (Acts i, 12.) During the Jew- 
ish war a false prophet led his followers to the Mount of 
Olives in order to force his way thence into the city. 
'Ihe prospect from its top is beautiful and extensive. 



486 



MATTHEW XXI, 1-11. 



and the colt, and put on them then- clothes, and they set him thereon. (8) And a 
very great multitude spread their garments in the way ; others cut down branches 
from the trees, and strewed them in the way. (9) And the multitudes that went 
before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David : Blessed is 
he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest. (10) And when 
he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this ? (11) 
And the multitude said, This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee. 



Verse 1. And when they drew nigh [literally, 
had drawn nigh] unto Jerusalem, and were come 
to Bethphage. According to verse 2, not into the 
village, but very nigh to it, so that it lay as it were 
at their feet. Mark says : "And when they are 
drawing nigh unto Jerusalem, unto Bethphage and 
Bethany;" and Luke: "When he had drawn nigh 
unto Bethphage and Bethany;" that is, to the di- 
viding line between these two little villages. Mat- 
thew gives evidently the end of the journey for .the 
time being, and the two other Evangelists merely 
state that the two villages lay close together, men- 
tioning them in the order in which the traveler com- 
ing from Jerusalem reached them; thus the geo- 
graphical difficulty is removed; Gresswell removes 
it in this way: "Bethphage lay upon the direct line 
of this route, but Bethany did not; so that one 
traveling from Jericho would come to Bethphage 
first, and would have to turn off from the road to go 
to Bethany." However that may be, the two Evan- 
gelists evidently mention Bethany on account of the 
stay which Jesus made there, but which John alone 
mentions expressly. The setting out of our Lord 
on Sunday morning from Bethany is connected with 
the journey from Jericho, without mentioning the 
interruption which the stay at Bethany had caused. 

Verses 2, 3. This order of our Lord shows that 
he intended to enter Jerusalem in an extraordinary 
manner. The language of the Evangelists implies 
evidently a miraculous knowledge on the part of 
Jesus. There is no evidence that there had been 
any previous understanding between Jesus and 
the owner of the animals. Yet we may safely 
infer that the owner was a friend of the Lord, and 
well acquainted with the apostles personally. Alford 
takes the word "Lord — Kvpwc" — here in its proper 
sense of Jehovah; the disciples should say that it 
was needed for the service of God; but it seems 
rather indicative of Jesus' royal dignity as Messiah. 
— An ass, and a colt with her. In the prophetic 
passage the Lord is represented as "sitting upon an 
ass, and a colt the foal of an ass." According to 
the Hebrew parallelism the ass is thus more fully 
defined as the foal of an ass. The four Evangelists 
state emphatically that Jesus rode on a colt, and 
Mark and Luke add, "whereon never man sat," 
His royal dignity required that he should ride, on 
this occasion, an animal whereon never man sat. 
(Comp. Num. xix, 2; 2 Sam. vi, 3; Luke xxii, 53.) 



But if the colt was unbroken, the presence of the 
mother was, if not necessary, at least very useful for 
taming and quieting the same. 

Verses 4, 5. That it might be fulfilled. This 
expression has here its literal meaning, represent- 
ing the fulfillment as designed; there is no doubt 
that Jesus chose this kind of entry with special ref- 
erence to the prediction of the prophet, and thus, as 
a symbolical representation of the unwarlike, peace- 
ful character of the true Messiah and his kingdom. 
For, "although this description of the prophet seems 
to be in the first place only figurative, yet Provi- 
dence fulfills such prophecies often to the letter, 
combining the greatest with the smallest in the 
boldest freedom and the most scrupulous exact- 
ness." (Olshausen.) — As to the prophecy itself, 
the Evangelist gives it in a condensed form, and 
introduces it with the words, "Tell ye the daugh- 
ter of Zion," taken from Isaiah lxii, 11. "Daugh- 
ter" is, in Hebrew, the symbolical designation of 
ihe inhabitants of a city or country. "Daughter of 
Zion," therefore, means the inhabitants of Jerusa- 
lem by synecdoche, Zion being the highest of the 
hills on which Jerusalem was built. The passage 
of Zechariah (ix, 9) reads, as translated from the 
Hebrew by Dr. Hengstenberg: "Rejoice greatly, 
daughter of Zion ! shout for joy, daughter of Jeru- 
salem! Behold, thy King cometh to thee; he is 
just, and protected of God — afflicted, and riding 
upon an ass, even the foal of an ass." It would 
lead us too far to set forth the connection of this 
passage with the whole prophecy. It may, therefore, 
suffice to call attention only to the fact: 1. That the 
King is represented as a sufferer, though protected 
of God, and as a prince of peace, for which reason 
he rides an ass — the kings and prophets of Israel 
being expressly commanded not to ride horses, (the 
symbol of war,) but asses, (the symbol of peace;) 2. 
That it is expressly said, in the following verse, (v. 
10,) that his kingdom shall be a kingdom of peace, 
and extend over the whole earth ; and the salvation 
which this victorious King accomplishes is ascribed, 
in verse 11, not to force of arms, but to the blood 
of the covenant. This prophecy of Zechariah has 
been referred to Zerubbabel, or Nehemiah, or Judas 
Maccabeus. But to none of them the following pas- 
sage is applicable: "And he shall speak peace unto 
the heathen; and his dominion shall be from sea 
even to sea, and from the river even unto the ends 



THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE. 



487 



of the earth." If the Jews had properly pondered 
this whole prophecy, they would not have persevered 
in their erroneous notions of a warrior-Messiah and 
the temporal character of his kingdom. 

Verse 7. And put on them their clothes. 
Though Jesus rode only on one of the animals, it 
was becoming to put the garments on both. — And 
they set him thereon; in Greek, on them, which 
may be referred to the garments put on the colt. 
But there is no impropriety in referring them to the 
animals, as both are to be considered as being the 
equipment of our Lord. A specimen of the frivo- 
lous critique of Dr. Strauss is his absurd remark 
that " the Evangelist represents the Lord as sitting 
on the two animals at the same time." 

Verse 8. And a vert great multitude, con- 
sisting of those that had come with him from 
Jericho, and those who came forth to meet him 
from Jerusalem. These two parts of the multitude 
are expressly named in verse 9. — Spread their 
garments; that is, the loose overcoat. (Compare 
chap, v, 40.) — Others cut down [were cutting] 
branches from the trees; John says, of palm- 
trees. The leaves of the mature palm-tree are vei-y 
broad when spread out. Palm branches were used 
as symbols of peace and victory. — And strewed 
them in the way. It was customary to celebrate 
the arrival of kings or victorious generals by such 
honors (2 Kings ix, 10.) 

Verse 9. "The road by which the Lord passed 
over Olivet was probably the southern or main road, 
which passes between the summit which contains 
the tombs of the prophets and that called the Mount 
of Offense. This was the usual road' for horsemen 
and caravans; a steep footpath leads over the cen- 
tral peak, and a winding road over the northern 
shoulder, neither of which he could have taken." 
(Andrews.) At the descent of the Mount of Olives, 
when they saw Jerusalem lying before them, as 
Stanley eloquently describes the scene, the people 



burst out into those triumphant shouts. Jesus, in- 
stead of being carried away by this joyous excite- 
ment, weeps over Jerusalem, as we learn from 
Luke. — Hosanna; a word of Hebrew origin, signi- 
fying save now, be propitious now, used as a term 
of supplication, and afterward of joyous acclama- 
tion. It is taken from a triumphal song, (Ps. cxviii, 
25,) typical of the coming of the Messiah. — To 
the Son of David. In these words they saluted 
Jesus as the Messiah, from the house and lineage of 
David, as "King of Israel." — In the highest — lit- 
erally, in the highest regions, that is, in heaven. 
Meyer translates the words, " May salvation come 
down from heaven upon the Messiah!" De Wette, 
"May our hosanna be ratified in heaven!" This 
note of acclamation is varied somewhat in the other 
Evangelists, the very thing that we would expect 
from the nature of the case, the multitudes that 
went before the Lord singing it in one form, and 
those that followed responding in another. 

Verse 10. And when he was come into Jeru- 
salem. The murmuring of the Pharisees is omit- 
ted by Matthew. We refer the reader to Luke and 
John for a full statement of all the facts connected 
with Christ's triumphal entry. All the citt was 
moved by the sight of the Messianic procession, but 
in very different ways. Heubner calls it justly into 
question, that some who shouted on this occasion 
joined, a few days afterward, in the "Crucify, cru- 
cify him !" 

Verse 11. This is Jesus, the prophet, the well- 
known prophet. The crowds that came with Jesus 
had proclaimed him Messiah in the plainest lan- 
guage; but the more cautious, less-excited people 
of the city wish to know his name, his profession. 
Hence the full answer, Of Nazareth of Galilee. 
The attending hosts seem to have been for the most 
part Galileans, and they may have mentioned the 
residence of the Great Prophet not without a feel- 
ing of national pride. 



49. THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE. 



A cleansing of the Temple similar to the one described here was performed by our 
Savior in the first year of his public ministry, while he attended the feast of the Passover. 
(John ii, 13.) The synoptic Gospels make no mention of this first cleansing, for the sim- 
ple reason that they describe only the Galilean part of our Lord's ministry up to his sol- 
emn entry into Jerusalem. Some critics have identified these two cleansings, "because," 
they say, "the repetition of such an act is inconceivable." But we ask, why is it incon- 
ceivable? What was, in the first place, more proper for Jesus than to enter upon his pro- 
phetic office with this reformatory act in oj^position to the priests ? We find, accordingly, 
that he was not severely censured for it. It would also seem that these abuses ceased 
afterward because Jesus did not feel called upon at any of his subsequent visits to the 
Temple to repeat the same act. But at the last Passover these buyers and venders are 
there again, possibly encouraged by the priests, as Ebrard suggests, to defy Jesus and to 



488 



MATTHEW XXI, 12-17. 



challenge a repetition of the act. However this may be, when the abuse reappeared, it 
was to be expected that Christ would correct it again, and this the more because he had 
now been publicly declared to be the Messiah, who, by his public entry, had fulfilled 
the prophecy of Zechariah, and had now to fulfill also that of Malachi by coming to his 
Temple to purify and purge the Sons of Levi, that they might offer unto the Lord an 
offering in righteousness. Of this spiritual cleansing of the house of God the act of out- 
ward cleansing was the proper symbol. The second cleansing differs also from the first 
by the increased severity of the rebuke administered in connection with it. According 
to Mark, (xi, 16,) he did not even suffer that any man should carry any vessel through 
the Temple. "While at the first cleansing he said, (John ii, 16 :) " Make not my Father's 
house a house of merchandise," he says here: "Ye have made it a den of thieves." At 
the second act he does not use the scourge. He acts now with the full authority of the 
Messiah, before which the multitude quailed, as shortly afterward a mere word of his 
brought his captors to the ground. 

As to the act itself, the modern scribes have questioned Jesus' authority to do it, and 
have, accordingly, charged him with a passionate act of violence. To these objectors 
Dr. Ullmann replies : " Jesus does not stand as a Jewish Rabbi over against Jewish traf- 
fickers, but as the divinely-appointed Purifier of the genuine theocracy over against those 
who were profaning his Father's house, and this position gave him the right to act in a 
way which perhaps could not, and certainly needed not, to be justified by precedents. 
He exercised that power which belonged to the prophetic office — that power which has 
been and should be exercised in all ages and among all nations by higher natures, called 
with such a vocation, whenever earthly relations and the course of justice, according to 
existing laws, are unable to stem the growing corruption. Such an action, however, could 
never have been performed but under the influence of an overpowering earnestness and 
an intensely-ardent zeal. Such earnestness and zeal are at once truly human and hu- 
manly grand. AVhoever is incapable of that zeal which is free from all personal feeling 
is incapable also of any great action. In this position a pure mind will see and feel that 
the exalted character of Jesus remained untarnished." Olshausen adds to this truth- 
fully : " Just because love is revealed in Jesus in its truth and fullness, its two sides, 
severity and mildness, manifest themselves in him. As the latter is shown to the hum- 
ble and contrite, so is the former to the proud, and as the Lord here acts, so he speaks on 
many occasions." Having exercised his Messianic authority in cleansing, he once more 
blesses the people by his miracles of love and mercy. 

"Verses 13-17-. (Compare Mark xi, 15-18; Luke xix, 45-48.) 

(12) And Jesus went into the Temple l of G-od, and cast out all them that sold 
and bought in the Temple, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and 
the seats of them that sold doves, (13) and said unto them, It is written, My house 
shall be called the house of prayer ; but ye have made it a den of thieves. (14) 
And the blind and the lame came to him in the Temple ; and he healed them. 



1 To obtain full information concerning the Temple, 
its inner structure, etc., the reader must consult special 
treatises with drawings. The following quotation from 
Lange may here suffice: " The Temple was divided into 
fhree parts ; namely, the outer court, the sanctuary, and 
the holy of holies. The tabernacle had only a simple 
court, the place of the altar of burnt-offering. (Exod. 
xxvii, 1-8.) The difference between the place of the 
people and that of the priests seemed to be indicated 
only by the place of the laver of brass, which was nearer 
to the sanctuary than to the altar of burnt-offering. 



(Ex. xxxviii, 8.) In the Temple of Solomon the court 
of the priests — the inner court — is distinguished from 
the great court. (2 Chron. iv, 9.) The former lay prob- 
ably a few steps higher. The altar of burnt-offering 
belonged now to the court of the priests. In the Tem- 
ple of Zerubbabel the court of the priests was separated 
from the outer court by wooden cross-bars. (Jos. Ant., 
XIII, 3, 5.) These wooden cross-bars were replaced in 
the Temple of Herod by rails of stone two-thirds of a 
yard high. In this Temple the court of Gentiles was en- 
tirely by itself. The Temple itself was surrounded by 



THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE. 



480 



(15) And when the chief-priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he 
did, and the children crying in the Temple, and saying, Hosanna to the Son of 
David; they were sore displeased, (16) and said unto him, Hearest thou what 
i these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the 
mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise ? (17) And he left them, 
and went out of the city into Bethany; 2 and he lodged there. 



Verse 12. And Jesus went into the Temple 
of God. Matthew, who, as we have seen again and 
again, often relates events not chronologically, but 
according to their inward connection, connects the 
cleansing of the Temple with Christ's triumphal en- 
try. Mark's account is chronologically exact, In 
the evening of the day of his entry, the Lord visited 
the Temple, and "when he had looked round about 
upon all things, he returned unto Bethany with the 
twelve," where he made his home at night during 
the feast. On the following morning — Monday, the 
11th of Nisan — the barren fig-tree was made to 
wither, while the Lord went back to the city; then 
followed the cleansing of the Temple. The few re- 
maining days of his ministry the Lord spent, for the 
most part, teaching in the Temple. — And cast out 
all them that sold, etc. This scene took place in 
the court of the Gentiles, which consisted in a large, 
paved place before the courts proper. (See foot-note.) 
In this court, to which Solomon had alluded in his 
dedicatory prayer, (1 Kings viii, 4-1,) animals, incense, 
oils, wine, and other articles necessary for sacrifices 
were offered for sale, and thus the place itself was eon- 
verted into a real market-place. There is no trace 
of this abuse in the Old Testament, and it seems 
to date from the return from exile, when many 
strangers came to Jerusalem from distant countries. 
This would also account for the money-changers, as 
it was unlawful (from Exod. xxx, 13) to bring for- 
eign money for the offering of atonement. — And 
overthrew the tables of the money-changers. 
They exchanged the foreign money into Jewish, es- 
pecially into didrachms. (See chap, xvii, 24) As 
the tribute-money was due in the month of Adar, 
and was received in the country towns by officers 
appointed for this very purpose, it would seem that 
these officers paid over the money at the Passover, 



and got the foreign money, which they had received, 
exchanged into didrachms. The frauds connected 
with this money-changing are also referred to by our 
Lord's rebuke. — And the seats of them that 
sold doves. When one was too poor to bring a 
lamb or kid for a trespass-offering, he was permitted 
to bring in its stead two turtle-doves or two young 
pigeons. (Levit. v, 17; xiv, 22.) Turtle-doves and 
young pigeons constituted also part or the whole of 
the sacrifice of women at their purifying. (Levit, 
xii, 8; Luke ii, 24.) By these worldly pursuits, 
which had the sanction of the Sanhedrim, and the 
frauds connected with them, the place was dese- 
crated and devotion disturbed. By cleansing the 
house of God of these abominations, Jesus symbolic- 
ally sets forth the purity of heart, which he requires 
of his Church in general and of each individual be- 
liever. (1 Cor. iii, 16, IT; 2 Cor. vi, 16.) 

Verse 13. My house shall re called the house 
of prayer; that is, truthfully, for which reason Luke 
says, "is" a house of prayer. (See Isa. lvi, 7; 1 
Kings viii, 29.) Mark adds: "Of all nations," which 
was of the greater importance, as the changers and 
venders carried on their business in the court of the 
Gentiles. — But ye have made it a den of thieves — 
literally, ye make it. (Comp. Jer. vii, 6.) Their 
filthy pursuits are compared with the distribution of 
booty in a robber's den. The word "thief" means 
in the original also a man of violence, and even a 
murderer. Luther's translation, "a den of murder- 
ers," is, therefore, very proper. Jeremiah (vii, 6) 
speaks of the shedding of innocent blood at this place. 
Thus the Lord castigates by the use of this term not 
only the body and soul-destroying pursuits of the oc- 
cupants of the Temple, but hints in even plainer 
language than he had done before [destroy this 
temple!] at their now-ripened plan to take away his 



terraces, which formed the various courts in a rising suc- 
cession. The outermost space — called in the Talmud 
Hill of the House, in 1 Maccabees xiii, 53, Hill of the 
Temple — around the whole Temple had several gates. 
It was surrounded by beautiful halls, and the floor was 
paved with variegated stones. A few steps higher there 
was a stone rail, two yards high, interspersed here and 
there with pillars that had inscriptions in Latin and 
Greek, enjoining it on Gentiles not to go further on pain 
of death. (Jos. Bell. Jud., VI, 2-4.) This hill of the 
Temple is called by Christian archaeologists the court of 
the Gentiles. Beyond this court was the court proper, 
containing in front the court of the men, and higher up 



the court of the women and the court of the priests. 
The court of the Gentiles became the more necessary as 
the distinction between proselytes of the gate and pros- 
elytes of righteousness became more prominent, and as 
it occurred more frequently that pious Gentiles made 
presents to the Temple. 2 Bethany means, according to 
the Talmud, " house of dates," according to others, 
" house of the valley ;" it was a village on the eastern 
side of the Mount of Olives, fifteen stadia, or nearly 
two English miles from Jerusalem. At present it is a 
wretched village, with about twenty to thirty Arabian 
families, and is called El-Azirijch, from el Azir, the 
Arabic name of Lazarus. 



490 



MATTHEW XXI, 12-17. 



life by violence, which is, therefore, immediately 
added by Mark and by Luke. (Stier.) 

Verse 14. Even in the Temple the Lord continued 
to dispense, as long as it was possible, blessings unto 
all that by faith were prepared to receive them, while 
the Pharisees and their party hardened themselves 
completely against all impressions which his whole 
conduct was so eminently calculated to produce. 

Verses 15, 16. And when the chief-priests 
AND scribes saw the wonderful things; that is, the 
cleansing of the Temple and the cures performed. — 
And the children crying in the Temple, etc. The 
miraculous healings, the thanksgivings, and shouts 
of praise of the individuals healed and their com- 
panions call forth in these children the echo of yes- 
terday's hosannas; they imitate what they saw in the 
adults. — Hearest thou what these sat ? "With 
this question they give him to understand that they 
do not recognize the honor expressed by the hosan- 
nas, and intimate, at the same time, that he must 
have overheard their acclamations, as he could cer- 
tainly not acquiesce in their import. They may, at 
the same time, have designed to express their con- 
tempt for children as improper subjects to receive 
homage from. Jesus replies, that he heard them 
indeed, but puts them to shame by asking them in 
turn : Have ye never read? The passage is quoted 
from Psalm viii, 3. The Hebrew has for "praise," 
"strength," which has, however, the same meaning. 
(Comp. Ps. xxix, 1; xcvi, 7; Ex. xv, 2; Is. xii, 2; 
Rev. iv, 11; v, 12.) In order to understand correctly 
the relation of this event to the words of the Psalm- 
ist, we must apply here the exegetical truth, that the 
outward fulfillment of a prophecy becomes in turn 
the typical representation of its own inner, spiritual 
meaning. In this sense Stier and Watson under- 
stand the passage. Watson, especially, expounds 
the passage thoroughly and intelligibly; he says: 
"The eighth Psalm celebrates the praises of God for 
our redemption by him who was made 'a little,' or 
for a little while, 'lower than the angels,' and then, 
'crowned with glory and honor,' having all things 
'put under his feet.' This the apostle Paul applies 
directly to Christ, and includes in it the wonderful 
exaltation of fallen human nature in him. The 
Psalm is thus introduced: '0 Lord our Lord, how 
excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set 
thy glory above the heavens!' But who acknowl- 
edges this glory of God in human redemption? Not 
the 'enemies' mentioned in the next verse, but the 
'babes and sucklings,' 'out of whose mouth' God is 
said to have ordained 'strength' because of his en- 
emies, and to still the enemy and the avenger. 
Now, since this strength was ordained out of the 
mouth, it must be understood of the strength of 
speech, strength of doctrine, and strength of praise; 
which most fitly applies to the disciples and apostles 
of our Lord, who were, in the estimation of the 
world, weak and inefficient as babes and sucklings, 
and yet by their asserting the claims of Christ, and 



proclaiming his praises, they silenced his most po- 
tent enemies, making the glory of God, in the re- 
demption of mankind by his Son, to fill the civilized 
world, and to be almost universally acknowledged. 
Thus by these weak instruments were those mighty 
results accomplished, which brought so much glory 
to God, and so mightily confounded his 'enemies.' 
Now, of this the praises of the little children in the 
Temple were a beautiful type; Christ was first pub- 
licly acknowledged and publicly praised in his Temple 
by children, and that to the confusion of his enemies, 
who were struck dumb themselves, but could not 
silence them; and there is nothing improbable in 
supposing that as a fine emblem was thus exhibited 
of the manner in which the enemies of Christ would 
be 'stilled' or silenced by that strength which God 
was about to ordain out of the mouths of the apos- 
tles, so this emblematical representation of a most 
interesting truth and important fact was not the re- 
sult of accident, but of the overruling providence of 
God. For that there was something remarkable in 
the case appears from the children not being men- 
tioned as taking a part in the hosannas of the pro- 
cession on the way to, and through Jerusalem, but 
only in the Temple, and that in the very presence 'of 
the enemies,' the chief-priests and scribes; and also 
that then only their acclamations are mentioned, not 
those of any others. It would seem as if these chil- 
dren were collected there and moved upon by a 
supernatural impulse to repeat the joyful songs and 
hosannas, which had been sung by the multitudes in 
the streets and along the way to Jerusalem. And 
if so, we may conclude that this singular event, ar- 
ranged by God to be an emblem of one much higher, 
even of that which should fully and in the highest 
sense accomplish the prophecy, was also referred to 
in this prophetic Psalm itself, and was in its degree a 
direct accomplishment of it. It is no small confirm- 
ation of this view — that the children in the Temple, 
publishing the claims and honors of Christ, were 
emblems of the apostles and other disciples — that 
Christ himself calls them ' babes,' in contrast to the 
learned and influential of the world. 'I thank 
thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because 
thou hast hid these things from the wise and pru- 
dent, and hast revealed them unto babes.' " — Heub- 
ner has on this passage the following excellent prac- 
tical remarks: "May God in mercy protect us from 
such theologians and priests as are offended by chil- 
dren and their harmless songs ! Children, too, are 
to sing the praises of God and of Christ. Would 
that our children were trained from early infancy 
for such praise! At a conference in Tergau, where 
the discussions had been long and all were greatly 
discouraged, Melancthon was called out and had to 
go through a room where some mothers were assem- 
bled with their children to pray for the reformers. 
This had such an effect on Melancthon that he said 
to Luther: 'We need not fear; I have seen those 
that will fi^ht for us, and can not be overcome.' " 



THE BARREN FIG-TREE WITHERED, AND ITS LESSON OF FAITH. 491 



§50. THE BARREN FIG-TREE WITHERED, AND ITS LESSON OF FAITH. 

The night from Sunday to Monday Jesus spent in Bethany, and set out early in the 
morning for Jerusalem. On this morning the symbolical act of causing the fig-tree to 
wither took place. Luke does not mention it, but he gives the parable of the fruitless 
fig-tree, based on Hosea ix, 10, and Joel i, 7, (Luke xiii, 6-9,) which seems to be a com- 
mentary on the act of our Lord here recorded. 

That the cleansing of the Temple, which Matthew records in connection with the 
solemn entry of Christ, took place on the day after the entry — that is, on the same day 
on which the fig-tree was made to wither, as Mark (xi, 15) expressly states — we have men- 
tioned already in the preceding section. Matthew's statement does, however, by no means 
come into conflict with that of Mark. The former merely states that the event in ques- 
tion took place on a certain morning while Jesus was going from Bethany to Jerusalem. 
Whether this was the morning of the day on which the Temple was cleansed or the fol- 
lowing morning, is not stated. In the same way Matthew also states that the fig-tree 
presently withered away, while Mark describes minutely how and when the disciples 
found the tree withered. By thus describing the two parts of the event, the words pro- 
nounced upon the tree and its withering, as one act, he does not contradict Mark, who 
does not state when the withering took place, but only that the apostles noticed it the day 
following. This they did on Tuesday morning, (Mark xi, 10,) while they returned with 
their Master to Jerusalem, which they had left late the preceding evening. 

"This withering of the fig-tree," says Dr. Morison in his Notes, "stands apart from 
all the rest of our Savior's miracles as a work of destruction. Amid the impressive and 
solemn imagery which Jesus, in those last days, is throwing around the subject by his 
terrible words of warning, this blasted tree stands forth a perpetual type and symbol of 
the curse of death which rests on all unfruitful lives, whether of nations or of men. 
Especially did it then apply to the Jews, whose political history was drawing rapidly to 
a close. In Mark, (xi, 21,) Peter says: 'Master, behold the fig-tree which thou didst 
curse has withered away.' We shrink from applying the word curse to any expression 
used by our Savior. It has an air of harshness and almost of profaneness in our language 
which it has not in the Greek. In order to understand its meaning here, we have only to 
bear in mind the words which called out Peter's remark, '•Let no man eat fruit from thee 
hereafter forever,' or, as in Matthew, '■Let there be no fruit from thee forever.' Neither 
of these expressions implies disappointment, vexation, or anger. It is only the calm and 
terrible sentence of death pronounced upon the unfruitful tree, as a symbol of the more 
terrible ruin which must fall on man's unfruitfulness." Similar symbolic denunciations 
of Divine judgments, without, however, being connected with a miraculous effect on the 
object of the symbol, had been pronounced bj T the prophets of old. Lange remarks: 
" This miracle was no real judgment, but only the symbol of such a judgment as Israel 
had to look for. And this solemn warning, which was intended to confirm to the disciples 
the following predictions of fearful catastrophes, and more especially to detach their 
hearts from the false belief in the sanctity of the Temple worship, constituted the great 
object of this miraculous act. He executed a symbolical punishment on the tree, which 
mocked the hungry traveler, designing hereby to show unto his disciples that they must 
no longer expect spiritual food from the leaf-covered but fruitless priesthood, but look 
forward for the Divine judgments, which would cause the withering of Judaism." 

The frivolous charge which critics like Strauss have brought against Christ, for inter- 
fering with the property of others in causing the fig-tree to wither, is scarcely worthy to 
be mentioned. The fig-tree standing by the roadside was, in all probability, no one's 
property. At any rate He who, by a word, could make a fig-tree wither had certainly a 
right to do it, and would not have done it without a worthy purpose. 



492 



MATTHEW XXI, 18-22. 



Verses 18-23. (Compare Mark xi, 20-26.) 

(18) Now in the morning, as lie returned into the city, he hungered. (19) And 
when he saw a fig-tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, hut 
leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward forever. 
And presently the fig-tree withered away. (20) And when the disciples saw it, 
they marveled, saying, How soon is the fig-tree withered away! (21) Jesus an- 
swered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and douht not, 
ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig-tree, but also if ye shall say Unto 
this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea ; it shall be done. 
(22) And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive. 



Verse 18. From the hungering of the Lord at 
this time of the day, it appears that he had not 
taken the time to partake of the morning repast; 
so great was his anxiety to spend the short time left 
to him in Jerusalem. 

Verse 19. And when he saw a [one] fig-tree in 
the way, [Mark, "Seeing a fig-tree afar off,"] and 

FOUND NOTHING THEREON, BUT LEAVES ONLY. Mark 

adds, "For the time of figs was not yet;" that is, 
the time for harvesting figs was not yet. ■ The early 
figs, which ripen in May, are evidently meant here. 
The peculiarity of the fig-tree is, that its leaves do 
not appear till after the fruit is formed. Our Lord, 
therefore, had reason to expect, from its full-leaved 
appearance, that he would find some figs on it suf- 
ficiently matured to be pleasant, in which condition 
figs are frequently found before the season of gath- 
ering them. Finding no fruit of any sort on this 
tree, it served as a significant emblem of the Jewish 
nation. As all the sap of the tree was wasted in 
putting forth leaves, without any fruit whatever, so 
the whole religion of the Jews consisted in the 
punctilious observance of forms and ceremonies, 
without any fruit meet for repentance. In making 
it to wither, our Lord prophesied by a symbolical 
act. — Unfruitfulness and ruin are inseparable. 
(Heb. vi, 7, 8; Matt, iii, 10; vii, 19; John xv, 2, 6.) 
— Let no fruit grow on thee henceforth for- 
ever. "The tree was punished, not for being with- 
out fruit, but for proclaiming by the voice of those 
leaves that it had such — not for being barren, but 
for being false. And this was the guilt of Israel, a 
guilt so much deeper than that of the Gentiles. The 
attentive study of the Epistle to the Romans sup- 
plies the true key to the right understanding of this 
miracle; such passages especially as ii, 3, 17-27; x, 
3, 4, 21; xi, 7, 10. Nor should that remarkable 
parallel, Ezekiel xvii, 24, And all the trees of the 
field shall know that I the Lord . . . have dried up 
the green tree and made the dry tree to flourish,' be 
left out of account. And then the sentence, 'No 
man eat fruit of thee hereafter forever,' will be just 
the reversal of the blessing that in them all the 



nations of the earth should be blessed — the symbolic 
counter-stroke to the ratification of the Levitical 
priesthood, through the putting forth, by Aaron's 
rod, of bud and blossom and fruit in a night. 
Henceforth the Jewish synagogue is stricken with 
a perpetual barrenness; it once was every thing, 
but now it is nothing, to the world; it stands apart, 
like a thing forbid; what little it has it communi- 
cates to none; the curse has come upon it, that no 
man henceforward shall eat fruit of it forever. And 
yet this 'forever' has its merciful limitation, when 
we come to transfer the curse from the tree to that 
of which the tree was as a living parable; a limita- 
tion which the word itself favors and allows; which 
lies hidden in it, to be revealed in due time. None 
shall eat fruit of that tree to the end of the present 
Eeon, not till these 'times of the Gentiles' are fill-, 
filled. A day indeed will come when Israel, which 
now says, ' I am a dry tree,' shall consent to that 
word of its true Lord, which of old it denied, ' From 
1ne is thy fruit found,' and shall be arrayed with the 
richest foliage and fruit of all the trees of the field. 
The Lord in his great discourse upon the last things 
(Matt, xxiv) implies this, when he gives this com- 
mencing conversion of the Jews under the image of 
the re-clothing of the bare and withered fig-tree 
with leaf and bud, as the sign of the breaking in 
of the new ason, which he does, saying, 'Now learn 
a parable of the fig-tree. When his branch is yet 
tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that Sum- 
mer is nigh: so likewise ye, when ye shall see all 
these things, know that it is near, even at the 
doors.'" (Trench.) — And presently the fig-tree 
withered away. Matthew emphasizes the instant 
of withering away, which, though not expressed, yet 
was contained in the words of Jesus, and brought 
about by them. "The withering fig-tree was a type, 
1. Of the expiring theocracy; 2. Of the actual 
drying up of the country, so near at hand, when 
the palm-trees disappeared, the fig-trees withered 
away, the fountains dried up, and the fertile country 
became a waste; 3. Of the withering old earth." 
(Lange.) 



CHRIST'S ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF HIS AUTHORITY. 



493 



Verse 20. Though the disciples had been wit- 
nesses of so many stupendous miracles, they are 
filled with wonder at every new and striking mani- 
festation of their Master's divine power. 

Verse 21. Olshausen finds the connection of 
the Lord's answer to the wondering expression of 
his disciples difficult, "because Jesus performed his 
miracles not by virtue of his faith in God, but by 
his own immanent divine power." To this Stier re- 
plies, that " Christ also, as the Son of man, wrought 
his miracles by faith, in dependence on his Father, 
(see John xi, 41, 42;) and that his faith, having 
been always perfect, he is placed before us for imita- 
tion as the author and finisher of our faith." How- 
ever we may view this, our Lord's object was evi- 
dently, as Meyer remarks, to show his disciples 
"how they, too, might perform similar and still 
greater miracles; namely, by an implicit confidence 
in the power of God working through them and ver- 
ifying their prayers, the condition of faith excluding 
all abuse of this promise by making the efficacy of 
the prayer dependent on its agreement with the 
Divine will." (Compare notes on chap, xvii, 20.) 
This lesson of faith our Lord seems to repeat here, 
"because," as Dr. Whedon remarks, "he is soon to 
leave them amid the state of surrounding ruin, pre- 
figured by the withering fig-tree." Lange finds in 
the mountain an allusion to the mountain on which 
the Temple stood, as an emblem of the superstitious 
Temple-worship of the Jews, which became so great 



an obstacle for the apostles in their efforts to spread 
the Gospel over the world. 

Verse 22. Believing, "with a faith that God 
inspires and you exercise. God will not give pure 
faith for a prayer or a work which he will not fulfill, 
nor yet will he promise the fulfillment unless you 
exercise the faith he empowers." (Whedon.) John 
defines believing prayer to be prayer offered in the 
name of Jesus, (xiv, 13; xv, 16; xvi, 24.) Prayer 
in the name of Jesus implies the mind and spirit of 
Christ, and is produced by the Holy Spirit, and such 
prayer is necessarily efficacious. Self-willed peti- 
tions are not prayers of faith. Owen remarks: 
"The promise made here to the apostles most un- 
questionably had primary reference to the miracu- 
lous powers with which they were endowed, as con- 
firmatory of their apostolic mission. But in its 
restricted sense, as above explained, it may be re- 
garded as a promise made to all God's people. 
Many things were primarily spoken to the apostles, 
which, when those features are left out of account 
that rendered them peculiarly applicable to them, 
may be considered as addressed to all the followers 
of Christ." — Our Lord improves every opportunity 
to enjoin upon his disciples the duty of believing 
prayer. Faith is the soul, prayer is the body; both 
must be combined in the service of God. We have 
so many promises, that God will hear and answer 
the prayer of faith, and yet men are so slow and 
sluggish in prayer! 



§51. CHRIST'S ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF HIS AUTHORITY. 

"We have now come to Tuesday of the Passion-Week, that memorable day on which 
the Lord, after having met successfully the varied assaults of all his enemies in turn, 
silencing one party after another, pronounced terrible woes on the Pharisees and Saddu- 
cees, (chap, xxiii,) and then took his final leave of the Temple. The first attack is 
described in the following section. He had scarcely entered the Temple when a formal 
deputation of the Sanhedrim met him, demanding to know by what authority he was 
acting. Although they may have considered themselves authorized to ask this question, 
as the highest ecclesiastical tribunal, yet it had evidently its origin in criminal unbelief 
and unparalleled impitdence ; for they had felt often enough the power of truth that 
proceeded from him in their own hearts, and he had demonstrated his mission by the 
most powerful miracles. For this reason they do not dare to ask him, as they had done 
at the beginning of his ministry, ""What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou 
doest these things ?" (John ii, 18.) Such a question would have convicted them before 
the people. Being unable to assign any fair motive for their procedure, they are at a loss 
how to entrap him. Instead, therefore, of answering their question, the Lord asked them 
a question in turn, which exposed their hypocritical unbelief to the people and their own 
conscience, and then added three parables — namely, that of the two sons, (vs. 28-32,) 
that of the wicked husbandmen, (vs. 33—44,) and that of the marriage of the king's son, 
(xxii, 2-14) — by which he compelled them to pronounce judgment against themselves be- 
fore all the people. As these three parables are intimately connected with each other, 
and form part of the answer which the Lord returned to the official question of the chief- 



494 MATTHEW XXI, 23-32. 



priests and scribes, we premise here, for the better understanding of this section, the fol- 
lowing admirable synopsis of Lange: "With the question, ' The baptism of John, whence 
was it?' the Lord intended three things; namely, 1. To compel them to declare their dis- 
sent from the popular belief in John's baptism; 2. To convince them irresistibly of their 
guilt in having slighted the testimony which God's appointed messenger had borne of 
the Messiah ; 3. To extort the confession from them that they were incompetent to dis- 
charge the duties of their office. In this way his defense became an attack, and the pic- 
ture, which he draws of their guilt and the Divine judgments hanging over them, comes 
to a fearful climax. Despisers of the preacher of repentance, John the Baptist, worse 
than the publicans and harlots ! was the first sentence; faithless stewards in God's vine- 
yard, murderers of the Messiah, to be condemned and deposed from their office, the sec- 
ond sentence ; being, with their whole nation, insane despisers of God and his salvation, 
and rebels against God, their city is to be burned and they themselves destroyed, and 
the kingdom of God shall pass over to the heathen — the third sentence, which the Lord 
himself pronounces in allegorical prophecy." 

Though the severity of these rebukes, warnings, and thi*eats was, to some extent, 
vailed, yet the vail that enveloped the truth was so transparent and the application so 
pointed, (v. 43,) that his hearers could not but perceive that he spoke of them, (vs. 
44, 45 ;) and thus they became the more bent upon his destruction, (v. 46 ; chap, xxii, 15.) 
In such manner the Lord had not spoken to them before; but as his mildness was only 
abused, and his enemies became more and more hardened, he spared them no longer, if 
possibly some at least might, by the severity of his address, be brought to repentance, 
and Luke (xx, 16) records that some of the hearers, terrified by the awful portrait of the 
impending judgments, actually exclaimed: " God forbid!" 

Vorses 33-33. (Compare Mark xi, 27-33; Luke xx, 1-8.) 

(23) And when he was come into the Temple, the chief-priests and the elders of 
the people came unto him, as he was teaching, and said, By what authority cloest 
thou these things? and who gave thee this authority? (24) And Jesus answered 
and said unto them, I also will ask you one thing, which if ye tell me, I in like 
wise will tell you by what authority I do these things. (25) The baptism of John, 
whence was it ? from heaven, or of men ? And they reasoned with themselves, 
saying, If we shall say, From heaven ; he will say unto us, "Why did ye not then 
believe him? (26) But if we shall say, Of men; we fear the people ; for all hold 
John as a prophet. (27) And they answered Jesus, and said, We can not tell. 
And he said unto them, Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things. 
(28) But what think ye ? A certain man had two sons ; and he came to the first, 
and said, Son, go work to-day in my vineyard. (29) He answered and said, I will 
not ; but afterward he repented, and went. (30) And he came to the second, and 
said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir ; and went not. (31) "Whether 
of them twain did the will of his father ? They say unto him, The first, Jesus 
saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into 
the kingdom of God before you. (32) For John came unto you in the way of 
righteousness, and you believed him not; but the publicans and the harlots be- 
lieved him : and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might 
believe him. 



CHRIST'S ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF HIS AUTHORITY. 



49o 



Verse 23. The chief-priests and elders of 
the people. The use of the plural with regard to 
the chief or high priests is accounted for by the con- 
dition of the high-priesthood in those days. By 
Divine appointment the office was for life, and prior 
to the Babylonian captivity there occurred only one 
deposition from office. (1 Kings ii, 27.) But after 
that epoch the high-priests were often changed by 
the civil rulers, sometimes by religious factions, and 
even by mobs. Under the Roman Government these 
changes increased. Thus Annas had become high- 
priest, A. D. 7. Seven years afterward Ishmael was 
put into the office by order of the Roman procurator, 
(Jos. Ant., XVIII, ii, 2,) then Eleazar, son of Annas; 
a year afterward a certain Simon, and after another 
year Joseph Caiaphas, a son-in-law of Annas. This 
Caiaphas was thus the official high-priest for the 
time being. But the stricter party of the Jews, who 
denounced all interference of heathen magistrates, 
continued to regard Annas as the legitimate high- 
priest; he may have gone by this name also as the 
vicar of the high-priest, or as the president of the 
Sanhedrim. That he exercised a great influence, 
appears from the fact that Jesus was taken to him 
for a preliminary examination. (John xviii, 13.) 
The heads of the twenty-four classes of priests were 
also called high-priests. The deputation in ques- 
tion was certainly a very imposing one, headed by 
the high-priests. — And said, by what authority 
doest thou these things? Being unwilling to rec- 
ognize the authority of Jesus, they used intention- 
ally this indefinite expression, including the whole 
public ministry of the Lord, but especially his solemn 
entry into Jerusalem and the cleansing of the Tem- 
ple. The import of their first question is: what au- 
thority dost thou claim, (Divine or human?) Whom 
dost thou claim to be? There is no doubt that they 
desired to get from him that answer which he gave 
them afterward, (chap, xxvi,) and which they con- 
strued into a capital offense. The second question — 
Who has given thee this authority? that is, who 
has commissioned or authorized thee? — indicates 
that he held no commission from them. 

Verse 24. What wonderful wisdom does this an- 
swer of the Savior show? In the form of a question 
he appealed to the testimony of John the Baptist; 
for by asking them whether John's baptism was 
from heaven or from men, he left them the alterna- 
tive either to reject John against the universal be- 
lief of the people, or to recognize Him of whom John 
had testified. The question of the Lord's enemies 
and the Lord's reply suggest two practical reflec- 
tions: 1. The enemies of the truth are always ready 
to question the authority of those that do more good 
than themselves. This means has often been re- 
sorted to to suppress efforts for the revival of relig- 
ion and the reformation of the world. The only 
question asked is: By what authority doest thou 
these things ? The success of ministerial labor is of 
uo account — the diploma every thing. 2. We ought 



to act very wisely and circumspectly in our inter- 
course with the enemies of the kingdom of God. 
Let us learn from the example of Christ how to 
answer calmly such zealots. 

Verses 25, 26. The baptism of John, whence 
was it? By the baptism of John, Jesus means (as 
in Acts i, 22; x, 37; xviii, 25) the whole office of the 
Baptist, his Divine commission and public ministry, 
his preaching of repentance and testimony of Jesus 
(see v. 32) included. — From heaven; that is, did 
John act as a true prophet with Divine authority? 
The antithesis, "or of men," denotes a self-as- 
sumed office; a fanatical zeal in the place of Divine 
inspiration, seconded by the party spirit of men. By 
declaring for this alternative, the Sanhedrim would 
not only have come into conflict with the general 
belief of the people, but they would have condemned 
themselves as false leaders of the flock intrusted to 
their care. But by recognizing the Divine mission 
of John, they could not but recognize also the Mes- 
siahship of Jesus; for John had solemnly declared 
himself to be the forerunner of the Messiah, and 
pointed out Jesus to the people as the Messiah. 
(John i, 33, 34.) — And they reasoned with them- 
selves, that is, apart by themselves, before they an- 
swered. Their private consultation is related by 
three Evangelists in almost the same words, and 
may have been reported to them by Nicodemus or 
Joseph of Arimathea. However this may be, they 
exhibit a remarkably-faithful picture of the mental 
state of these priests; they are condemned in ad- 
vance by their own conscience — "Why, then, did ye 
not believe him?" This question they would like to , 
evade at any hazard. 

Verse 27. And they answered, we can not tell — 
literally, we do not know. "In the midst of the 
Temple, in the presence of all the people, these dep- 
uties of the Sanhedrim found themselves constrained 
to the confession of their ignorance, and that a hyp- 
ocritical one. With this lying declaration they 
ceased being a legitimate Sanhedrim in the estima- 
tion of the Lord. Hence his reply — Neither do I 
tell you." (Lange.) 

Verse 28. But what think ye? Inasmuch as 
you can not answer my last question, what do you 
think of the following case?- — A certain man had 
two sons. These two sons represent two great 
moral divisions of men, under one or other of which 
might be ranged almost all who were within reach 
of our Lord's ministry, or to whom now the Gospel 
is preached. Of one of these classes the Pharisees 
were the representatives, and to it belong self-right- 
eous moralists and formalists, nominal professors of 
religion in all ages. The second class, of which the 
publicans and harlots stand as representatives, com- 
prises all who make no pretension to keep the law 
of God, but openly and boldly transgress it. — Son, 
go. The father's kind address sets forth God's 
paternal tenderness and affection, with which he 
deals with the worst of sinners in his endeavors to 



496 



MATTHEW XXI, 33-46. 



induce them to repent, while the self-righteous Phar- 
isees looked with the utmost contempt upon this 
class of men. 

Verse 29. I will not. Impudent as this reply 
was in the very face of the Father, it being without 
any title of respect, such as father or sir, a flat re- 
fusal without assigning any cause for it, such as, "I 
can not," (Luke xiv, 20,) or something like it; yet 
this son is no hypocrite, he is honest, at first in his 
defiance, afterward in his return to his duty. By 
saying, I will not, he confesses truly his state of 
mind, the wicked and perverse will of the sinner 
being the source from which all disobedience to 
God, whether open or concealed, flows. — After- 
ward he repented and went. "The grace of God 
and the workings of conscience produce a reaction. 
Repentance and obedience follow upon this outburst 
of a proud, rebellious heart. The notoriously-wicked 
man becomes a meek, humble, obedient child of 
God. He enters the vineyard, and cheerfully and 
faithfully performs his allotted task." (Owen.) 

Verse 30. And he answered and said: I go, 
sir — literally, I, sir — a polite but indifferent assent 
with the lips. — And went not. He contents him- 
self with making fair promises, and does nothing. 
His words and work do not agree; this want of har- 
mony between the heart and the outward appearance 
is the very substance of hypocrisy, and this becomes 
sanctimoniousness, when a great, religious profes- 
sion conceals the moral corruption of the heart. An 
acknowledgment of, and compliance, to any extent, 
with the law of God, is indeed, in itself, considered 
preferable to throwing off its yoke altogether. Yet, 
as Trench remarks, it is far better "that the sinner 
should have his eyes open to perceive his misery and 
guilt, even though it be by means of manifest and 
grievous transgressions, than that he should remain 
in this ignorance of his true state; just as it would 



| be better that disease, if in the frame, should take a 
decided shape, so that it might be felt and acknowl- 
edged to be disease, and then met and overcome, 
than that it should be secretly lurking in and per- 
vading the whole system, and because secretly, its 
very existence denied by him whose life it was 
threatening. From this point of view St. Paul 
speaks, (Rom. vii, 7-9,) and the same lesson is 
taught us in all Scripture — that there is no such 
fault as thinking we have no fault." 

Verse 31. The publicans and the harlots go 
[are going] into the kingdom op God before you; 
that is, rather than you; because they, acknowledg- 
ing and feeling themselves to be sinners, are ready 
to comply with the conditions necessary for entering 
there, such as repenting and believing. Trench re- 
marks: "When our Lord says, 'they go before you,' 
or take the lead of you, he would indicate that the 
door of hope was not yet shut upon them, that they 
were not yet irreversibly excluded from that king- 
dom. The others indeed had preceded them, but 
they might still follow, if they would. It is worthy of 
note, that the parables which the Lord addresses here 
to the Pharisees, severe and threatening an aspect 
as they have, are words of earnest, tenderest love — 
spoken, if it were yet possible, to turn them from 
their purpose, to save them from the fearful sin they 
were about to commit, to win them, also, for the 
kingdom of God." 

Verse 32. John came unto tou in the way of 
righteousness; that is, he preached not only the 
way of righteousness, but he walked in it himself. — 
And ye believed him not. (Comp. Luke vii, 28, 
30.) — And ye, when ye had seen it; that is, that 
the publicans and sinners believed. A very cutting 
reproof, that Jesus places the mostdespised men 
before the highly-respected Pharisees, as models for 
imitation. 



§52. THE PARABLE OF THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN. 

■Verses 33—46. (Compare Mark xii, 1-12; Luke xx, 9-19.) 

(33) Hear another parable : There was a certain householder, which planted a 
vineyard, and hedged it round about, l and digged a wine-press 2 in it, and built a 
tower, 3 and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country: (34) And 



1 The hedge was made, generally, of perfectly-dense 
thorn-bushes, planted round about a field or vineyard, 
to protect it against animals, especially foxes, dogs, and 
marauders of any kind. Sometimes a wall of stone wa3 
added. (Comp. Num. xxii, 24-; Ps. Ixxx, 12; Prov. 
xxiv, 31; Isa. v, 5.) 2 These wine-presses, or troughs, 
consisted of two receptacles. Into the first, which was 
built of stone, or hewn out of a large rock, the grapes, 
when gathered, were thrown, and trodden out by men. 



Near to the bottom of this there was an opening through 
which the juice flowed off into another and lower vat or 
trough. As this cistern was below the other, it was al- 
most of necessity subterranean, and hence the expres- 
sion, He digged a wine-preM. 3 This turret, or watch- 
tower, answered the twofold purpose of a place of abode 
for the keeper of the vineyard and a post of observation 
to protect it from thieves. They are still found in Ori- 
ental countries. 



THE PARABLE OF THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN. 



497 



when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, 
that they might receive the fruits of it. (35) And the husbandmen took his serv- 
ants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. (36) Again, he sent 
other servants more than the first : and they did unto them likewise. (37) But 
last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. (38) But 
when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir ; 
come, let us kill him, and let lis seize on his inheritance. (39) And they caught 
him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him. (40) When the lord there- 
fore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen? (41) They 
Ray unto him, He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his 
vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their 
seasons. (42) Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the Scriptures, The 
stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: 
this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes ? (43) Therefore say I 
unto you, The kingdom of G-od shall ' be taken from you, and given to a nation 
bringing forth the fruits thereof. (44) And whosoever shall fall on this stone 
shall be broken : but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder. 
(45) And when the chief-priests and Pharisees had heard his parables, they per- 
ceived that he spake of them. (46) But when they sought to lay hands on him, 
they feared the multitude, because they took him for a prophet. 



Verse 33. Hear another parable. While in 
the parable of the Two Son 3 the conduct of the 
Pharisees and scribes was delineated with reference 
to their personal character as individuals, it is now 
more their official character which is brought to 
view, both historically and prophetically. The Lord 
holds up to them what their predecessors had done 
to God's prophets, and what they were about to do 
to God's own Son. Yea, in verse 38, he puts the 
confession in their mouth that he is the Son, and 
thus they must pass the sentence of condemnation 
upon themselves, which he then solemnly confirms. 
" There is this apparent difference between the ac- 
counts of the several Evangelists, that while Mat- 
thew and Mark relate the parable as addressed to 
the Pharisees, it was, according to Luke, spoken to 
the people. But the Sacred Narrative itself sup- 
plies the helps for clearing away this slight apparent 
difference, Luke mentioning the chief-priests and 
scribes (v. 19) in a way which shows that they were 
listeners also; and thus, being spoken in the hear- 
ing of both parties, in the mind of one narrator the 
parable seemed addressed mainly to the people; in 
that of the others, to the Fharisees." (Trench.) — 
There was a certain householder which planted 
a vineyard. An image very common with the 
prophets, especially with Isaiah, (chap, v, 1-6,) where 
there are many features similar to this parable. As 
the kingdom of God is represented under the image 
of a marriage-feast with regard to the enjoyments 
which it oFdrs, so it is represented under that of a 



32 



vineyard with re/arcl to the labor that must be done 
in it. The householder was more than the possessor 
of this vineyard — he had himself planted it. (Ex. 
xv, 17.) The planting of this vineyard took place 
under Moses and Joshua, in the establishment of 
the Jewish polity in the land of Canaan. (Deut. 
xxxii, 12-14; compare Ezek. xvi, 9-14; Neh. ix, 
23-25.) — Hedge, tower, and wine-press are used by 
Isaiah merely for the purpose of filling up the por- 
trait, and the meaning to be conveyed by them is 
probably only the general statement, that the Lord 
did every thing for his vineyard that could be done. 
The hedge, however, has an unmistakable reference 
to both the ceremonial and the civil law which sep- 
arated the children of Israel from the surrounding 
nations. "This meaning is suggested by passages 
like Ephesians ii, 14, where the law is described as 
'the middle wall of partition' between the Jew and 
Gentile. By their circumscription through the law, 
the Jews became a people dwelling alone, and not 
reckoned among the nations. (Num. xxiii, 9.) That 
law was a hedge at once of separation and of de- 
fense, since in keeping distinct the line of separa- 
tion between themselves and the idolatrous nations 
around them, lay their security that they should enjoy 
the continued protection of God. That protection is 
called a wall of fire, (Zech. ii, 5; and compare Ps. 
cxxv, 2; Isa. xxvi, 1; xxvii, 3.) Nor is it unworthy 
of observation, that outwardly also Judea, through 
its geographical position, was hedged round — by the 
bounty of nature on every side circumscribed and 



498 



MATTHEW XXI, 33-46. 



defended — guarded on the east by the River Jordan 
and the two lakes, on the south by the desert and 
mountainous country of Idumea, on the west by the 
sea, and by Anti-Libanus on the north." (Trench.) 
— An essential difference between the parable of 
Isaiah and that of our Lord consists in this, that 
the vineyard of the prophet is represented as un- 
fruitful, as producing only wild-grapes, while in our 
Lord's parable the main point is the criminal con- 
duct of the husbandmen, who withheld the produce 
from the rightful owner. — And let it out to hus- 
bandmen. "These must be different from the vine- 
yard which they were to cultivate, and must, there- 
fore, be the spiritual leaders and teachers of the 
people, while the vineyard itself will then naturally 
signify the great body of the people, who were to be 
instructed and taught, to the end that, under dili- 
gent cultivation, they might bring forth fruits of 
righteousness. By the letting out of the vineyard 
to these, we must understand the solemn committal 
which the law made of this charge to the priests 
and Levites; their solemn commission is recognized 
and pressed in such passages as Malachi ii, 1 ; Eze- 
kiel xxxiv, 2. It is worthy of observation, that the 
parable is so constructed as to imply that the diso- 
bedience, the contumacy, the unprofitableness of the 
Jews, were to be looked at not merely in the light 
of common wickedness, but as a breach of the most 
solemn trust — as ingratitude of the darkest dye; for 
no doubt it was a great benefit to the husbandmen 
to be put in possession of a vineyard so largely and 
liberally furnished, (compare Neh. ix, 25; Deut. xvi, 
11,) and everything implies that they had entered 
into covenant with the proprietor concerning what 
proportion of the fruits they were to pay to him in 
their season — even as the Jewish people made a 
solemn covenant with God at Horeb, that, as he 
would be their God, so they would be his people." 
(Trench.) — And went into a far country. After 
the vineyard had been planted, that is, after Israel 
had been led out of Egypt, the law had been given, 
and the people had been settled in Canaan, God re- 
vealed himself no more in so extraordinary a man- 
ner. (Deut. xxxiv, 10-12.) But this going into a 
far country may also be applied to the belief of the 
husbandmen, that God was paying no attention to 
their administration. (Ezek. viii, 12; ix, 9.) 

Verse 34. And when the time of the fruit 
drew near, he sent his servants, etc.; that is, 
extraordinary embassadors, the prophets, whose 
special duty it was, as the accredited messengers 
of God, to preach repentance and to remind princes, 
priests, and people of their covenant obligations. — 
That they might receive the fruits of it. The 
Lord had done so much for his people from the time 
of Moses to the time of the first prophets, that he 
was justified to expect from them true penitence 
and an ardent desire for the promised Redeemer. 
It was the solemn duty, and was justly expected of 
the husbandmen, that they should take proper pains 



from the beginning, that the Lord might find at his 
coming a well-prepared people ardently desiring 
him, such as John the Baptist wanted to prepare at 
last, and such as Zacharias and Elizabeth and a few 
more actually were. 

Verse 35. This feature of the parable has no 
specific historical signification. A threefold treat- 
ment is mentioned only to indicate that a sufficient 
number was sent, and the beating, killing, and ston- 
ing form a gradation of the abuse heaped on God's 
messengers. For the stoning implies, as we learn 
from Mark, that they pelted the third messenger 
with stones, not even suffering him to come near 
them. 

Verse 36. Again, he sent other servants, etc. 
"The patience of the householder under these ex- 
traordinary provocations is wonderful; that he sends 
messenger after messenger to bring back, if possi- 
ble, these wicked men to a sense of duty, and does 
not at once resume possession of his vineyard, and 
inflict summary vengeance, as the end proves that 
he had power to do, upon them; and this his pa- 
tience is thus brought out and magnified, that it 
may set forth the yet more wonderful forbearance 
and long-suffering of God: 'Howbeit I sent unto 
you all my servants the prophets, rising early and 
sending them, saying, 0, do not this abominable 
thing that I hate.' (Jer. xliv, 4.) 'Nevertheless 
they were disobedient, and rebelled against thee, 
and cast thy law behind their backs, and slew thy 
prophets who testified against them, to turn them to 
thee, and they wrought great provocations.' (Neh. 
ix, 26.) The whole confession made in that chapter 
by the Levites is in itself an admirable commentary 
on this parable." (Trench.) 

Verse 37. But last of all, he sent unto 
them his son. "Or in the still more affecting 
words of Mark, (v. 6,) 'Having yet therefore one son 
his well-beloved, he sent him also last unto them, 
saying, They will reverence my son.' (See Heb. 
i, 1.) This was the last and crowning effort of 
Divine mercy, after which, on the one side, all the 
resources even of heavenly love are exhausted, on 
the otht',r the measure of sins is perfectly filled up. 
The description of the son as the only one, as the 
well-beloved, marks as strongly as possible the differ- 
ence of rank between him and the servants, the 
worth and dignity of his person, who only was a Son 
in the highest sense cf the word, (see Heb. iii, 5, 6;) 
and undoubtedly they who were our Lord's actual 
hearers quite understood what he meant, and the 
honor which in these words he claimed as his own, 
though they were unable to turn his words against 
himself, and to accuse him oo the strength of them, 
of making himself, as indeed he did then affirm him- 
self, the Son of God. When the householder ex- 
presses his conviction, that, however those evil men 
may have outraged his inferior messengers, they will 
stand in awe of and reverence his son,\t is hardly 
worth while to make a difficulty here, as stme have 



THE PARABLE OF THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN. 



499 



done, from the fact that he whom the householder 
represents must have fully known from the begin- 
ning what treatment his Son would receive from 
those to whom he sent him — not that there is not a 
difficulty, but that it is the same difficulty which 
run's through every thing, that of the relations in 
which man's freedom and God's foreknowledge stand 
to one another — and it does not in truth come out 
more strongly here than it does every-where else, 
and requires not to be especially treated of in this 
place." (Trench.) Stier remarks : "These words im- 
ply a direct, although parabolically-expressed answer 
to their question in verse 23. I am the Son, as ye 
know very well ! Yet the Lord does not introduce 
himself to them so much as the promised Messiah 
and Redeemer, but rather as the last witness of 
truths,-preacher of repentance and pardon according 
to his prophetic office; this is quite in order, inas- 
much as the rejection of the Son, the last and great- 
est of the prophets, consummates the rejection of all 
the earlier messengers of God. The Son also com- 
mences his public ministry by preaching repentance 
and reformation of life." 

Verse 38. They said among themselves. The 
thought of men's hearts is their true speech, and 
therefore here given even as though it were the 
words of their lips. We are not to infer that the 
Pharisees, even in their secret counsels, ever trusted 
one another so far, or dared to look their own 
wickedness so directly in the face, as with their lips 
to say, This is the Messiah, therefore let us slat/ 
him ! Yet the manifold testimonies that Jesus was 
the Messiah and Son of God, his miracles, his spot- 
less life, the irresistible power of his preaching, the 
fullness of his love, and every thing that God did, to 
place his Divine mission beyond every reasonable 
doubt, produced really on many of the leading men 
ot the nation the conviction here expressed, (John 
i'u, 2;) and although they rejected in their obstinate 
unbelief all this, and even the solemn declaration of 
Jesus concerning himself, (Matt, xxvi, 63-66,) yet 
they could not but know that Jesus claimed to be 
the Messiah and the Son of God. — This is the heir; 
that is, the future proprietor. Christ is called the 
heir of all things, (Heb. i, 2,) as the Son of man, 
(Phil, ii, 9-11.) — Come, let us kill him. This is a 
literal quotation of Gen. xxxvii, 20 — according to 
the LXX — where the sons of Jacob plot in the same 
way the death of their brother Joseph, who may be 
considered a type of Christ with regard to his subse- 
quent exaltation. — -Let us seize on his inherit- 
ance. They were anxious to remain in undisputed 
possession of their theocratic power, which they ap- 
prehended to lose through Christ. 

Verse 39. Casting the son out of the vineyard, 
like the exclusion from the camp of Israel, implies 
a cutting off from the people of God. It has refer- 
ence to the delivering of Jesus into the hands of the 
Gentiles, and, at the same time, to his suffering with- 
out the gate. (Heb. xiii, 13.) By this very act the 



vineyard is laid waste, the sanctuary left desolate, 
and a new Church founded upon the rejected corner- 
stone. 

Verse 41. They say unto him. According to 
Mark and Luke the Lord himself pronounces the 
sentence, while according to Matthew those whom 
he addresses do it. The two accounts can, perhaps, 
be best reconciled by supposing that the answer 
given by the Pharisees was confirmed and repeated 
by Christ. It may be that they, as yet, had missed 
the scope of the parable, and pronounced sentence 
against themselves before they were aware; but it is 
more probable that they merely pretended not to 
perceive its drift, and thus gave occasion to our 
Lord to add the more explicit words, (vs. 42-44,) 
which they could not affect to misunderstand. The 
" God forbid," which, according to Luke, the people 
uttered when they heard the terrible doom of the 
husbandmen, gives evidence that the scope of the 
parable had not escaped their comprehension — that 
they had understood it, even before its plain inter- 
pretation. "The convicted hypocrites must needs 
pass sentence upon themselves, and they do it with 
consummate hypocrisy, affecting an apparent ease, 
as if they did not know that they were pronouncing 
judgment upon themselves. This reply is the fullest 
justification of the Divine judgments upon the Jews, 
out of their own mouth, as it were, the first note 
of that fearful imprecation recorded in chap, xxvii, 
25. We may, at the same time, look upon this par- 
able as the last possible warning from a long-suffer- 
ing God — they are warned against deeds which they 
are about to commit, and are compelled to pass judg- 
ment upon their own acts. They were forewarned, 
and yet they did it! In the whole history of the 
world, as in its central point, the crucifixion of 
Christ, the decrees of God, and the free agency of 
man work together most mysteriously. Gen. 1, 20." 
(Stier.) 

Verse 42. Jesus saith unto them. In confirm- 
ation of the sentence that had just been pronounced 
upon the husbandmen, and, as it seems, in answer 
to the exclamation God forbid, which, according to 
Luke, the people had uttered, the Lord quotes a 
prophecy from the Old Testament. — Did ye never 
read in the Scripture? "The quotation is from 
Ps. cxviii, 22, 23, a psalm of which, as already has 
been noted, the Jews recognized the application to 
the Messiah, and of which there is the same applica- 
tion in Acts iv, 11; 1 Pet. ii, 7; and an allusion 
somewhat more remote, Eph. ii, 20. The passage 
quoted forms an exact parallel with this parable. 
The builders answer to the husbandmen ; they were 
appointed of God to carry up the spiritual building, 
as these to cultivate the spiritual vineyard. The re- 
jection of the chief corner-stone answers exactly to 
the denying and murdering the heir. The reason 
why he leaves for a moment the image of the vine- 
yard, is because of its inadequacy to set forth one 
important part of the truth, which yet was needful 



500 



MATTHEW XXII, 1-14. 



to make the moral complete; namely this, that the 
malice of the Pharisees should not defeat the pur- 
pose of God— that the Son should yet be the heir— 
that not merely vengeance should be taken, but that 
he should take it. Now this is distinctly set forth 
by the rejected stone becoming the head of the cor- 
ner, on which the builders stumbled and fell, and 
were broken — on which they were now already thus 
stumbling and falling, and which, if they set them- 
selves against it to the end, would fall upon them 
and crush and destroy them utterly. They fall on 
the stone who are offended at Christ in his low estate; 
(Isa. viii, 14; Luke ii, 34;) of this sin his hearers 
were already guilty. There was yet a worse sin 
which they were on the point of committing, which 
he warns them would be followed with a more tre- 
mendous punishment; they on whom the stone falls 
are they who set themselves in distinct and self-con- 
scious opposition against the Lord — who knowing 
who he is, do yet to the end oppose themselves to 
him and to his kingdom; and they shall not merely 
fall and be broken, for one might recover himself, 
though with some present harm, from such a fall as 
this; but on them the stone shall fall and shall grind 
them to powder — in the words of Daniel, 'like the 
chaff of the Summer thrashing-floors,' destroying 
them with a doom irreversible, and from which there 
should be no recovery." (Trench.) 

Verse 43. Therefore say I unto Tor;. There- 
fore, because the stone rejected by you has become 
the head of the corner. — The kingdom op God 
shall be taken from you; that is, from Israel after 
the flesh, whose representatives they were. — And 
given to A nation. Most commentators understand 
by it the Gentiles, the singular being used in contrast 
with the Jewish nation. But as this nation is de- 
scribed by the addition "bringing forth the fruits 



thereof," we may understand by it the real people 
of God, the spiritual Israel, consisting of both Jews 
and Gentiles. The fruits brought forth by the mem- 
bers of the Messianic kingdom are described in chap- 
ter v, 3-10. 

Verse 44. Our Lord returns to the figure of the 
stone, but views it in a different position than that 
assigned it in the building as the head of the corner. 
The stone falls upon no one that has not first fallen 
upon it; that is, unbelievers, that have rejected 
Christ first, will be judged and rejected by him also. 
But there is a double form of punishment indicated 
by this antithesis. — Whosoever shall fall upon 
this stone — Christ the head of the corner — that is, 
whoever rushes against it, making it the stone of 
offense, shall be broken like an earthen vessel that 
falls upon a rock. (Comp. Isa. viii, 14; 1 Pet. ii, 8.) — 
But on whomsoever it shall fall. The first half 
of this verse spoke of the activity of the unbeliever 
in his attack upon Christ, the second speaks of that 
of the stone, as is done by Daniel, who describes the 
severe chastisements inflicted by the Messiah under 
the similitude of a stone, which, cut out of the rock 
without hands, crushes every thing that opposes it. 
"In the first case the stone is, as it were, passive; in 
the second, it is in motion and active. The stone at 
rest is Jesus, not judging, but waiting that every one 
may repent. The stone that crushes the gainsayers 
is Jesus as he shall reveal himself in judging the 
world, in his power and glory. Reader, be on thy 
guard! The corner-stone is every-where in thy way; 
thou must either be built upon it as a living stone 
by faith, or stumble against it in unbelief. And 
woe unto thee if it shall once fall upon thy guilty 
head!" (Stier. ) — It will grind him to powder — 
literally, it will make him to be winnowed by the 
winds, like chaff. (Dan. ii, 34, 35.) 



CHAPTEE XXII. 
51. PARABLE OF THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON. 



This parable was spoken immediately after the preceding to the people and the disci- 
ples — probably after the departure of the chief-priests and elders. A parable resembling 
this in several particulars we find in Luke xiv, 15-24 ; but it is evident that they are not 
to be confounded with one another, as if they were two different versions of the same 
discourse. That of Luke was spoken at a meal to which one of the chief Pharisees had 
invited the Savior, at a much earlier period of our Lord's ministry, when the hostility 
of the Jewish hierarchy had not yet reached the point of a formal determination of put- 
ting Jesus to death. It moreover stands in connection with the truth, which the Lord 
had impressed upon those who sat with him at meat, that men ought not to give in order to 
receive in turn, but from disinterested kindness. Having illustrated this proposition by stat- 
ing what guests ought to be invited to a social repast, our Lord took occasion, from the 
remark of one of the guests concerning those that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God, 



PARABLE OF THE MARRIAGE OP THE KING'S SON. 501 

to show that the invitation to the kingdom of God rests upon the same principle — of free 
grace — and that only those who feel their need and indigence are willing and prepared 
to accept the offers of Divine mercy. The invitation is, indeed, declined in both parables 
by some; but how different is the manner of declining! In that of Luke the invited 
guests civilly excuse themselves ; in this they mark their contempt for the invitation as 
strongly as they can, not thinking it worth their while to make any excuse, and some 
of them maltreating and killing the bearers of the message. There it is " the poor, the 
maimed, the halt, the blind" who come in the place of the first-invited guests, while here 
"all are gathered, both good and bad." Again, " as the contempt would be aggravated in 
proportion to the honor and dignity of the person inviting and the solemnity of the oc- 
casion, this increased guilt is set forth by the fact of its being a king, and no common 
man, as in that other, who makes the festival ; so that rebellion is mingled with their 
contempt — and the festival no ordinary one, but one in honor of his son's marriage — by 
which latter circumstance is brought out the relation of the Jews not merely to the king- 
dom of God in general, but their relation to Jesus, the personal theocratic King ; and in 
every way the guilt involved in their rejection of him is hightened. While in the para- 
ble recorded b}^ Luke nothing more is threatened than that God would turn from one 
portion of the Jewish people — from the priests and the Pharisees — and offer the benefits 
which they counted light of to another part of the same nation — the people that knew 
not the law, the publicans and harlots — with only a slight intimation (v. 23) of the call 
of the Gentiles; in Matthew it is threatened that the kingdom of God shall be taken 
wholly away from the Jewish people, who had now proved themselves in the mass, and 
with very few exceptions, despisers of its privileges, and should be given to the Gentiles." 
(Trench.) 

Strauss, ignoring all these circumstances, which perfectly explain the appearance of 
the parable in forms so different, asserts " that here Luke is the only accurate narrator 
of Christ's words, and that Matthew has mixed up with them some heterogeneous ele- 
ments, such, for instance, as the wedding garment." To this Trench replies: "How fit- 
ting was it, in a discourse which sets forth how sinners of every degree were invited to a 
fellowship in the blessings of the Gospel, that they should be reminded likewise that, for 
the lasting enjoyment of these, they must put off their former conversation—in Theoph- 
ylact's words, ' that the entrance, indeed, to the marriage-feast is without scrutiny, for 
by grace alone we are all called, as well bad as good; but the life of those that have 
entered, hereafter shall not be without scrutiny. The King will make a very strict exam- 
ination of those who, having entered into the faith, shall be found in filthy garments ' — 
a most needful caution, lest any should abuse the grace of God, and forget that while, as 
regarded the past, they were freely called, they were yet now called unto holiness." 

Verses 1-14. 

(1) And Jesus answered and spake unto them again by parables, and said, 
(2) The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage 
for his son, (3) and sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the 
wedding : and they would not come. (4) Again, he sent forth other servants, say- 
ing, Tell them which are hidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen 
and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage. 
(5) But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his 
merchandise : (6) And the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spite- 
fully, and slew them. (7) But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth : and he 
sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. 
(8) Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is reacty, but they which were 



502 



MATTHEW XXII, 1-14 



bidden were not worthy. (9) G-o ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye 
shall find, bid to the marriage. (10) So those servants went out into the highways, 
and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good : and the 
wedding was furnished with guests. (11) And when the king came in to see the 
guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment: (12) And he 
saith unto him, Friend, how earnest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? 
And he was speechless. (18) Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand 
and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness ; there shall be 
weeping and gnashing of teeth. (14) For many are called, but few are chosen. 



Verse 1. And Jesus answered. If the chief- 
priests and elders were still present, when this para- 
ble was spoken, it must be taken for a direct an- 
swer to their murderous plan. It is, however, more 
likely, from Mark xii, 13, that they had gone away 
after the first parable. In this case the "he an- 
swered" must be taken for a general answer to the 
thoughts and ideas called forth in the hearers by 
chap, xxi, 42, 43. What had been said there, is 
here more fully stated and confirmed. — By para- 
bles. The plural here merely indicates the method 
teaching which the Lord made use of. 

Verse 2. The kingdom op heaven is like. In 
the preceding parable he had compared the pre- 
paratory and typical kingdom of God with a vine- 
yard. Now he speaks of the establishment of his 
own kingdom in the New Testament. This transi- 
tion from the times of the Old Testament to those of 
the New is worthy of special consideration. The 
former was a parable of the Old Testament history; 
even Christ himself appears there rather as the last 
and greatest of the line of its prophets and teachers, 
than as the founder of a new kingdom. In that, a 
parable of the law, God appears demanding some- 
thing from men ; in this, a parable of grace, God ap- 
pears more as giving something to them. There he 
is displeased that his demands are not complied 
with — here, that his goodness is not accepted ; there 
he requires here he imparts. And thus, as we so 
often find, the two mutually complete one another; 
this taking rip the matter where the other left 
it. — Unto a certain king, which made a mar- 
riage for his son. The two favorite images un- 
der which the prophets set forth the blessings of 
the new covenant, and of all reunion with God — 
that of a festival, (Isa. xxv, 6; Ixv, 13; Cant, 
v, 1;) and that of a marriage, (Isa. lxi, 10; Ixii, 
5; Hos. ii, 19; Matt, ix, 15; John iii, 29; Eph. v, 
32; 2 Cor. xi, 2) — are united and interpenetrate 
one another in the marriage festival here. The 
latter has reference not only to the enjoyments 
of the guests, but also to the joy and honor in- 
tended for the king's son. Of the bride there is in- 
tentionally nothing said here, because the aim of 
this parable is not to represent the intimate relations 
existing between Christ ard the Church, but to de- 



scribe the different conduct of the guests invited to 
the feast of the Messianic kingdom and its conse- 
quences, and it impedes only the proper understand- 
ing of the parable to apply the similitude of the mar- 
riage to the close relationship between Christ and 
his Church. The believers are elsewhere represented 
as Christ's bride, but here as subjects doing homage 
to the king's son; and the marriage festival, with 
all the preparations for it, lasts from the enthrone- 
ment of Christ to the completion of the Kingdom, an 
idea which is also hinted at by the "coming in of 
the king to see his guests." 

Verse 3. And sent forth his servants. These 
servants are not the prophets, as in the preceding 
parable, but John the Baptist and the apostles dur- 
ing the lifetime of our Lord. To have mentioned, 
in this connection, the king's son himself as inviting 
would have impaired the unity of the parable. — To 

CALL THEM THAT WERE BIDDEN TO THE WEDDING; 

that is, to tell them that they should come now. 
The invitations given to the Jews in the Old Testa- 
ment, as the chosen guests in the kingdom of God, 
are presupposed here. The Oriental custom of an- 
cient and modern times to bid the guests twice fur- 
nishes the appropriate and simple figure of the Old 
and the New Testament invitation of Israel — from 
which it is plain that the "bidden guests" are the 
Jews generally. — And they would not come. 
(Compare chap, xxiii, 37; John v, 40.) There was 
no actual maltreatment of the servants sent out 
during the ministry of our Lord. 

Verse 4. Again he sent forth other servants. 
The second sending forth of the servants describes 
the renewed invitations to the Jews from the day of 
Pentecost to the destruction of Jerusalem. "It 
need not perplex us to find these spoken of as 
' other' servants, while, in fact, many of them were 
the same. In the first place, there were many 
others now associated with them — Stephen, and Bar- 
nabas, and Paul, and a great company of preachers. 
Those, too, who were the same, yet went forth as 
new men, full of the Holy Ghost, and with a some- 
what altered message, not preaching generally a 
kingdom of God, but preaching now 'Jesus and the 
resurrection;' declaring, which they had not done 
before, that all things were ready — that all the ob- 



PARABLE OF THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON. 



503 



stacles which man's sin had reared up, God's grace 
had removed, (Acts ii, 38, 39; iii, 19-26; iv, 12;) 
that, in that very blood which they had impiously 
shed, there was forgiveness of all sins, and freedom 
of access to God." (Trench.)- — -Tell them which 
are bidden. "Let us not miss in the parable or in 
its application the infinite grace which gives to the 
guests the opportunity of coming to a better mind, 
and making good their first contempt. The king — 
as though he thought it possible that they deferred 
coming, because not being aware that the prep- 
arations were yet completed, or that some other mis- 
understanding had found place, instead of threaten- 
ing or rebuking — told his servants only to press the 
message with greater distinctness and instancy. So 
tell them that they can not mistake, that every an- 
terior preparation is made. And exactly thus was 
it with the apostles after the crucifixion; how will- 
ing were they to look upon all that was past in the 
mildest possible light! thus Peter, (Acts iii, IT,) 
And now, brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye 
did it' — how did they refuse to dwell upon the past 
sin, urging rather the present grace!" (Trench.) 
"0 how anxious is this king to get guests for his 
feast — to win back his rebellious subjects! All their 
former unwillingness is to be forgiven, a new ' be- 
hold ' sets forth the New Testament blessings and 
privileges, purchased by the death of Christ, in all 
their fullness and glory. But being unwilling to 
submit to the Son, they refuse to come, and if they 
persist in this disobedience they must at last be 
judged as incorrigible rebels. God's grace in Christ 
is preventing, all-sufficient, repeatedly-calling, and 
urging, but not compelling." (Stier.) — All things 
are ready. Every thing necessary for our salvation 
is prepared by Infinite Mercy and Goodness. All 
things wait, as it were, for man to be appropriated 
and enjoyed by him. 

Verses 5, 6. But they made light of it. This 
contempt of the gracious invitation rises, with some, 
to open rebellion. If the Gospel is repeatedly urged 
upon men without success, the natural enmity which 
is at the bottom of this indifference becomes mani- 
fest. 

Verse 7. By referring to the prophecy of Dan- 
iel, (ix, 26, 27,) the Lord explains, and, in reality, 
ends the parable. — From God's punitive justice, 
expressed by the words, "the king was wroth," we 
can clearly see how earnest God is in inviting sinners 
to come unto him. "If I invite a person to dine 
with me merely for a compliment, and he declines 
the invitation, my feelings are not hurt. So with 
God; if his invitations given to men were a mere 
formality, if he was not in full earnest about them, 
he would not be wroth if his supper is despised." 
(Rieger.) Wrath of holiest love ! God is wroth, be- 
cause men are unwilling to be saved from their 
sins! God is wroth, not because men are sinners, 
but because they are bent on being wretched. Who, 
then, that is lost, can say that God is too rigid, 



too severe? Is not the very opposite the case? 
Men are hard upon themselves, not God. — And he 
sent forth his armies, etc. A similar expression 
of the unconscious instruments of God's wrath is 
used by Isaiah, (x, 5; xiii, 5;) Jeremiah, (xxv, 9;) 
Joel, (ii, 25.) The hostile armies of Rome were the 
executive angels of Jehovah's judgments upon the 
Jews — but not only they, but also the invisible pow- 
ers of heaven, as Titus himself acknowledged, the 
elements, and the powers of nature.- — And burned 
hp their city. Jerusalem is no longer the city of 
God; since they had rejected the Son of God, it is 
now their city. The fate of Jerusalem ought to 
teach every despiser of God's messengers what is in 
store for him. 

Verse 8. They which were bidden were not 
worthy. "Their unworthiness consisted in their 
rejection of the invitation, even as the worthiness 
of those who did find a place at the festival con- 
sisted — not in their previous state, for in that re- 
gard they were most unworthy of the honor of sit- 
ting down at the king's table, but in their acceptance 
of the invitation. ' Go ye, therefore, into the high- 
ways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the mar- 
riage.' Here the doctrine so hateful to Jewish 
ears, (see Acts xxii, 21, 22,) the calling of the Gen- 
tiles, and that by occasion of the disobedience of the 
Jews - , is again plainly declared. By the breaking 
off of the natural branches of the olive, there shall 
be room made for the grafting in of the wild olive 
in their stead, (Rom. xi;) so Paul sets forth the same 
truth which here his Lord declares under the image 
of the exclusion of the guests, who in the natural 
order of things would best become the wedding, and 
were invited to it, and the reception of those gath- 
ered in from the highways in their stead. Compare 
Matt, viii, 10-12, of which this parable is only the 
ampler unfolding." (Trench.) 

Verse 9.„ The calling of the Gentiles, as described 
here, indeed took place before the destruction of 
Jerusalem; the Gospel having been preached unto 
them forty years before that catastrophe. But it is 
here inserted in the parable, partly because it was 
proper to bring that part, that referred to the Jewish 
nation exclusively, first to a close; partly, also, be- 
cause the total rejection of the Jews, and the step- 
ping of the Gentiles into all their forfeited rights did 
not take place before the destruction of Jerusalem. 
The substitution of others, not previously called, for 
the rejected guests is the theme discussed by the 
apostle in Rom. xi, where the Jews are represented 
as broken-off branches of the olive-tree, in whose 
place others— the fullness of the Gentiles — are 
grafted in. (Comp. Acts xiii, 46-48.) — Go ye, 
therefore, into the highways — literally, into the 
confluences of ways. In Luke's parable the servants 
are sent into the streets and lanes of the city, the 
resorts of the poor and beggars. Here they are sent 
far beyond the confines of the burned city, to the 
distant crossings of the world's highways. The time 



504 



MATTHEW XXII, 1-14. 



of the indiscriminate invitation of all nations to the 
kingdom of God is still going on, and will not elapse 
till the Gospel shall have been preached to all na- 
tions of the world. — And as many as ye shall 
find, bid to the marriage. Divine grace and the 
offers of mercy are universal, not restricted to na- 
tions or individuals. (John iii, 16; Matt, xxviii, 18, 
etc.; Luke xxiv, 46, 47.) 

Verse 10. Both bad and good. This does not 
refer to the subsequent — moral — state of the guests, 
but to their state at the time when they were called 
and accepted the call. The inviting servants paid 
no respect to the character of the persons whom 
they invited; the only question was whether they 
would accept the offers of mercy by faith, or reject 
them through unbelief. The separation of the good 
from the bad, in the true sense of the term, was to be 
made subsequently by the king himself. Although 
this refers, like chapter xiii, 48, to the present mixed 
state of the Church, yet it does not exclude the ad- 
ministering of wholesome discipline, which is en- 
joined in other places of the New Testament. — And 
the wedding [that is, the feast] was furnished 
with guests. All these enjoy the royal honor and 
favor to some extent; each keeps his place up to the 
close of the time of probation and trial, and the 
gathering continues all the time. 

Verses 11, 12. And when the king came in to 
see the guests. This scene is generally referred 
to the day of judgment, and that justly, so far as 
the execution of the sentence is concerned; yet we 
may give it a wider application. "At every other 
judgment," says Trench, "whereby hypocrites are 
revealed, or self-deceivers laid bare to themselves or 
to others, the king enters in to see, or, rather, dili- 
gently to regard, the assembled guests — at every 
time of trial, which is also in its nature a time of 
separation, a time when the thoughts of many hearts 
are laid bare; though for the day of the last judg- 
ment the complete and final separation is, of course, 
reserved, and then all that has been partially fulfill- 
ing in one and another will be completely fulfilled 
in all." The hall or reception-room, in which the 
guests are represented to be assembled, is evidently 
to be distinguished from that mentioned in the 
parable of the Ten Virgins; for no one can enter 
the latter hall without the righteousness of God. 
There is, however, no discrepancy between the 
two parables. In this parable the kingdom of God 
in its temporal manifestation, the mixed, visible 
Church on earth, has thus far been brought to 
view; in the remaining portion of the parable the 
Lord teaches us that not all that apparently accept 
the offer of mercy, and thereby become members of 
the visible Church, are members of Christ's body. 
This truth is symbolized by the coming in of the 
king to see the guests, and with this truth there is 
connected another; namely, that the time of proba- 
tion and grace will come to a close when the ever- 
lasting destiny of all shall be immutably fixed and 



revealed. — He saw there a man. The one is men- 
tioned as an example for the many, (v. 14.) "So 
diligent and exact will be the future scrutiny that 
not so much as one in all that great multitude of 
men shall on the last day escape the piercing eye3 
of the Judge." (Gerhard.) — Which had not on a 
wedding garment. The custom of Oriental kings 
to present those that are about to appear before 
them with festal garments — caftans — (comp. Gen. 
xlv, 22; Judg. xiv, 12; 2 Kings v, 22,) which is said 
to be still in vogue, is presupposed here, and is, as 
we shall see, a beautiful symbol of what the Lord 
intends to teach us in this part of the parable. De 
Wette and Meyer maintain, without good reason, 
that the existence of this custom can not be suffi- 
ciently established; the guilt of the guest, they say, ' 
consisted in violating a self-evident rule of good 
breeding and decorum, which required him to appear 
on such an occasion in festal array. But even ad- 
mitting that the custom in question could not be 
sufficiently established, yet the parable itself shows 
that the wedding-garment was presented to the 
guests by the king, since many of the guests, that 
had come from the lanes and streets, could not pro- 
cure it elsewhere; if the individual without the gar- 
ment had not had a chance to get it from the king's 
wardrobe, he could have pleaded his poverty as an 
excuse of his appearance. We admit, however, that 
no especial stress is to be laid on the idea that the 
wedding-garment was presented to the guests, no 
more than on the supposition that each guest had to 
provide himself with the garment. The main point 
is, that each guest was to appear at the feast in the 
proper garment, and had, therefore, to take the 
proper pains beforehand to get it. The question, 
How it could be procured? did not come within the 
scope of the parable. If the guest had not taken 
sufficient pains to procure the garment, he was guilty 
of positive disrespect to the inviting king, and of a 
profanation of the feast. But what have we to un- 
derstand by this wedding-garment 1 ? Lange answers 
this question as follows: "Imputed righteousness, 
as such, can not be meant by it, because it is implied 
by the invitation to the marriage and the enjoyment 
of the feast. Faith, as such, can likewise not be 
meant, because it is simultaneous with the accept- 
ance of the invitation. The wedding-garment is. 
therefore, the state of the heart corresponding to the 
invitation and the feast." With this fully agrees 
what Meyer says: "By the garment is meant that 
righteousness, [holiness,] which those that have been 
called into the Messianic kingdom, have to appro- 
priate to themselves by a change of heart through 
faith in Jesus Christ." Olshausen says: "The 
garment — the outward ornament — represents the 
inward ornament of the soul, which is called right- 
eousness. This inward righteousness, however, is 
nothing acquired, nothing self-made, but a gift, a 
present, the very refusal of which is the act that is 
here condemned. Whoever is destitute of this right- 



INSIDIOUS QUESTION CONCERNING TRIBUTE TO CAESAR. 



505 



eousness must be cast into the kingdom of darkness. 
Man's call is thus not an irresistible grace, but 
something that appeals to his free self-determina- 
tion. Even in the hearts of those that accept the 
invitation, sin can, and does, remain, if they do not 
become humbly-obedient, accepting with the invita- 
tion the freely-offered robe of righteousness." Stier 
says: "Whenever the Lord calls, we may and are in 
duty bound to come, such as we are; but in order to 
see him and to be admitted to the marriage feast of 
the Lamb, we are not allowed to remain what we 
are." Fully agreeing with these expositions is the 
following of R. Watson: "Nothing can be more 
clear than this : as this garment would have consti- 
tuted the meetness of a man to be received as a guest 
at the feast, so it must represent all those qualities 
collectively which constitute our meetness for heaven. 
And as we are so expressly informed that 'without 
holiness no man can see the Lord;' and as habits of 
dress are constantly used figuratively to express 
moral habits of the mind and life, the virtues 
wrought in man by God's Spirit, and exhibited in a 
course of external obedience to his will, (Rom. xiii, 
14; Gal. iii, 27; Col. iii, 10; Eph. iv, 22-2-1; 1 Pet. 
iii, 4; Rev. vii, 13-15; xix, 8,) — that one word holi- 
ness, implying, as it does in the Christian sense, both 
the regeneration of those who have penitently re- 
ceived Christ as the propitiation for sin, and the 
maturing of all the graces of their new nature by 
the same influence of the Holy Ghost, will fully ex- 
press all that is comprehended by having the wed- 
ding or festal robe." Those, then, are adorned with 
the wedding-garment who possess the righteousness 
of faith and life. (Comp. Isa, lxi, 10.) Destitute 
of the garment are those who boast of their faith in 
Jesus Christ, and pretend to rely on his merits, but 



whose faith is no vital power, renewing and sanctify- 
ing the heart. — And he was speechless — liter- 
ally, his mouth was stopped; he had no plea to 
allege for his contemptuous behavior; he stood self- 
condemned, and judgment, therefore, immediately 
proceeded against him. 

Verse 13. Then said the king to the servants. 
The word translated servants here is 6idKovoc, and 
means the angels; the word used for servants in the 
previous verses is iovXot. — Bind him hand and foot. 
Figurative expression of the utter helplessness to 
which the sinner will be reduced. The hands by the 
aid of which resistance, the feet by whose help es- 
cape, might have been meditated, are alike deprived 
of all power. In the command, Take him away, is 
implied the sinner's everlasting exclusion from the 
Church triumphant. — And cast him into outer 
darkness, so called because it lies wholly beyond 
God's kingdom of light and joy. The weeping of 
the damned signifies their intense pain; and the 
gnashing of teeth is the expression of the impotent 
rage, which is unable to avert the sentence of con- 
demnation. 

Verse 14. For many are called, etc. This 
refers not merely to the expulsion of this unworthy 
guest; but in the called and not chosen must be in- 
cluded those others also that did not so much as 
embrace the invitation, and who were for their con- 
tumacy destroyed with their city. " Great is the 
number of those that are called to Messiah's king- 
dom; but only few are chosen of God. This choice 
is not arbitrarily made ; but those are chosen, by 
God's eternal counsel, of whom he' foresaw that they 
would have the necessary meetness, by appropriating 
unto themselves the only availing righteousness. 
(Comp. xxv, 34; xxiv, 22; Luke xviii, 7.)" (Meyer.) 



4. INSIDIOUS QUESTION CONCERNING TRIBUTE TO CJ1SAR. 



Verses IS— 23. (Compare Mark xii, 13-17; Luke xx, 20-26.) 

(15) Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him 
in his talk. (16) And they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, 
saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, 
neither carest thou for any man : for thou regardest not the person of men. (17) 
Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou ? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or 
not ? (18) But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hyp- 
ocrites ? (19) Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny. 
(20) And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? (21) They 
say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the 
things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's. (22) When 
they had heard these words, they marveled, and left him, and went their way. 



506 



MATTHEW XXII, 15-22. 



Verses 15, 16. Then went the Phaeisees. 
"Of the deputation of the Sanhedrim, that was to 
crush Jesus by the weight of official authority, the 
Pharisees had been the principal element. Their 
object, however, had signally failed; instead of de- 
stroying or even weakening the confidence of the 
people in Jesus, they had greatly increased it ; Jesus 
had fully vindicated his claims to the Messiahship, 
while they stood before the people as virtually de- 
posed of their office, having been compelled to leave 
the Temple by an ignominious flight." (Lange.) — 
They took, therefore, counsel, in order to reach 
their object in another way. Their device was very 
insidious. They attempt to drag him on the dan- 
gerous arena of a political question, to make him 
appear as a political Messiah, in order to charge 
him with sedition before the Roman magistrate, or 
to destroy his influence with the people, if he should 
unqualifiedly declare for submission to the Romans. 
— And they sent unto him theik disciples with 
the Heeodians. "It was a part of the stratagem, 
that the pharisaic dignitaries of the Sanhedrim, that 
had just returned from an official attack on Jesus, 
came not themselves as submissive inquirers after 
the truth. This would have created suspicion. 
Therefore, they sent their disciples, younger, un- 
known persons, students of the law. For their at- 
tendants they had succeeded in procuring some 
politicians, Herodians, probably likewise younger 
persons. The students and young aristocracy of 
Jerusalem were every way qualified to be used as 
tools in an attempt at a theocratical revolution." 
(Lange.) It must, likewise, not be overlooked, that 
the tetrarch Herod Antipas happened to be at 
Jerusalem. (Luke xxiii, 7.) "The Herodians," 
says Meyer, " are that party of the Jews that were 
devoted to the royal house of Herod, a party neither 
hierarchical nor strictly Roman, royalists in opposi- 
tion to the principle of theocracy, but likewise op- 
posed to the unpopular rule of the Romans. Cun- 
ningly enough the orthodox hierarchists unite with 
this royalistic party in order to embolden Jesus to an 
answer unfavorable to the payment of tribute." But 
it is more probable that the combination of the Phari- 
sees and Herodians was a feigned dispute between 
two parties, known to be radically opposed to each 
other, the Pharisees as the fierce repudiators of the 
Roman rule, and the Herodians as the adherents of 
the Roman dynasty. — Master, we know that thou 
aet true, and teachest the way of God in teuth. 
They speak as if they desired to learn from him and 
to submit to his authority, yea, as if they were ready 
to acknowledge him as the Messiah. — Neithee 
CAREST thou for any man. " Thou accommodatest 
thyself to no man — a truth which the scribes had, 
indeed, found out often enough. Thou hast no re- 
gard for the person and authority of men when the 
truth of God is at stake. This lofty praise of a 
truthful teacher is here given to the faithful witness 
from the lips of his enemies, who are compelled to 



speak the truth, while they mean to lie. No poet 
could portray the combination of falsehood and truth 
with more psychological truth than these persons 
are described here by the Evangelists in these few 
words." (Stier.) 

Verse 17. Is it lawful to give tribute unto 
CjEsae or not? The tribute (nf/vcoc;) was a poll-tax, 
which had been levied since Judea became a prov- 
ince of Rome. By the "or not" they wish to in- 
duce Jesus to answer by yes or no. Mark (xii, 15) 
has the addition, "Shall we give, [it,] or shall we not 
give [it]?" The real point of the question was this: 
whether it was morally right for the Jews, the people 
of Jehovah, to submit to the heathen Roman em- 
peror? whether this submission did not involve an 
apostasy from the theocracy and was inconsistent 
with the Messianic kingdom? In this sense Judas 
Gaulonites (Jos. Ant, XVIII, 1) had rejected the pay- 
ment of the Roman poll-tax as a characteristic mark 
of servitude. If Jesus— so reasoned the question- 
ers — approves of this tax, he contradicts all theo- 
cratic ideas, and stands before the people, that anx- 
iously look for deliverance from the Roman yoke, as 
a false Messiah. But if he pronounces our submis- 
sion to Rome to be wrong, the Herodians will accuse 
him as a rebel, and we shall be ready as witnesses. 
If he refuses to answer our question — the only al- 
ternative left — he has not less undermined his au- 
thority with the people. 

Verses 18-21. The Lord gives his questioners a 
practical demonstration that he teaches the truth 
without respect of person, by addressing them : Ye 
hypocrites, why tempt ye me? He might have 
stopped here, but in his great condescension he con- 
tinues teaching to the very last moment of his life, 
pronouncing a truth of the highest importance not 
only for the Jews, but for the whole world. In 
order, however, to give the more force to his word, 
he prefaces it with a very significant act. He bids 
them to show him the tribute money — the Roman 
denarius — and read what was written thereon. The 
image and superscription on the coin furnished con- 
clusive evidence that the Jews were under the au- 
thority and protection of the Roman emperor. — 
Render, therefoee, unto Caesar the things which 
aee Caesar's; that is, pay unto him the expenses of 
governing you. The truth of this position was so 
self-evident, that no party could say aught against it. 
The question of his enemies is answered, and its de- 
sign frustrated, but he is not satisfied with this. In 
order to remind the Jews that their submission to 
the authority of the emperor did not release them of 
their obligations to the God of their fathers — in 
order to meet beforehand the charge of teaching 
that the theocratic people ought or might do some- 
thing at variance with their duty toivard Jehovah, 
the Lord adds the significant words : and unto God, 
the things that aee God's. This second clause of 
the answer involves not only the idea that they owed 
no other obedience to the emperor than such as was 



INSIDIOUS QUESTION CONCERNING TRIBUTE TO CAESAR. 



507 



consistent with their obedience to God, but also the 
humiliating reason why they, the theocratic people 
of Jehovah, were obliged to pay tribute unto Caesar. 
If ye had rendered to God — this is the meaning of 
the Lord's significant reply — the things that are 
God's, you would not now be obliged to pay tribute 
unto Cassar. Your subjection to a heathen power is 
only the consequence and punishment of your apos- 
tasy from God. Thus these words of stern rebuke 
point back to the scene in the wilderness, (Numb, 
xiv, 40-44,) and the establishment of the kingdom 
of Israel under Saul, at first disapproved of by 
Jehovah. In order, therefore, to attain again to the 
true liberty of the people of God, it is their first and 
imperative duty to render unto God again the things 
that are God's. They must first shake off the yoke 
of sin and seek the kingdom of God. Instead of 
doing this, they denied unto God the homage due 
him by rejecting his Son ; and by disregarding the 
injunction to render unto Caesar the things that are 
Caesar's, they brought about the destruction of Jeru- 
salem and their total dispersion. "Briefly and strik- 
ingly," says Meyer, "Jesus disarmed his adversaries 
and laid down the Christian doctrine, subsequently 
more fully developed by his apostles, (Rom. xiii, 1, 
etc.; 1 Tim. ii, 1, etc.; 1 Pet. ii, 13, 14, 17,) that the 
Christian must not rebel against existing forms of 
government or other civil institutions, (1 Cor. vii, 
21,) but must unite with his obedience to God, obe- 
dience to the powers that be. If these twofold duties 
at any time conflict with each other, it can not be 
doubtful for a moment which of them has the first 
claims, (see Acts v, 29;) yea, obedience to magis- 
trates, in order to be more than slavish subjection, 
must be rooted in obedience to God, (Rom. xiii, 5.)" 
With regard to the inference — drawn by some from 
our Lord's words — "that no nation or people has a 
right to overthrow or abolish a tyrannical govern- 
ment," we must not lose sight of the fact that Jesus 
answered this political question not in the character 
nor from the stand-point of a civil arbiter, but as a 
teacher of religion. He does not, accordingly, en- 
ter upon the question at all, whether the Roman 
Government was a usurpation, and what the Jewish 
people had in that case a right to do, but he simply 
maintains that the de facto recognition of the 
Roman Government by the Jews involves also the 
obligation to pay the taxes imposed by them. 
"Changing," as Stier says, "the law question into 
the question, What is your de facto government f 
he wisely teaches the oppressed people conscien- 
tiously to answer the other question, implied in it — 
Whence has it sprung 1 whereby they might be led 
to fulfill their obligations to God. Each govern- 
ment involves the submission to certain conditions 
in lieu of certain privileges. Thus every citizen or 
subject of a government is in duty bound to give up 



a part of his property to the government in consider- 
ation of the protection which he enjoys from it. He 
owes the safety of his person and property to the 
laws which the government enacts and enforces. If 
the government transcends its limits, if it enacts 
laws which contravene the laws of God, the Chris- 
tian must in this case obey God more than men. 
This, however, is not the question here. The Lord 
does not discuss the question, what a people has a 
right to do if the government curtails its civil rights. 
Nevertheless, his admonition given to the Jews is — 
even from the political point of view — the only cor- 
rect one for every nation that, like the Jews at that 
time, is oppressed in consequence of its demoraliza- 
tion, and, for the same reason, unable to achieve its 
independence. That nation alone that renders unto 
God the things that are God's, is able to secure true 
civil liberty. The whole history of Israel confirms 
the truth, that righteousness exalts a nation, but sin 
causes national, social, and individual ruin. True 
civil liberty is conditioned by the acknowledgment 
of God's claims upon man. Utterly false is, there- 
fore, the notion, that the Christian must be uncon- 
cerned about his political rights, that he can not 
serve God acceptably without yielding life, and prop- 
erty, and every thing to the demands of civil govern- 
ment, be they ever so arbitrary. Such absolutistic 
principles were neither taught by Christ nor by his 
apostles ; and the direction of Christ, " to render 
unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's," is by no 
means at variance with the principles laid down 
in the Declaration of American Independence, 
to-wit: "We hold these truths to be self-evident — 
that all men are created equal; that they are en- 
dowed by their Creator with certain inalienable 
rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, 
governments are instituted among men, deriving 
their just powers from the consent of the governed; 
that whenever any form of government becomes de- 
structive of these ends, it is the right of the people 
to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new govern- 
ment, laying its foundations on such principles, and 
organizing its powers in such a form, as to them 
shall seem most likely to effect their safety and their 
happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate, that gov- 
ernments long established should not be changed for 
light and transient causes; and accordingly all ex- 
perience has shown, that mankind are more disposed 
to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right 
themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are 
accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and 
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, 
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute des- 
potism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off 
such a government, and to provide new guards for 
their future security." 



508 



MATTHEW XXII, 23-33. 



§55. REPLY TO THE SADDUCEES RESPECTING THE RESURRECTION. 

Verses 33—33. (Compare Mark xii, 18-27; Luke xx, 27-40.) 

(23) The same clay came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no res- 
urrection, and asked him, (24) saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no 
children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. 
(25) Now there were with us seven brethren: and the first, when he had married 
a wife, deceased, and, having no issue, left his wife unto his brother: (26) Likewise 
the second also, and the third, unto the seventh. (27) And last of all the woman 
died also. (28) Therefore in the resurrection, whose wife shall she be of the 
seven? for they all had her. (29) Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, 
not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. (30) For in the resurrection 
they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in 
heaven. (31) But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that 
which was spoken unto you by God, saying, (32) I am the God of Abraham, and 
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of 
the living. (33) And when the multitude heard this, they were astonished at his 
doctrine. 



Verse 23. The Sadducees were the rationalists 
of their age in the Jewish Church. They went so 
far as to deny the immortality of the soul as well as 
the resurrection of the body, (Acts xxiii, 8.) Al- 
though they looked with contempt upon the Phari- 
sees, as narrow-minded dogmatists, yet they agreed 
with them in their opposition to Christ. Feeling, 
perhaps, a little gratified with the baffled and con- 
founded state in which their old opponents had been 
driven from Christ's presence, they, with their self- 
sufficient pride, now venture to assail him. They 
select for this end a doctrine that was grossly per- 
verted by the sensual notions of the Pharisees, with 
the expectation to extort an answer from him that 
would conflict with the law of Moses, or expose him- 
self and the Pharisees to ridicule. 

Verses 24-27. "They bring before Jesus," says 
Stier, "as actual history, a curious case, which was 
at least possible: in order to put their question 
in the sharpest form — a case which was probably 
not then for the first time imagined, but which was 
already a common and hackneyed jest against the 
resurrection; as, indeed, the like are current enough 
among the Sadducees of our day. From the com- 
mandment of Moses, that, if a man die, having no 
children, his brother shall marry his wife, they im- 
agine they can conclusively prove that Moses could 
not possibly presuppose a resurrection ; and, scarcely 
suppressing a smile, they put the question: Did 
Moses, when he made such ordinances of this life, 
take for granted another life?" — Moses said. They 
refer to the provisions of the so-called levirate law, 



(Deut. xxv, 5, etc.,) which, however, was, accord- 
ing to Genesis xxxviii, 6, in vogue, as to its sub- 
stance at least, long before Moses. The quotation 
is from memory, and accordingly differently worded 
by the Evangelists. If a man died without male 
issue, his brother had, by the provisions of this law, 
to marry the widow, and the first son from this mar- 
riage had to be entered in the public registers as the 
son of the deceased. The object of this law was to 
prevent the extinction of any family of the tribe — 
the occupancy of the land in Canaan being regu- 
lated by the number of the families of a tribe. For 
the same reason the first-born was regarded as the 
heir of the deceased, and as his real son in all the 
civil relations of life. 

Verse 28. Therefore in the resurrection, 
[They admit, for arguments sake, the truth of the 
resurrection. According to Mark, they say, "When 
they shall rise," using, as Stier thinks, ironically, 
b-av, (when,) for el, (if,)] whose wife shall she be 
of the seven? How is the confusion to be settled, 
that shall arise when seven men shall claim one 
woman, each for his wife? What wonderful pa- 
tience and mildness does our Lord exhibit in his 
reply to such folly! 

Verse 29. Ye do err. They erred in two re- 
spects: 1. In denying the resurrection; 2. In taking 
it for granted that, if there was a resurrection, soci- 
ety in the future life must be organized upon the 
sexual relationship of the present. — While the Lord 
concedes to the Pharisees some knowledge of the 
Scriptures, the possession of the keys of knowledge, 



REPLY TO THE SADDUCEES RESPECTING THE RESURRECTION. 



509 



(Luke xi, 52,) charging them, at the same time, that 
they did not desire to understand them better, he 
accuses the Sadducees, who looked upon themselves 
as the only knowing ones, of total ignorance. — Not 
knowing the Scriptures. The cause of their erro- 
neous conceptions of Divine things was their not 
being versed in the Scriptures — and so it is still in 
our day; at the bottom of the unbelief of most men 
there is a total ignorance or misunderstanding of 
the Scriptures. The revealed "Word of God dispels 
all error by its truth. — Nor the power of God. 
Most interpreters understand by this, that the Sad- 
ducees denied the resurrection on the ground of its 
impossibility, and that our Lord called to their 
minds that with Omnipotence nothing can be im- 
possible. But Olshausen remarks: "There is no 
proof that the Sadducees called in question the 
power of God, as seen every-where in nature; but 
they lacked a knowledge of the power of God, as 
revealed in the Scriptures. They did not perceive 
the Divine, the spiritual in the Scriptures, (1 Cor. ii, 
14;) hence their ignorance of the Scriptural doc- 
trine of the resurrection." In the same sense the 
passage is understood by Stier, who says: "Every 
word of the Scriptures, coming from the Spirit, 
from the mind of the ever-living God, teaches us 
that man is called to live for God and in God. The 
spirit of all the Scriptures points to eternal life, and 
bears testimony to the resurrection denied by the 
Sadducees. But, as infidelity ignores the being of a 
personal God, beyond and above nature, so it fails 
to perceive in the Scriptures God as revealing him- 
self to us as our God." To the point is also the 
remark of Kleuker: "The possibility of the resur- 
rection we must find in the power of God, (Rom. 
iv, 17; Acts xxvi, 8; Rom. viii, 11; 1 Cor. vi, 44; 
xv, 43,) and its final realization in the spirit of all 
the Scriptures, where it is set forth as the consum- 
mation of the whole counsel of God." 

Verse 30. In the resurrection. By this term 
we have to understand here not only the beginning 
of the resurrection life, but its whole subsequent 
state or condition. — They neither marry, [said of 
the man,] nor are given in marriage — said of the 
woman, with reference to the Oriental custom, ac- 
cording to which fathers gave their daughters into 
marriage. Where there are no deaths there is no 
need of a propagation of the race. — But are as 
[the] angels of God in heaven. As the resurrec- 
tion state is here considered simply as the higher 
sphere of existence, into which the body enters by 
the resurrection, the Lord refers only to the resur- 
rection of the just, as appears still more plainly 
from Luke's parallel passage, (xx, 35.) From the 
fact that the saints in their glorified bodies shall be 
like the angels, Stier infers that the angels are not 
mere spirits, but are clothed with some kind of a 
body, and that the form of the angelic bodies is like 
that which the glorified bodies of men shall have. 
(Rev. xxi, 17.) 



Verses 31, 32. But as touching the resurrec- 
tion OF THE DEAD, HAVE YE NOT READ? Having 

refuted or rejected the sensual notions about the res- 
urrection, on which the Sadducees founded their ob- 
jection to that sublime doctrine, the Lord proceeds 
to prove it directly from the Old Testament Scrip- 
tures, quoting, however, not the apparently-plainer 
passages in the prophetical writings, such as Isaiah 
xxvi, 9 ; Ezekiel xxxvii ; Daniel xii, 2 ; but a word 
spoken by God himself, and recorded in Exodus 
iii, 15 — probably because the Sadducees placed the 
Pentateuch above all other writings of the Old Test- 
ament. But, even apart from this consideration, the 
passage chosen by Christ was most to the point, al- 
though many of the modern critics can see therein 
only a proof of the immortality of the soul, not of 
the resurrection of the body ; for in this passage the 
Lord points out, as Lange well remarks, the root of 
all proofs for the immortality of the soul and the 
resurrection of the body ; namely, the doctrine of a 
personal God and his covenant relation to men as 
the basis of their own eternal self conscious existence. 
The bush that burned, but was not consumed, and 
from which God spoke the words quoted by Christ 
on this occasion, was, at the same time, a beautiful 
symbol of God's power to preserve what nature 
seems to destroy. That the Scriptures attach more 
importance to the resurrection of the body than to the 
mere self-conscious existence of the soul in its dis- 
embodied state, arises from the fact that the disem- 
bodied state of the soul is considered in the Scrip- 
tures as something imperfect, abnormal, so much so 
that even the souls of the just look forward with in- 
tense desire to their reunion with their bodies. (Rom. 
viii, 11, 23.) Without the body man has not his 
whole full life. — God is not the God of the dead, 
but of the living. WTien the eternal God makes a 
covenant with a created intelligence, the latter can 
not die any more, becoming by this covenant a par- 
taker of the Divine nature, and therefore immortal 
as God is immortal; for this reason he is called the 
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob long after their 
death. The promise, " I am thy God," includes nec- 
essarily eternal life, not only the immortality of the 
soul, but also an earnest of the resurrection of the 
body. The whole argumentation of our Lord can, 
indeed, be appreciated only by those who are in per- 
sonal covenant relation to the living God; and as 
Gerlach well remarks, Christ gave, by what he said, 
a plain hint to the Sadducees that, in order to as- 
sure themselves of the truth of the resurrection, 
they must enter into personal covenant relations 
with God, like Abraham ; for only the soul's real 
union with God secures its true life, whose comple- 
tion is the resurrection of the body, while the rising 
of the damned is followed by the real death of the 
soul — not, indeed, the destruction of the substance 
of the soul, but the state of endless and complete 
separation from the fountain of life, God. Stier, 
however, understands by the dead the totality of the 



510 



MATTHEW XXII, 34-40. 



dead, and says : " As certainly as God has created 
all men as persons, and wishes to save them as 
persons, so certainly they will be God's after the 
present life, not as dead persons, for all live unto 
God, as Luke has it. They are to live unto him, 
and they must and shall live unto him for the pur- 
pose of being judged, and every one shall, in the 
totality of his being, his body included, (2 Cor. v, 10,) 



render an account of what has been bestowed upon 
him by God's promise, 'I shall be thy God.' " 

Vekse 33. The words of the Savior made a deep 
impression, not only on the better disposed of the 
people, but, according to Luke, even on some of the 
Pharisees. After he had so powerfully advocated the 
doctrine of the resurrection they said, " Master, thou 
hast well said.' 1 



§56. THE GREAT COMMANDMENT. 

Verses 34-40. (Compare Mark xii, 28-34.) 

(34) But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to 
silence, they were gathered together. (35) Then one of them, which was a lawyer, 
asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, (36) Master, which is the great 
commandment in the law? (37) Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. (38) This 
is the first and great commandment. (39) And the second is like unto it, Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. (40) On these two commandments hang all the 
law and the prophets. 



Verse 34. But when the Pharisees had heard. 
Whether they were present, mixed up with the 
crowds, or absent, so that they learned what had 
taken place through their spies, does not appear. 
After the Sadducees are silenced, the Pharisees, 
though defeated once before, make a second attempt 
to extort from him an answer which they might use 
as a handle against him. — They were gathered 
together; that is, they met together in order to lay 
a new plot. While the lawyer was to engage Jesus, 
they were to gather, and did gather, around the speak- 
ers, (v. 41.) The following account of the question 
concerning the great commandment, propounded 
by a Pharisee, is omitted by Luke; the conversation 
of Jesus with a scribe, recorded Luke x, 25-37, is, 
in all its details, so different from the present inci- 
dent, that there is not a shadow of reason for con- 
founding them, as Strauss does. The account of 
Mark treats of the same incident, but from a differ- 
ent point of view. Matthew relates the fact that a 
plot was laid by the corporation of the Pharisees for 
the purpose of insnaring Jesus by certain questions; 
the personal character and conduct of the individual, 
who acted as the mouth-piece of the Pharisees, he 
does not take into consideration ; while Mark lays 
particular stress on this point, the individual in ques- 
tion being decidedly better than the party to which 
he belonged. Such an impression seems to have 
been made by our Lord on this scribe, that he could 
not but admire him; and such overwhelming im- 
pressions upon his adversaries are types of the sub- 



sequent conversion of Saul and other members of 
the Pharisaic party. 

Verse 35. Then one of them, which was a 
lawyer, [yoficKd?, a person skilled in the law, an 
actual teacher of the law,] tempting him. Inter- 
preters differ as to what constituted the tempting 
in the following question. Olshausen and Afford 
do not see any bad intention in the question, but 
suppose that the questioner, struck with the answer 
given to the Sadducees, really admired Jesus, and 
asked the question for his own information. Others 
refer the whole question to the rabbinical disputes 
as to the great and small commandments. They 
counted six hundred and thirteen of them; namely, 
three hundred and sixty-five prohibitions, and two 
hundred and forty-eight injunctions. As not all of 
them could be of equal force and importance, the 
question naturally arose, which of them took preced- 
ence of the other. But it is hard to perceive how 
Jesus could possibly have exposed himself to danger 
by naming this or that commandment as great. 
The only intelligible interpretation is that given by 
Lange. Before giving it we shall merely state that 
the English version is inaccurate; the translation 
ought to be, "What kind of a (= which) command- 
ment is great in the law?" Lange says: "The 
tempting character of the question must be gath- 
ered from the reply which Jesus made, and the 
question which he asked in turn. The Pharisees 
expected, undoubtedly, a part of the answer which 
Jesus actually gave, or something like it, as: Thou 



THE GREAT COMMANDMENT. 



511 



shalt love the Lord thy God, or thou shalt have 
no other gods before me. In short, they expected 
that he -would mention the inviolability of mono- 
theism. But their monotheism was deistical; they 
inferred from the oneness of God, as Mohammed 
afterward did, that God could have no Son. For 
claiming to be the Son of God, they had, on a for- 
mer occasion, charged Jesus with blasphemy. (See 
John x.) From the expected answer of Jesus, 
therefore, 'Thou shalt love God supremely,' they 
wanted to draw this inference: By pretending to be 
the Son of God, thereby claiming equality with God, 
tvho is supreme, thou blasphemest God. That this 
was the end they had in view in their catechisation 
appears plainly from the question asked by Jesus in 
turn, how David could call the Messiah his son — a 
mere man — his Lord; that is, God or the Son of 
God? Their attempt to make him a political Mes- 
siah had failed. They seek, therefore, to extort 
from him the confession, unmeaning, indeed, before 
the Roman tribunal, but the more dangerous before 
the people, that he was in open, blasphemous con- 
tradiction to monotheism, the very foundation of 
Judaism." 

Verse 37. Thou shalt love, etc. The passage 
is a free quotation of Deuteronomy vi, 5, according 
to the LXX. The Hebrew reads, Jehovah, thy God. 
"The God of Israel," says Lange, "was not a deist- 
ical abstraction, but Jehovah, the personal, living 
self-revealing God, who became incarnate." Mark 
gives also the introductory words on which the com- 
mandment rests: "Hear, Israel, the Lord our 
God is one Lord." In the same manner as, and be- 
cause, God is one, his law also, though consisting of 
a variety of precepts, must be a unity flowing from 
the being and will of God. "The Lord, by calling 
the commandment to love God supremely the first 
and great commandment, does evidently not design 
to represent it as one out of many, though greater 
in degree than others. On the contrary, the love of 
God is the commandment, and the whole law, with 
all its injunctions and prohibitions, is only a develop- 
ment of this one commandment: 'Thou shalt love 
the Lord thy God.' By this love we have to under- 
stand the unqualified surrender of our whole being 
to God. Of such a love man is capable, though not 
by his own strength, but by Divine grace, because he 
finds in God alone all his wants fully and everlast- 
ingly satisfied." (Olshausen.) Dr. Adam Clarke 
has the following comment on the nature of love: 
"A sovereign preference given to one above all 
others, present or absent; a concentration of all the 
thoughts and desires in a single object, which a man 
prefers to all others. Apply this definition to the 
love which God requires of his creatures, and you 
will have the most correct view of the subject. 
Hence it appears that by this love the soul eagerly 
cleaves to, affectionately admires, and constantly 
rests in God, supremely pleased and satisfied with 
him as its portion; that it acts from him as its 



Author; for him as its Maker; and to him as its 
End; that by it all the faculties and powers of the 
mind are concentrated in the Lord of the universe; 
that by it the whole man is willingly surrendered to 
the Most High ; and that, through it, an identity or 
sameness of spirit with the Lord is acquired — the 
man being made a partaker of the Divine nature, 
having the mind in him which was in Christ, and 
thus dwelling in God and God in him." — With all 

THY HEART, WITH ALL THY SOUL, AND WITH ALL THY 

mind; that is, with all thy higher and lower faculties, 
intellect, will, emotion, desires, etc. R. Watson re- 
marks: "The terms heart, soul, mind, to which Luke 
adds strength, are not intended so much to convey 
distinct ideas, as to give force to the precept by the 
accumulation of words of nearly the same import. 
All interpretations, therefore, built upon the sup- 
posed variety of meanings which these terms are 
held to convey, are too refined. The words evidently 
mean that God is to be loved with the entire affection 
of the soul, maintained in its most vigorous exercise, 
so that all its faculties and powers shall be conse- 
crated wholly to his service. This vigorous and en- 
tire appreciation of the soul to an object is expressed 
in like forcible and reiterated terms in 2 Kings xxiii, 
25: 'And like unto him there was no king before 
him, that turned to the Lord with all his heart, and 
with all his soul, and with all his might, according to 
all the law of Moses.' " 

Verse 38. This is the first and great command- 
ment. It is the sum-total of all existing or conceiv- 
able commandments. "It is," says Watson, "the 
greatest commandment — 1. In respect of its object; 
love being directed to the greatest and best being, 
our Creator, Preserver, and Redeemer. 2. In the 
absolute character of its obligation; being bound 
upon us by the supreme 'and infinite excellence of 
God, and by the innumerable benefits which we 
have received, and shall be forever receiving at his 
hands. 3. In its sanctifying influence upon the 
heart; for as it is the intense love of a holy being, 
it necessarily implies the intense love of holiness, 
and is, indeed, the vital, purifying flame of holi- 
ness itself. 4. Because it compels us by a sweet 
constraint to obedience to every other command; 
and so love is the fulfilling of the law; while the 
freedom of this obedience, as being that of entire 
choice and supreme delight, gives the noblest char- 
acter to submission. 5. As it impels to the most 
arduous duties, and makes us willing to submit to 
the severest sufferings for the glory of God. 6. Be- 
cause of that full and entire satisfaction of soul, 
which it produces by bringing us into communion 
with God himself, and feeding its own strength and 
the strength of every other virtue, by its devotional 
intercourse with him; and, 1. As being the root and 
principle of every other act of obedience, without 
which it can have no genuineness of character, and 
is considered as but a formal hypocrisy before 
God." 



512 



MATTHEW XXII, 41-46. 



Verse 39. And the second is like unto it; that 
is, equally obligator)' ; although subordinate as the 
second to the first, yet it comprises, like the first, all 
others, (comp. 1 John iv, 20, 21; Rorn. xiii, 9.) As 
the love of God comprises the commandments of the 
first table, so the love of our neighbor includes those 
of the second; but both are in reality one again, 
since none can be conceived of without the other. 
The love of God is the root, the love of our neighbor 
its manifestation. Their juxtaposition was the more 
necessary, as the Pharisees fancied to satisfy the 
first commandment by the fulfillment of outward 
religious duties, such as fasting, prayer, sacrifices, 
etc. — Thou shalt love thy neighbor. (Levit. xix, 
18.) Quoted from the LXX. "The word rendered 
by love" here — ayanav — does not, like QtXetv, mean 
the emotion of love, which is not an object of com- 
mand, but a proper regard and esteem, arid a cor- 
responding conduct. Where the emotion of love — 
<f»2,€lv — exists with regard to the world, (Jam. iv, 4,) 
and where it is wanting with regard to God, (1 Cor. 
xvi, 22,) there is condemnation." (Meyer.) — As 
thyself— in the same manner as thou lovest thyself; 
that is, as far as thou art justified and in duty bound 
to love thyself. Self-love is conditioned and limited 
by the love of God. Only in so far as a man loves 
God, he has the proper measure of self-love. To 
love one's neighbor as one's self is nothing else 
than to wish that our neighbor may obtain from 
God and men what we wish for ourselves; conse- 
quently the practical carrying out of the golden rule, 



(Matt, vii, 12.) To love our neighbor more than. 
ourselves, God neither requires nor commands. 

Verse 40. On these two commandments hang 
all the law and the prophets. To the interpret- 
ation of these words Stier adds the following re- 
marks, which we subjoin in the place of homiletic 
suggestions: "Who can conceive of any thing more 
perfect and comprehensive than what these two 
commandments set forth? But our case is not 
reached by it: the commandment can not give us 
what we have lost through the fall; that is, the love 
of God and the love of our neighbor. We are stub- 
born children and undutiful servants from our very 
birth. We have by nature, before we have received 
the spirit of bondage, (Rom. viii, 15,) not even a 
slavish fear, much less filial love and reverence of 
God, but only the wicked, defying, and sin-loving 
fear of Adam after the fall. And yet there is the 
commandment— T hou shalt lovel However fully 
entitled God is to this supreme love, yet this com- 
mandment, as addressed to man, appears unsuitable 
to man's fallen state, because love is the sponta- 
neous act of the heart that can not be forced on man 
by any commandment. This very unnatural 'thou 
shalt' is the writing that attests our guilt; if there 
was any love in our hearts no such commandment 
would be necessary, much less a specification of 
what is contained in it. The Ten Commandments 
are so many witnesses against thee! But the Lord, 
thy God, will circumcise thy heart, as even Moses 
has testified." 



57. OUR LORD'S QUESTION CONCERNING THE MESSIAH AND DAVID. 

(Compare Mark xii, 35-37; Luke xx, 41-44.) 



"Verses 41—46. 



(41) While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, (42) say- 
ing, "What think ye of Christ ? whose son is he ? They say unto him, The son of 
David. (43) He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, say- 
ing, (44) The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine 
enemies thy footstool ? (45) If David then call him Lord, how is he his son ? 
(46) And no man was ahle to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that 
day forth ask him any more questions. 



Verses 41 , 42. While the Pharisees were gath- 
ered together. Mark adds, "in the Temple;" that 
is, in one of the courts or halls belonging to the 
Temple, where all the incidents, related from chap, 
xxi, 23, may have taken place. The answer which 
Jesus gave to the lawyer, made so deep an impres- 
sion on all, that, according to Mark, henceforth no 
one dared to ask him any further question. But 
now the Savior asks his adversaries, whose attacks 
had all been directed against his Messiahship, a ques- 



tion, which was to convince them that they did not 
even know what the nature of the Messiah was, al- 
though Psalm ex was so plain on that subject, 
Stier finds the internal connection between what had 
gone before and this question of the Lord, in the 
idea underlying the two great commandments, that 
man, by his own strength, is absolutely unable to 
fulfill them, that he, therefore, needs a Savior. But 
we prefer the view of Lange, who connects this ques- 
tion of the Savior with the tempting character of the 



OUR LORD'S QUESTION CONCERNING THE MESSIAH AND DAVID. 



513 



question of the lawyer. The Lord's object is to 
prove to his adversaries by a psalm admitted by 
themselves to be Messianic, that the Messiah could 
be both David's son, that is, a real man, and at the 
same time the Lord of David, that is, the Son of 
God. In this twofold aspect the Old Testament pre- 
sents him every-where. He is the offspring and the 
root of David; the child and the ancient of days; 
the man of sorrows, and the mighty God, etc. The 
Messiah was to be, in one word, the God-man. — 
What think ye of Christ? The connection of 
this question with what goes before seems to be this: 
ye have propounded to me a question concerning 
the law; let me now ask you a question concerning 
the Messiah, of whom the law and the prophets 
testify. — Whose son is he? He asked them this 
question, well knowing what answer they would re- 
turn, and that this their answer would give him an 
opportunity to prove from a psalm his Divine- 
human personality, from which alone the sin-pardon- 
ing and law-establishing grace and gift of God could 
spring. — They say unto him, The son or David. 
The answer of the Pharisees was correct, as far as it 
went. They knew that the Messiah should be of the 
house and lineage of David, but they overlooked his 
higher nature altogether. 

Verse 43. How, then, [that is, in what sense,] 
Does David in spirit call him [that is, the Messiah] 
Lord? Mark (xii, 36) says: "For David himself 
said by the Holy Ghost," etc. Before we comment 
upon the words quoted from Psalm ex, let us call to 
mind the whole Psalm, as it stands in Dr. Noyes's 
translation : 

1. Jehovah said to my Lord, 
" Sit thou at my right hand, 

Until I make thy foes thy footstool." 

2. Jehovah will extend the scepter of thy power from 

Zion; 
Thou shalt rule in the midst of thine enemies. 

3. Thy people shall be ready, when thou musterest thy 

forces in holy splendor [in the beauty of holiness.] 
Thy youth shall come forth like dew from the womb 
of the morning. 

4. Jehovah has sworn, and he will not repent: 
" Thou art a priest forever, 

After the order of Melchisedek I" 

5. The Lord is at thy right hand, 

He shall crush kings in the day of his wrath. 

6. He shall execute justice among the nations; 
He shall fill them with dead bodies ; 

He shall crush the heads of his enemies over many 
lands. 
1. He shall drink of the brook in the way ; 
Therefore shall he lift up his head. 

Dr. Morison, to whose Notes we are indebted for 
the above extract from Dr. Noyes, though a Unita- 
rian, nobly defends our Lord's quotation of this 
Psalm against the attacks of rationalistic comment- 
ators, as follows: "We will suppose this Psalm to 
be, as our Savior himself assumes in speaking of it, 
composed by David. Could the opening words be 
applied by him to any one of his successors? The 



question of Jesus still comes in with all its original 
force: 'If David call him Lord, how is he his son?' 
Must there not then be a different and higher sense 
in which the language is used than in its application 
to a king of Israel? Besides, what Jewish monarch 
was there who united, in the manner indicated in 
verse 4, the priestly with the kingly character and 
office? There is no suitable correspondence between 
the words and the subject. But if, on the other hand, 
David, in spirit, had a glimpse of the higher and ho- 
lier kingdom of the Messiah with its attendant con- 
flicts, and victories, and glories, are not the images 
here such as a warlike king, like David, might fit- 
tingly employ to body forth the essential facts of the 
case? 1. The exalted condition of the Messiah 
whom the prophet-king looks up to as his Lord. 2. 
The scepter of his power going forth from Zion, the 
seat of the Jewish religion, gaining its ascendency 
even in the midst of his enemies. 3. His people in 
the beauty of holiness, and his followers coming forth 
in the freshness of their youthful zeal, like dew from 
the womb of the morning. 4. His joining the priestly 
to the kingly office. 5 and 6. Jehovah putting down 
and destroying his enemies, when kings and rulers rise 
against him, and executing justice among the na- 
tions, while he, 7, like one in a desert land suddenly 
refreshed by a running brook, lifts up his head in 
joy and triumph. Is there not here, under these 
various images, 1-4, a picture of the Messiah in his 
exaltation and holiness, while the warlike images 
that follow show how amid violent opposition and 
bloody conflicts, where kings and people are over- 
whelmed and destroyed, his kingdom shall be estab- 
lished, and he, notwithstanding these wearisome 
wars, shall, like one refreshed by a stream in the 
sultry day, lift up his victorious head? The cruelties 
spoken of in the Psalm are objected to. ' The least,' 
says Dr. Palfrey, 'that such a supernatural inspira- 
tion, had David possessed it, might have been ex- 
pected to do, would be to keep him from describing 
the future Messiah, the meek and peaceful Jesus of 
Nazareth, as a furious soldier who should strike 
through kings, and pile up heaps of bloody and help- 
less corpses, and slay till he should be exhausted 
with weariness and thirst? But is not this a carica- 
ture? Do these images in the Psalm of war, and 
cruelty, and desolation not truthfully describe the 
condition of things through which the religion of 
Jesus, extending the scepter of its power from Zion, 
passed in its victorious progress? And do they not 
accord with the wars and rumors of wars, nation 
rising against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, 
which Jesus himself has spoken of as among the 
signs of his coming? We wish to state the matter 
precisely. Here is a Psalm which the Jews received 
as written by David, and as referring to the Messiah. 
Jesus, in quoting from it, speaks of David as saying 
these things in spirit, and with reference to the Mes- 
siah. The presumption from all this is that Jesus be- 
lieved David to be the author of the Psalm, and that the 



33 



514 



MATTHEW XXII, 41-46. 



Psalm was, or at least contained, a prediction of the 
Messiah and his kingdom. The Psalm itself, in the 
first four verses, is altogether in harmony with this 
view of its Messianic character, and can hardly be 
explained naturally and intelligibly on any other 
supposition. Is there in the last three verses any 
thing inconsistent with this view ? We leave it for 
the careful reader to judge whether the latter clause 
is not also perfectly in accordance with the dark and 
destructive conflicts which marked the early progress 
of Christianity, and whether its language may not 
without any violence be interpreted as a highly-im- 
passioned and condensed figurative description of 
the struggles, and slaughters, and conquests by which 
God in his providence was preparing for the estab- 
lishment of the Messiah's kingdom." — More posi- 
tively and profoundly is the Messianic character of 
this prophetic Psalm unfolded by Stier, of whose 
extended comment we give the following brief 
synopsis: "The Lord takes in his argument two 
things for granted, and confirms them by his own 
authority; namely, that the 110th Psalm was written 
by inspiration, and that David speaks in that Psalm 
of his descendant, the promised Messiah. It is true, 
David's own life furnished an occasion for this 
typical Psalm. Having restored the old Salem of 
Melchisedek on Mount Zion, he can be considered 
as Melchisedek's successor. After many suffer- 
ings and struggles he brought the ark of the cov- 
enant into Zion, that it may henceforth remain 
in the house of God, and he receives through 
Nathan the promise that the throne of his seed 
shall be an everlasting throne. (2 Sam. vii, 12; com- 
pare also the last words of David on this subject, 2 
Sam. xxiii, 3, etc.) On the basis of these typical 
events the spirit of prophecy teaches David to call 
his antitype, the promised seed, his Lord (Adonai.) 
Jesus confines himself here to the very beginning 
of the Psalm, leaving it to the Spirit of inspiration 
to explain in the Epistle to the Hebrews what is said 
about the priesthood after the order of Melchisedek, 
while the last three verses are still waiting for their 
explanation by their fulfillment. When he says, 
that the words quoted were spoken by the Holy 
Spirit, he evidently does not mean that they simply 
might be applied to the Messiah, as Peter applies 
(Acts i, 16) other words of the Psalmist to Judas; 
for he says: 'David calls him, in spirit, Lord,' that 
is, David had clearly before his mind a man clothed 
with Divine dignity. That David really looked upon 
the Messiah as a Divine personage appears from 
the words, 'unto my Lord,' and more particularly 
from his assigning unto him a place on the right 
hand of Jehovah. Jesus might have quoted many 
other Old Testament passages which prove the Di- 
vinity of the Messiah, such as Mieah v, 1; Ps. xlv, 
7, 8; Mai. iii, 1; Isa. vii, 14; ix, 5; Jer. xxiii, 6. 
But he quotes the passage which speaks of the Mes- 
siah as David's son and David's Lord at the same 
time, consequently as God and man in one person. — 



The question arises : What did David know of 
Christ when he called him in spirit his Lord? Not 
as much, indeed, as we now read and find in the in- 
exhaustible Word of the Spirit spoken by the mouth 
of David, since the priest-king has been exalted to 
the right hand of God. But as Moses already had 
some insight into the deep and far-reaching meaning 
of his typical laws and institutions, (Num. xii, 6-8;) 
so David could not have been unconscious of the 
higher nature of that son promised him through Na- 
than. Else how could he have spoken prophetically 
in the 16th Psalm of the resurrection of Christ, (Acts 
ii, 30, 31,) or in the 2d Psalm of a universal king, 
whom he calls "the Son" in a unique sense, and in 
whom he enjoins to trust for salvation as in God ? 
In short, the burden of all prophecy of the Old 
Testament is what God has determined to do in the 
days of the New Testament through the incarna- 
tion of his Son, and what he has, therefore, foretold 
in the preparatory dispensation. (Acts iii, 24.) 
The whole history of the people of God in the old 
dispensation becomes absolutely meaningless, if 
viewed as having no reference to the coming 
of Christ into the world. To look forward to the 
future was for the people of God nothing else than 
to look for the coming of the seed of the woman ; 
of the seed of Abraham, in whom all nations were 
to be blessed; of Shiloh, to whom the obedience of 
all nations is due; of the son of David, whose king- 
dom shall be an everlasting kingdom. His coming 
was pointed out not only by God's special dealings 
with his chosen people, but especially by the direct 
testimonies, given from time to time, that is, prophecy 
proper. The special prophecies concerning the per- 
son of the Messiah and his kingdom, becoming 
gradually more and more definite and having all a 
direct bearing on the history of Israel, had a three- 
fold end. In the first place, the faith and hope of 
the children of God living in those days were to be 
strengthened; both the prophets and the people were 
to search diligently into the hidden meaning of the 
Divine oracles, they being not of human origin, but 
given by God unto men to satisfy the cravings of 
their hearts. In the second place, Israel had the 
infallible marks by which to recognize their Messiah 
at his coming, and the unity of all the revelations 
of God in Christ should thereby become manifest to 
the believers under the new dispensation. Thirdly, 
these prophecies so scrupulously preserved by the 
Jews, in their sacred books, will be the means in 
the last days to open their eyes and induce them to 
accept their long-rejected Messiah." 

Verse 44. The Lord said unto my Lord — liter- 
ally, Jehovah said unto my, that is, David's, lord or 
sovereign, (Adonai.) It is true that Adonai is not 
exclusively applied to God, but also to angels and 
human potentates; but the fact that David, a sover- 
eign king called his descendant his king or sover- 
eign, shows that he looked upon him as a higher 
than merely human being. — Sit thou on my right 






CHRIST'S DENUNCIATION OF THE SCRIBES AND PHARISEES. 



515 



hand. These words are addressed by Jehovah, to 
the Messiah. The right hand was the seat of honor 
and exaltation. No one took this seat but the heir 
of the throne, or one raised to a participation in the 
regal power and dignity. A seat at God's right 
hand was, therefore, an honor to which no human 
being could attain. — Till I make. "The eternity 
of his sitting on the right hand," says Bengel, "is 
not denied; but it is denied that the assault of the 
enemies will interfere with it. The warlike king- 
dom will come to an end; the peaceful kingdom, 
however, will have no end. (Compare 1 Cor. xv, 25, 
etc.)" — Thine enemies [including all wicked men, 
the fallen angels, and death itself] thy footstool. 
Allusion is here had to the custom of kings putting 
their feet on the necks of conquered foes, as the 
sign of their complete subjugation. In quoting 
this description of the Messiah as the conqueror of 
his enemies, the Lord passes, at the same time, 
judgment upon the Pharisees, and thus this quota- 
tion forms the transition to the following denuncia- 
tion of the scribes and Pharisees, uttered before the 
large crowd of people assembled in the Temple. 



Verse 45. If David, then, call him Lord, how 
is he his son? If the son of David, the Messiah, is a 
mere man, a mere temporal monarch, as the carnal 
Jews fancied him to be, he can not be the Lord of 
his ancestor David, however widely extended and 
brilliant his dominion may be. The question pro- 
posed to the Pharisees can find its answer only in 
this, that the Messiah was to have, according to the 
Scriptures, both a Divine and a human nature, 
(Rom. i, 3, 4,) and that his kingdom was to be not 
a temporal, but a spiritual kingdom. "Applying the 
subject to his own person, Jesus, as it were, asks, in 
these words : Am I a blasphemer when I call God 
my Father, and myself his Son? (John v, 18.) 
Does not David testify the same of me, his prom- 
ised seed, who is to sit on the right hand of God?" 
(Stier.) 

Verse 46. Unable to answer our Lord's question, 
and despairing of entrapping him by any of their 
questions, his enemies harden themselves to lay vio- 
lent hands on him. Hence follows the last denun- 
ciation of the Lord against them, and his departure 
from the Temple. 



CHAPTER XXIII 



§a8. CHRIST'S DENUNCIATION OF THE SCRIBES AND PHARISEES. 

Having silenced all his assailants, the Lord takes now the offensive, and passes on the 
hierarchy, without the least reserve, the judgment of condemnation. " It is remarkable," 
says Dr. Morison, " that in enumerating the crimes which made a national existence no 
longer possible for the Jews, Jesus did not dwell on the vices of the people, but on the spir- 
itual wickedness, the vainglory, hypocrisy, and religious insensibility of their spiritual 
teachers and guides." Not less worthy of note is it that, although Sadducees were also 
included among the scribes, yet our Lord in his terrible condemnation singles out the 
Pharisees, who for the last one hundred and fifty years had enjoyed the highest respect 
of the people for their zeal and rigid observance of the law. During his whole ministry 
he had been making pharisaic formalism the constant object of reproof, while almost 
ignoring the unbelief of the Sadducees. 

Dr. M. Baumgarten in his "®cfd)id)tc 3c|ll" says of this discourse of the Savior: "As he 
once commenced his Sermon on the Mount in Galilee with pronouncing eight beatitudes, 
so he closes his last public address with pronouncing eight woes on Mount Moriah, declar- 
ing thereby most distinctly that all manifestation of his Divine love and meekness had 
been in vain, and must now give way to stern justice. Of that awful delusion which has 
done at all times so much harm in the Church — namely, that the office sanctifies the 
officer, at least before the people — there is here not the most distant trace, but the very 
opposite. The office held by the scribes and Pharisees Jesus fully recognizes; but the 
sacredness of the office, instead of furnishing any apology for their corrupt morals, in- 
creases only their guilt, and he, therefore, exposes with the utmost severity the wicked- 
ness of their lives. Never did any prophet deliver such a discourse as this. We see here 
turned into wrath the holy love of Jesus, which is unwilling to break the bruised reed or 
to quench the smoking flax, (chap, xii, 19,) which seeks and fosters what is lost, which 
casts out none, but attracts any that shows himself in the least degree susceptible." 



516 



MATTHEW XXIII, 1-12. 



Because Mark and Luke give only short epitomes of this discourse, and because Luke 
gives some portions of it in a different connection, some commentators will see in this 
discourse, as in the Sermon on the Mount, a compilation of remarks made by the Savior 
on different occasions. But against this speaks the tenor of the whole discourse, as has 
been admitted even by critics whose lax views of inspiration would not have prevented 
them from maintaining the very reverse. — The discourse consists of three parts: The 
first part characterizes, by way of introduction and warning, the scribes and Pharisees in 
distinction from the disciples and followers of Jesus, (vs. 2-12;) the second, making a 
sudden transition, pronounces seven woes against the hypocritical and willfully-blind 
leaders of the people, (vs. 13-28.) With the eighth woe, that comprises all the preceding 
seven, the Lord passes over from the leaders to the whole people, as ripe for the judg- 
ment, and closes with announcing in portentous words his final leave of Jerusalem and 
the Temple, the city and house of God, (vs. 29-39.) Looking upon himself as already 
raised above the earth, he does not mention again what they shall do to his person, but 
contents himself with foretelling how he shall continue his ministry among them through 
his chosen organs, whom, however, they would persecute as all former witnesses of the 
truth, thus filling up the measure of the sins of their fathers, with whom they agreed in 
sentiment, and so bringing about the final catastrophe prepared by the accumulated guilt 
of successive generations. He concludes with the affecting words which point from Jeru- 
salem's awful punishment to the future conversion of Israel, thus completing the picture 
of God's dealings with his peculiar people. 

A. WARNING AGAINST THE EXAMPLE OF THE SCRIBES AND PHARISEES. 

"Verses 1—13. (Compare Mark xii, 38, 39; Luke xx, 45, 46.) 

(1) Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, (2) saying, The 
scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat : (3) All therefore whatsoever they hid 
you observe, that observe and do ; but do not ye after their works : for they say, 
and do not. (4) For they hind heavy burdens and grievous to he borne, and lay 
them on men's shoulders ; but they themselves will not move them with one of their 
fingers. (5) But all their works they do for to be seen of men : they make broad 
their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments, (6) and love the up- 
permost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, (7) and greetings in 
the markets, and to be called of men, Eabbi, Rabbi. (8) But be not ye called 
Rabbi : for one is your Master, even Christ ; and all ye are brethren. (9) And call 
no man your father upon the earth : for one is your Father, which is in heaven. 
(10) Neither be ye called masters : for one is your Master, even Christ. (11) But 
he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. (12) And whosoever shall 
exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. 



Verse 2. The scribes and Pharisees [that is, 
those of the latter class who were at the same time 
scribes] sit in Moses' seat. Some understand by 
Moses' seat the pulpit set up in the synagogues, 
(Neh. viii, 4, 9,) for the declaring and interpreting 
the law to the people, and therefore maintain that 
our Lord spoke here of the scribes and Pharisees as 
the interpreters of the Divine law given by Moses. 
But this appears to us incorrect, for reasons given 
in our comment on verse 3, unless we lay especial 



stress on the word sit, which may be translated, have 
seated themselves, implying that they arrogated to 
themselves the character of Divinely-authorized in- 
terpreters of the law of God. It seems to us more 
fitting to the context, to understand by those that 
sit in Moses' seat the Sanhedrim. (Compare Num. 
xi, 16.) 

Verse 3. All, therefore, whatsoever they 
bid you observe. The Lord does not speak here 
of the scribes as the authorized teachers of religion 



WARNING AGAINST THE EXAMPLE OF THE SCRIBES AND PHARISEES. 517 



in the Old Testament, as plainly appears from verses 
16-22, and the many other warnings against their 
false doctrines. (Chaps, v, 22, 43, 44; ix, 16, 17; 
xiii, 14; xv, 9; xvi, 11.) But in virtue of their 
office they were to apply the provisions of the law 
to individual cases; in this capacity the Savior hon- 
ors them, because he was himself obedient to the 
law; and as the time for abolishing the Mosaic pol- 
ity had not yet come, he taught his disciples and 
hearers, who were still bound by the Mosaic law, to 
respect the judicial decisions of the scribes and 
Pharisees. — The proper interpretation of our Lord's 
injunction is of practical importance, because it has 
been maintained that he commanded in this passage 
to recognize and to honor the ministry of uncon- 
verted, yea, even of immoral ministers, with the only 
caution not to follow their bad example. Nothing 
of this kind is to be inferred from this passage. 
For although many of the scribes might act as 
public teachers of religion in the synagogue, in ad- 
dition to their official position in the Sanhedrim or 
the lower courts, yet they were not authorized by the 
law to do so before others. The public worship in 
the synagogue consisted in the recital of public 
prayers, the reading of the lessons of Scriptures— 
which had to be translated from Hebrew into the 
vernacular tongue, keeping as close as possible to 
the letter— (Neh. viii, 4-9;) after this every Jew had 
the privilege of addressing the congregation. Di- 
vinely-authorized teachers of relic/ion were, after 
Moses, only the prophets, not the priests and scribes. 
All that Christ enjoins in this passage, therefore, is 
obedience to their judicial decisions. But as teach- 
ers of religion the Lord warns against them, saying, 
" Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both 
fall into the ditch?" (Luke vi, 39.) Nor are their 
traditions, which make the Word of God of no effect, 
any more to be followed than their example, in not 
fulfilling the requirements of the law which they 
enforced upon others. 

Verse 4. For they bind heavy burdens, and 
grievous to be borne. By these burdens we are 
not to understand their additions to the law of God, 
since they excelled other people in observing them ; 
others understand by them the ceremonial law, 
which Peter calls (Acts xv, 10) a yoke which their 
fathers were not able to bear. But it can not be said 
of the Pharisees that they did not move the cere- 
monial law with one of their fingers. More pro- 
found and correct is Stiers's comment: "They hand 
down the law haughtily and readily in its whole 
rigor, are fond of repeating the thunder of Sinai, 
'Thou shalt,' k Thou shalt not,' without even think- 
ing of their own obedience. (Rom. ii, 21-23.) Just 
as our modern moralists preach of duties, and of 
nothing else but duties 1 They lay the burdens on 
men's shoulders without moving them with one of 
their fingers. (Luke xi, 46.) This involves, then, 
the idea that the Pharisees make the law of God an 
insufferable burden by the rigor and formality with 



which they cling to the letter while they lose sight 
of its spirit, thus falsifying the law even by their 
manner of inculcating it." ■ — But they themselves 

WILL NOT MOVE THEM WITH ONE OF THEIR FINGERS. 

What hypocrisy! In their own hearts the law is 
unto them so grievous a burden that they will not 
touch it with one of their fingers, and yet they take 
delight in laying it upon the shoulders of others! 
Lange calls attention to the fourfold rebuke con- 
tained in the Savior's word: "1. They make religion 
a burden; 2. A grievous burden; 3. Lay it on the 
shoulders of men; 4. Do not move it themselves 
with one finger." 

Verses 5-7. But all their works they do, etc. 
For doing their duty in the sight of God, they care 
nothing; whatever they do, they do in order to be 
seen of men. Ostentation prompts all their actions. 
(Comp. vi, 1.) — They make broad their phy- 
lacteries. The Greek word signifies preventives. 
These phylacteries were scrolls of parchment, on 
which were inscribed certain passages of the law, and 
which were worn on the forehead and left arm, in 
order to obey literally the injunction of Moses, in 
Deut. vi, 8. They came into use after the exile. In 
later times they were regarded as amulets or charms 
to keep away evil spirits, diseases, and other evils, 
but it is not probable that this was the case in the 
days of our Savior, or he would, most probably, have 
exposed their superstition as well as their sancti- 
moniousness. "There was no more appropriate in- 
stance and symbol of an opus operatum than this 
wearing passages of the law on their persons, as if 
they could fulfill thereby the spirit of the injunction 
in question. To wear such trinkets for a show, and 
under the delusion that a religious duty is performed 
thereby, is the quintessence of all pharisaism. 
Whether it is done by the Jewish Pharisee, or by the 
Christian monk, or by the Indian fakir, makes, in 
reality, no difference." (Stier.) — And enlarge the 
borders of their garments. The wearing of such 
fringes, etc., was, indeed, commanded, (Num. xv, 
38,) but the Pharisees enlarged them beyond their 
usual breadth, thus making a show of them instead 
of being reminded by them of their duty, for which 
purpose they were designed by Moses. — And love 
the uppermost rooms [that is, seats] at feasts. If 
the love of the uppermost seat in the synagogues, 
where the rank of office determined the order of the 
seats, is reprehensible, it is still more so to seek it 
even in the social circle, (Luke xiv, 7.) "It is not," 
says Matthew Henry, "possessing the uppermost 
seats that is condemned — some one must be upper- 
most — but. loving them." — And [love] to be called 
of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. This term comes from the 
Hebrew Bab, a great one. It was an honorary title 
given to Jewish teachers, like our "Doctor." It was 
used in three forms: Bab, master; Babbi, my mas- 
ter; Babboni, my great master. 

Verse 8. But be not ye called Rabbi. On 
what ground this prohibition rests is clear from the 



518 



MATTHEW XXIII, 13-28. 



reason assigned by our Lord: fob one is tour 
Master, which ought to be translated, for one is your 
teacher, ((MdcvcaAoc,) according to a reading adopted 
by the best critics, who omit also the word Christ, 
considering it interpolated from verse 10. The 
Jewish Rabbins claimed, in connection with their 
title, as Owen observes, "the prerogative of supreme 
jurisdiction in all religious matters, imposing what- 
ever rites, forms, or ceremonies they pleased, and 
lording it over the consciences of the common peo- 
ple." Alford understands by " one is your teacher," 
not Christ, who is mentioned in verse 10, but the 
Holy Spirit, and says: "He is not named here, be- 
cause the promise of the Holy Spirit was only given 
in private to the disciples. If he is meant here, we 
have God, in his Trinity, here declared to us as the 
only Teacher, Father, and Master of Christians, the 
only One on whom they can rest or depend. They 
are all brethren, all substantially equal — none by 
office or precedence nearer to God than another; 
none standing between his brother and God." This 
remark of Alford throws a flood of light upon this 
passage. The titles teacher, father, master are 
prohibited by our Lord with reference to their hie- 
rarchical sense and use, but not absolutely, as is evi- 
dent from the harmless and proper use of the word 
father. "To understand and follow such commands, 
in the slavery of the letter, is to fall into the very 
pharisaism against which our Lord is uttering the 
caution." (Alford.) 

Verse 9. And call no man tour father upon 
the earth. It could not be the Lord's intention to 
interdict to children the use of the name "father," 
in their intercourse with their parents; and the 
apostle Paul, who had the mind of Christ and under- 
stood his precepts, calls himself^/a^jer, in a spiritual 
sense, (see 1 Cor. iv, 15.) The word is also used in 
the New Testament as a term of respect to aged and 
venerable men. (See Acts vii, 2; xxii, 1; 1 John 
ii, 13, 14.) But we are forbidden to apply this term 
to any man, as expressive of such spiritual authority 
as belongs only to God our Heavenly Father. In 
this very sense it is used of the Pope, who suffers 
himself to be addressed by his followers as the Holy 
Father. 

Verse 10. Neither be te called masters. The 
Greek word for "master" here (ica$?]yr/Tfjg) means a 
leader of a school or party, whom his followers have 
to obey implicitly. Against setting up any such 



party leader the apostle Paul warns the Corinthians. 
(1 Cor. i, 12.) No one shall assume the position of 
master in the Church of Christ. He is the only 
master, and all the members of the New Testament 
Church are to sustain a real life-union with the one 
Head of the Church, and the relationship of brethren 
to one another. "Christ's prohibition is against two 
things, though opposed to each other, yet still re- 
lated, and often found in the same individual — the 
haughty spirit that would domineer over others, and 
would play the little lord; and the servile spirit, that 
would basely cringe to the dictates of assumed supe- 
riority. It is not against intellectual or moral, but 
official, lordship our Savior speaks — the pride of the 
office. The true lord, the man endowed with lordly 
attributes, never has the haughty spirit which Christ 
prohibits, would not have the lordly office, spurns 
the very name; the true Rabbi laughs at the title. 
Christ's prohibition, however, against servility is as 
strong as against lordly assumption. He not only 
says, "Be not called masters, but call no man 
father." Ye men, even of feeblest intellect in the 
Church, cherish the spirit of religious independence, 
acknowledge no human authority in matters of re- 
ligion, scorn the assumption of primates and popes. 
1 One is your Master, even Christ.' No authority is 
to be acknowledged but that of Christ; but the 
haughty spirit thinks of his own authority, and the 
servile spirit bows to the dictates of pretenders." 
(Homilist.) 

Verses 11, 12. But he that is greatest [liter- 
ally, greater] among tou, shall be tour servant. 
(Comp. chap, xviii, 1; xx, 25; Luke xiv, 11; xviii, 
14.) The higher the personal endowments of an in- 
dividual are, the greater is his obligation to serve 
others, and to use his gifts for the good of the 
Church. Different degrees of usefulness, based upon 
a difference of gifts, are not excluded in the king- 
dom of Christ, but the measure for greatness is 
humble, self-sacrificing love. (See chap, xx, 26.) 
It is worthy of note, that the Pope, who violates this 
commandment most flagrantly and constantly, causes 
others to do the same, calls himself, in pretended 
obedience to Christ's injunction, "the servant of all 
the servants of God." — And whosoever shall ex- 
alt himself, etc. These words refer primarily and 
especially to religious teachers that labor and study 
merely for the purpose of ranking themselves higher 
than others. 



B. THE SEVEN WOES AGAINST THE SCRIBES. 



Verses 13-28. 



(13) But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye shut up the 
kingdom of heaven against men : for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye 
them that are entering to go in. (14) "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypo- 
crites ! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayer : there- 
fore you shall receive the greater damnation. (15) Woe unto you, scribes and 



THE SEVEN WOES AGAINST THE SCRIBES. 



519 



Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte; 1 and 
when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. 
(16) Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, "Whosoever shall swear by the 
Temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the Temple, he is 
a debtor ! (17) Ye fools and blind : for whether is greater, the gold, or the Temple 
that sanctifieth the gold? (18) And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is 
nothing; but whosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty. (19) Ye 
fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the 
gift? (20) Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all 
things thereon. (21) And whoso shall swear by the Temple, sweareth by it, and 
by him that dwelleth therein. (22) And he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth 
by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon. (23) Woe unto you, 
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cum- 
min, 2 and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and 
faith: these ought ye to have done, and not leave the other undone. (24) Ye blind 
guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. (25) Woe unto you, scribes 
and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the 
platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. (26) Thou blind Phari- 
see, cleanse first that lohich is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them 
may be clean also. (27) Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye 
are like unto whited sepulchers, 3 which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are 
within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. (28) Even so ye also out- 
wardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. 



Verse 13. Ye shut up th'e kingdom op heaven 
against men — literally, in the face of men. Upon 
their unwillingness to enter tbe Messianic kingdom 
the first woe is pronounced, forming a contrast with 
the first beatitude, (chap, v, 3,) and verifying the 
immediately-preceding declaration that whoever is 
unwilling to humble himself shall not be exalted, 
These occupants of Moses' chair, however, are not 
content with not entering themselves, but prevent 
others from doing so. According to Luke, (xi, 52,) 
the Lord had told them the same once before, 
and had added: "For ye have the key of knowl- 



edge." Having usurped the monopoly of knowledge, 
the scribes abused it for shutting up instead of open- 
ing. By their authority they prevented the poor 
people from acknowledging the Messiah, saying to 
them that were willing to believe in him, "We know 
that this man is a sinner," and after the ascension, 
they prevented, as much as they could, the Gospel 
from being preached to the Gentiles. (1 Thess. ii, 
16.) These hierarchs use all their influence which 
learning, office, standing, etc., give them to keep 
people from complying with the terms of salvation. 
Verse 14. Not content with shutting up the king- 



1 There were two kinds of proselytes : First, the pros- 
elytes of the gate — foreigners who lived among the 
Jews, who were not circumcised, yet conformed to some 
of the Jewish laws and customs ; they were admitted 
into the outer division of the Temple, called the conrt 
of the Gentiles. Secondly, the proselytes of righteous- 
ness, who embraced the Jewish religion in its full ex- 
tent, and shared in all the rights and privileges of Jews 
themselves. The first were despised by the Pharisees 
because they were unwilling to take the whole yoke of 
the Jewish law upon themselves. The second class is 
meant here. 2 Mint — a sweet-scented herb, like our 
garden or spear-mint, with which the Jews strewed the 
floors of their houses and synagogues. It grew in great 
profusion. Anise — an aromatic plant, answering to our 



dill. Cximmin — the seeds of this plant were of a warm, 
bitterish taste, like our caraway seeds, and were used by 
the ancients as a condiment. These plants were of lit- 
tle repute, and so abundant as to be within reach of all. 
(Owen.) 3 The graves were natural or artificial caverns 
in groves, (Isa. xxii, 16; Gen. xxiii, 17; John xix, 41.) 
They were sometimes perpendicular, (Luke xi, 24,) some- 
times horizontal, and were closed with doors or large 
stones. (Matt, xxvii, 60; John xi, 38.) Once a year — 
on the 15th of the month Adar — the Jews were accus- 
tomed to paint or whitewash this stone door, or the 
whole external portion of the sepulchers, in order that 
those who came up to the Passover might distinguish 
them, and not defile themselves (Num. xix, 16) by 
coming in contact with them. 



520 



MATTHEW XXIII, 13-28. 



dom of heaven against men, they rob them also of 
their property, and that under the cloak of religion. 
— Ye devour widows' houses; that is, ye defraud 
them of their property by abusing their weakness and 
helplessness, as well as your social standing, for your 
own aggrandizement. This was done in two ways: 
1. They appealed to their legal erudition while pre- 
tending to keep the law perfectly. Thus they in- 
duced widows and others to intrust unto them the 
administration of their estates as guardians or ad- 
ministrators, and then they took advantage of, and 
cheated them. Possibly they succeeded also by 
their reputed sanctity to secure places in the wills 
of testators, etc. ; this became even in the Chris- 
tian Church a common practice at an early date, so 
that the Emperor Justinian had to forbid by a law 
to make clergymen heirs in testaments. 2. They pre- 
tended long prayers. In this way they surrounded 
themselves with the halo of great sanctity, and in- 
duced their victims to make them large donations 
for religious or charitable purposes. In return, they 
promised to pray much for these widows and or- 
phans. Does it not seem as if the Lord designed 
by these words also a prophetic reference to legacies 
to the clergy to pay for prayers and masses to be 
said for souls in purgatory? — Therefore ye shall 
receive the greater DAMNATION. There are de- 
grees in damnation. Avarice in any form insures 
damnation; but avarice will receive greater damna- 
tion when directed against the widow and the father- 
less, whom "to visit in their affliction," says James, 
"is pure religion and undefined before God and the 
Father." 

Verse 15. Ye compass sea and land — a proverb- 
ial expression of the zeal of the Jews to make prose- 
lytes, which is often mentioned by heathen authors. 
This zeal was, apart from its motive, premature, be- 
cause Israel's mission was to prepare for the Gospel 
dispensation, not to convert the heathen world. But 
the Lord finds fault with this zeal of the Pharisees 
especially, because it flowed from impure motives. 
While they neglected their own people, they wanted 
to have the appearance as if their zeal for the glory 
of God was so great as to impel them to bring people 
from a great distance into covenant-relations with 
Jehovah. — To make him twofold more the child 
of hell than yourselves. He that went over to 
pharisaism from heathenism could not do it with a 
good conscience; and it is not strange that such 
converts were reputed to be unprincipled men, inas- 
much as they added Jewish corruption to their un- 
changed inward heathenism. — This passage teaches 
us to distinguish between genuine missionary zeal 
and the spirit of proselytism. True missionary zeal 
insists on repentance and conversion, a thorough 
change of heart; while proselytism contents itself 
with inducing men to give their assent to a creed, or 
to observe certain outward forms and ceremonies. 
The latter employs, where practicable, force instead 
of argument. Experience, moreover, has shown 



that conversion to the mere form, whether of wor- 
ship or of a doctrine, without the regeneration of 
the heart, leads invariably to fanaticism. "There 
is an essential difference between sectarian zeal and 
godly zeal; the one is selfish and mean, the other is 
self-denying and magnanimous. Godly zeal is a 
generous and noble passion, it is a zeal not for hu- 
man systems, but for Divine truths; not for the letter 
of a doctrine, but for its spirit; it is a zeal for the 
progress of the true and just, the honorable and the 
lovely throughout the world, and which rejoices in 
them wherever they are found; it is a zeal which en- 
ables a man's heart to see and love the good every- 
where. Sectarian zeal is kindled and fed by the few 
peculiar opinions that distinguish its pwn class. 
These opinions, whether they refer to doctrine or 
ritual, are supreme in the mind of the sectarian; 
'his principles,' as he calls them, 'his Church,' 'his 
denomination,' are every thing to him. There is no 
good outside his little pale; the men that join his 
Church are converted ; all else, at the best, are in a 
doubtful state. All this is pure selfishness. It is 
the glorifying of our own little opinions, the idolizing 
of our own notions." (Homilist.) 

Verses 16-22. Woe unto you, ye blind guides. 
The Lord proceeds now to hold up to public view 
some of their false doctrines which they inculcated 
upon their people at home and upon their proselytes 
abroad, selecting examples of which he had spoken 
in the Sermon on the Mount, (v, 34,) and subse- 
quently, (xv, 5;) for, as he pronounces here their 
final sentence, he does so on charges previously 
proved. The spirit of the conduct exposed (from 
vs. 16-22) is the exalting of the human at the ex- 
pense of the Divine; making "the gold" and "the 
gift" which men had brought to the Temple some- 
thing more sacred and divine than the Temple 
itself, and the God whose dwelling-place it was. 
And why did these men exalt the gold and the gift 
above the Temple and the altar? In order to en- 
courage the people to bring their gold to the Temple 
and their gifts to the altar. Setting the human 
above the Divine, and that from sordid considera- 
tions, was the evil which Christ denounced in the 
Pharisees. They are, alas ! only the servants of the 
Temple and the altar, not of God, whom they for- 
get. — In the Sermon on the Mount our Lord had 
condemned all their frivolous oaths; here he shows 
them more fully why the validity of an oath rested 
not upon the thing from which it was taken, but 
upon its tacit reference to God himself, who dwelleth 
in the Temple, and who sitteth upon the throne. 

Verse 23. In this fifth woe the Lord exposes the 
doubly-criminal hypocrisy of the Pharisees, who 
scrupulously attended to small matters, not even 
commanded by the law, in order to earn the reputa- 
tion of eminent saints, while they disregarded the 
cardinal principles of true morality altogether. — 
For ye pay tithe of mint. (Compare Luke xi, 39.) 
The legal enactments (Lev. xxvii, 30; Num. xviii, 



CONCLUSION AND LAMENTATION OVER JERUSALEM. 



521 



21; Deut. xiv, 22-27) made fruit and the produce 
of the field tithable, but the Pharisees extended 
these enactments arbitrarily to the most insignifi- 
cant of herbs, such as mint, anise, and cummin. — 
And hate omitted the weightier matters of the 
LAW. The Greek, cupr/iiare, (aor. 1,) is the aorist of 
repetition; that is, you have done it before, and do 
it again, it is your uniform practice. The Lord 
had in all probability the rabbinical distinction be- 
tween easier and harder commandments in view, 
and reminds them, in allusion to Micah vi, 8, (com- 
pare Hos. xii, 7,) of three requirements of the law, 
which he might have summed up, as he did in chapter 
xxii, 40, by the love of God and of our neighbor, or, 
as Luke has it, (xi, 42,) by "judgment and the love of 
God." — These requirements are: Judgment, the ad- 
ministration of the law according to the principles of 
justice, (Isa. i, 17;) mercy, with which the admin- 
istration of the law is to be tempered; and faith, 
such faith as implies the love of God and man, faith 
that worketh by love, (Gal. v, 22.) Stier and others 
understand by faith here, faithfulness or sincerity, 
as opposed to the hypocrisy and duplicity of the 
Pharisees. — These ought ye to have done, and 
not to leave the other undone — literally, these ye 
ought to do, etc. (Compare chap, v, 19.) The Lord's 
meaning is not, that tithe ought to be paid of these 
small herbs, but, referring to the above-quoted pas- 
sage in Micah, where it is said that the fulfillment 
of the moral law is better than all offerings, etc., 
he admits the obligatory nature of the ceremonial 
law. —Alas! that the evil, against which Christ 
hurls here his woe, is also found in the Christian 
Church! There are professing Christians who at- 
tend with the greatest exactness to all the formali- 
ties of religion, but are hard-hearted toward the 
poor. 

Verse 24. "Which strain at a gnat, should be 
translated, strain out the gnat (by filtering.) "The 



straining of the gnat is not a mere proverbial say- 
ing. The Jews — as do now the Buddhists in Ceylon 
and Hindoostan — strained their wine, etc., carefully, 
that they might not violate Leviticus xi, 12, 23, 41, 
42." (Alford.) — And swallow a camel. The 
camel is named not only on account of its immense 
size, but also because it is an unclean animal. 
(Lev. xi, 4.) 

Verses 25-28. The lying contrast between the 
external deportment and internal character of these 
hypocrites our Lord now sets forth by a double com- 
parison, a vessel full of filth, but externally clean, 
and a sepulcher, externally adorned and white, but 
internally filled with the corruptions of death. This 
is -the finishing touch of the picture of hypocrisy. 
" The power of man to falsify the state of his heart 
by his outward conduct is remarkable; he- can ap- 
pear to be what he is not. The most corrupt can 
so thoroughly counterfeit goodness that they may 
pass undetected for a long time, perhaps to the end 
of their life. In proportion to the vileness of the 
heart is the force of the temptation to this hypocrisy. 
Were a bad man to leave his heart thoroughly un- 
covered in his daily life, corrupt as society is, it 
would shun him with horror, and his existence 
would scarcely be tolerated. Was this hypocrisy 
confined to the Pharisees? By no means; it has 
ever been one of the most common sins of man- 
kind. Bad men every-where counterfeit goodness, 
and seek to pass for what they are not. This hypo- 
critical acting Christ denounces as a "blind" policy, 
and it is so. A thousand times better let the out- 
side be filthy, bad though that would be, and the 
inside clean, than for the inside to be defiled and 
the outside pure. Blind policy, too, because the 
lohited sepulcher must one day be thrown open and 
expose its contents to the sun. Justly, then, does 
the Heavenly Teacher fling his terrible woes against 
this abominable hypocrisy." (Homilist.) 



C. CONCLUSION AND LAMENTATION OVER JERUSALEM. 
Verses 39—39. (Compare Mark xii, 40; Luke xx, 47.) 

(29) Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the 
tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchers of the righteous, (30) and say, 
If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with 
them in the blood of the prophets. (31) Wherefore ye be witnesses unto your- 
selves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. (32) Fill ye up 
then the measure of your fathers. (33) Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how 
can ye escape the damnation of hell ? (34) Wherefore, behold, I send unto you 
prophets, and wise men, and scribes; and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; 
and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city 
to city: (35) That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, 
from the blood of righteous Abel, unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias, 
whom ye slew between the Temple and the altar. (36) Verily I say unto you, All 



522 



MATTHEW XXIII, 29-39. 



these things shall come upon this generation. (37) Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou 
that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often 
would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chick- 
ens under her wings, and ye would not ! (38) Behold, your house is left unto you 
desolate. (39) For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, 
Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. 



Verse 29. "The eighth woe combines the preced- 
ing seven into one. Charging the wicked offspring 
and the wicked fathers with one common sin and 
guilt, it is a woe pronounced not only upon the 
scribes, but upon all pharisaic Israel, as being ripe for 
judgment. Though they sanctimoniously disclaim all 
share in their fathers' guilt, (vs. 29, 30,) yet they are 
no better, (v. 31,) yea, they fill up the measure of 
their guilt, (vs. 32, 33.) And thus the whole genera- 
tion becomes with them ripe for judgment. For 
they will reject Christ's last messengers sent unto 
them for a witness of their incorrigibility, and thus 
bring down the final judgment on the accumulated 
guilt of preceding ages, (vs. 34-36;) Jerusalem, 
especially, has scorned the grace so long and so 
liberally offered ; now, however, it is withdrawn — till 
in the far-distant future Israel shall humbly and 
penitently return to its rejected Messiah, (vs. 37-39.)" 
(Stier. ) — Because ye build the tombs of the 

PROPHETS AND GARNISH THE SEPULCHERS OF THE 

righteous. (Comp. Luke xi, 47, etc.) Lange thinks 
that the phraseology employed here sets forth the 
different treatment which the two classes of the dead 
receive at the hands of succeeding generations. 
"The righteous," he says, "had their merits speedily 
acknowledged, and monuments arose over their 
graves to proclaim their virtues ; but the prophets 
lay for centuries in humble, sometimes ignominious, 
graves; only the latest generations commence to do 
justice to their memories by erecting splendid tombs 
over the spots that contain their dust." There is 
no proof for such a distinction as Lange makes. 
Owen correctly remarks: "There is a parallelism 
between the two members of the sentence, by which 
the sentiment of the first is repeated in varied lan- 
guage in the second." 

Verses 30, 31. By erecting monuments to the 
prophets they pretended to proclaim aloud that they 
disapproved the persecutions of the prophets by their 
ancestors, while they acted in diametrical opposition 
to the words of the prophets, by rejecting the great- 
est of the prophets — John the Baptist — and the Mes- 
siah of whom they bore witness. "While ye thus 
disclaim all participation in the crimes committed 
by your ancestors, you show, by your conduct, that 
you are their genuine descendants, actuated by the 
same spirit of unbelief and murder." Stier very 
forcibly remarks: "Men are very apt to praise the 
departed witnesses of the truth, whom they would 
reject if they were still alive; they are, as it were, 



glad that they have nothing else to do with these wit- 
nesses than to set monuments to their memories." 

Verse 32. Fill ye up then. "Words similar to 
those that the Lord addressed to Judas — 'That thou 
doest, do quickly.' The last means of deterring the 
villain from the perpetration of a contemplated 
crime is to challenge him to do it at once. If there is 
any moral principle left, the horror of the guilt which 
he is about to contract will seize him, and his cour- 
age fails." (Lange.) The imperative "Jill" how- 
ever, is often used in the sense of the future, "ye 
shall or will fill," (see note on chap, xiii, 14, 15.) — 
The measure of your fathers. The sense is not, 
as Meyer says, "fill ye also the measure, [of iniq- 
uity,] as your fathers have filled it," but "ye, who 
blame the murderers of the prophets, shall even fill 
the measure of their guilt." When the measure of 
guilt is full, the judgment commences. As the in- 
dividual man can tire out God's long-suffering and 
bring upon himself the judgments of punitive jus- 
tice, so, also, a nation, viewed as an organic whole. 
From this point of view the Savior represents the 
guilt of Israel as one national sin, commenced by 
the fathers and consummated by the murder of 
Christ. " There is a measure of sins which, when 
filled up, never fails to bring down upon nations the 
special visitations of judgment. To fill up this 
measure is seldom the work of one age. Successive 
generations adopt the principles, and imitate the 
practices of their ancestors, adding sin to sin, and 
iniquity to iniquity, till either by the natural conse- 
quence of such public vices as tend to subvert the 
strength and security of society, or by the special 
visitations of Divine vengeance, they receive the full 
reward of their sins. The punishment of individuals 
may be deferred to another life; but nations, who 
are treated under the Divine administration as 
political persons, have no existence but in time, and 
in this life, therefore, are rewarded according to their 
works — subject, however, to this consideration, that 
they, as well as individuals, are under a mediatorial 
government, receive greater blessings than they 
could claim of right, are treated with much long- 
suffering, and can turn away God's anger by re- 
pentance and prayer. But when that point is once 
reached, beyond which it is inconsistent with the 
character of a wise and righteous government, 
though founded in mercy, to extend impunity, the 
measure is full, and the terribleness of God's judg- 
ments proves to all the world that none ever hard- 



CONCLUSION AND LAMENT OVER JERUSALEM. 



523 



ened his heart against God and prospered." (Wat- 
son.) The increasing guilt of a nation is similar 
to family sins, spoken of in Exod. xx, 5, on 
which Olshausen remarks: "The visiting of the iniq- 
uity of the fathers upon the children, necessarily 
implies that the sins of the fathers do exist in the 
children, since a just God punishes sin only where it 
is. Yet it is a fundamental truth, set forth in the 
Bible, that men are not and must not be viewed as 
isolated beings, perfectly disconnected from each 
other, but as members of an organic whole; it is 
part of the curse of sin and part of the blessing of 
righteousness, that they affect each other for good 
or evil. As the prodigality of the father makes his 
children beggars, so the parents' sins affect the 
children morally. The false inferences that might 
be drawn from this fundamental idea of the Scrip- 
tures are obviated by the possibility which exists 
in the case of every individual descendant, to be 
converted by a conscientious use of the means of 
grace placed within his reach, and to secure there- 
by the pardon of all his sins. To this refer the 
words in verse 37 — 'ye would not,' The Jews did 
not realize the full consequences of their sins before 
they had frustrated all attempts on the part of God 
to bring them to a sense and confession of their 
crimes." 

Verse 33. Ye serpents, te generation of vi- 
pers, [no longer, as with John the Baptist, (iii, 7,) 
"Who hath warned ye to flee from the wrath to 
come?" but] how can ye escape [more correctly, 
how shall ye escape] the damnation of hell? 
"These words," says Watson, "were uttered, not in 
anger, but in the spirit of calm, piercing judgment, 
by Him who knew the hearts of men, and, as it has 
often been justly observed, afford no precedent to 
justify us in using harsh terms in reproving the 
most notorious sinners. John the Baptist acted 
and spoke under special inspiration ; our Lord 
spoke as a sovereign and a judge. We are to deal 
faithfully with men in showing them their true char- 
acter, and endeavoring to open their eyes to their 
spiritual dangers ; but we are to remember that 
we, who address them, are their fellow-sinners. 
To us it belongs to instruct, persuade, and reason; 
but it does not belong to us to pronounce the sen- 
tence." 

Verse 34. Wherefore ; that is, as this is the 
case. Since ye are bent upon filling up the iniqui- 
ties of your fathers, I send unto you my messengers, 
though you will reject them also, and thereby fill up 
your measure of iniquity. The unintended effect 
of an act is often represented in Scripture language 
as its cause. (See note on chap, xiii, 13, 14, 15.) 
The mission of inspired messengers, which brings 
peace and eternal life to the humble believer, be- 
comes for the perseveringly impenitent the occasion 
of their ruin. Thus Christ is, in his messengers 
also, " set for the fall of many." (Luke ii, 34.) — I 
send unto Tou. Thus Jesus speaks in the con- 



sciousness of his Messianic dignity; although he 
was to be crucified first, yet his exaltation was so 
unchangeably present to his mind that he puts him- 
self at this time already in the place of Jehovah, 
who sent the prophets of old. (Isa. xli, 27.) In an 
earlier discourse very similar to this, (Luke xi, 49,) 
Christ used the expression: "Therefore also said the 
wisdom of God." — Prophets, and wise men, and 
scribes formed the three classes of teachers of re- 
ligion among the Jews ; their places are to be filled 
by apostles, evangelists, teachers, and other holy 
ministers of Christ. — ■ And some of them te shall 
kill, etc. These predictions were literally fulfilled 
in the first era of Gospel history. The Acts of the 
Apostles abound with illustrations. Stephen was 
stoned; James was beheaded; some of the disciples 
were imprisoned, scourged, driven from city to city; 
and tradition informs us that some of the apostles 
were nailed to the cross. To Christ's eye all the 
sufferings that his messengers would meet with in 
Jerusalem and elsewhere, in that age and all future 
times, stood as clear as in the fight of day. And by 
giving them strength according to their day, and 
enabling them to glory in their tribulations, he has 
furnished the world with the highest demonstrations 
of the power, the divinity, and blessedness of his 
truth. 

Verse 35. That (cnrwg — in order that.) See the 
remarks on "wherefore" in verse 34 — Upon you. 
As the scribes and Pharisees were the representa- 
tives of the Jewish people, the whole nation must be 
understood by the "you" the generations both of 
past and of coming ages. ("Whom ye slew," verse 
35, and "shall come upon this generation" of verse 
36.) — All the righteous blood; that is, the punish- 
ment due for the shedding of this blood. (Comp. 
chap, xxvii, 25.) The meaning of these words is 
not that those, whom Jesus addressed, were to suffer 
the punishment for crimes which they had not com- 
mitted, but that, as Watson remarks, " a punishment 
equal to the accumulated woes brought upon men 
for the crime of rejecting the truth, and persecuting 
its righteous preachers in all these ages, should be 
heaped upon the devoted heads of the Jews. And 
this was an act of manifest justice, since they put 
one, infinitely greater than all the prophets, to 
death, even the Messiah himself; and in opposition 
to stronger evidences of a Divine mission than any 
former prophets had given." (See also note on verse 
32.)- — From the blood of righteous Abel unto 
the blood of Zacharias. Of the blood of Abel it 
is particularly said, that "it cried unto God from the 
ground," and Zacharias said, while he was expiring, 
"The Lord look upon it and require it;" that is, 
avenge it. (2 Chron. xxiv, 22.) It must be noticed, 
also, how very like the punishment of the Jews was 
to that of Cain and of the murderers of Zacharias. 
Since the overthrow of their polity, and the destruc- 
tion of their Temple by the Romans, the Jews have 
borne the curse of Cain; have been fugitives in the 



524 



MATTHEW XXIII, 29-39. 



earth; and yet the Lord had set a sign on their na- 
tion so that it could not be destroyed. And as, in 
consequence of the murder of Zacharias by-Joash, 
the army of the Syrians took Judea and Jerusalem, 
and destroyed all the chief men of the nation, so 
the Jews were punished by the Romans, though 
much more severely and on a larger scale. That 
the last judgment of the Jews was typified by earlier 
and partial judgments, we see from 2 Chron. xxxvi, 
16-19. A critical difficulty arises from the addition, 
"Son of Barachias," because, according to 2 Chron. 
xxiv, 20, Zacharias was the son of Jehoiada. But 
as the Jews had often two names, and as the two 
names, "Jehoiada" and "Barachias," have the same 
meaning, that is, " the praising of Jehovah," it is 
probable that "Jehoiada" and "Barachias" were 
names of one and the same individual. Ebrard 
thinks that Jehoiada was the grandfather of Zacha- 
rias. Jerome says that the Gospel to the Hebrews 
had the correct name, Jehoiada. Meyer is of the 
opinion that Jesus did not mention the father's 
name at all, (Luke xi, 51,) and that it crept after- 
ward erroneously into the text; the Zacharias in 
question being confounded with the well-known 
prophet Zechariah, whose father's name was Bara- 
chiah. Some think that the horrid murder of a just 
and good man by that name is meant, which, accord- 
ing to Josephus, (Ant. IV, 19,) took place in the 
Temple shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem 
by the Romans. But this can not be, because "Bar- 
achias" and "Barueh" are different names, and the 
words, "whom ye slew — tyoveiioaTe" are too plainly 
the statement of a past act to be taken for a pro- 
phetic future. — Between the Temple and the 
altar. The altar for burnt-offering stood in the 
court of the priests, just in front of the Temple 
proper. 

Verse 36. Upon this generation. Most com- 
mentators understand by "generation," (yeved,) the 
then living Jews. "The Heavenly Teacher seemed 
to look upon his age as the great reservoir into 
which all the crimes of the persecutors of all past 
ages, like so many streams, had flown; or, as a great 
harvest-field, in which all the iniquities of all past 
times had ripened, and now awaited the scythe of 
Eternal Justice. Josephus, one of their countrymen, 
an opposer of the Gospel, bears important, because 
impartial, testimony to their abandoned condition. 
He says that they had carefully imitated, and even 
exceeded, all the deeds of their ancestors." True 
as this remark is, we prefer, with Stier and other 
German commentators, to understand by "this gener- 
ation" here — and in chapter xxiv, 34, where we shall 
give our reasons — not the then living generation, 
but the Jewish people as such. 

Verse 37. In view of this terrible doom, he 
breaks out into a wail, which, for tenderness and 
pathos, has never been equaled. According to 
Luke, (xiii, 34,) the Lord had spoken these words 
once before. — Jerusalem, Jerusalem. From the 



scribes and Pharisees, he now addresses himself to 
Jerusalem, the central point of the hierarchy, the 
metropolis of Judaism. — Thou that killest and 
stonest — literally, thou that art killing and stoning; 
indicative of the habit to which that doomed city 
was addicted. It had become a proverb among the 
Jews, that no prophet could perish out of Jerusa- 
lem. (Luke xiii, 33.) — How often would I have 
gathered thy children. How majestic is this J of 
the incarnate Logos! He refers not only to his own 
personal ministry, but to all the messengers through 
whom he had invited them from time to time. — And 
ye would not. (Compare Isa. xxviii, 12; xxx, 15.) 
Israel's Messiah is a Savior that yearns to save, but 
can not save the perseveringly unwilling. Who will 
dare to say, "The calling and bidding was not 
meant in earnest; for if it had been, the irresistible 
grace of God would have subdued the stubborn 
will ?" 

Verse 38. Behold your house. It is no longer 
the house of God, the house of my Father; prima- 
rily the Temple must be understood here, which 
Jesus leaves with these words, indicating thereby 
that God has withdrawn his gracious presence from 
it forever. But the city, the country, the whole na- 
tion, shares the fate of the Temple — Jehovah has 
withdrawn, the theocracy has ceased. — Is left 
unto you desolate. The Greek word for "deso- 
late" {iprjijaq) means solitary, deserted, not laid waste. 
Because it is wanting in several Codices, Meyer and 
others consider it spurious. But the meaning is 
the same: desolation and destruction are the neces- 
sary consequences of the Divine withdrawal, as the 
Lord had foretold even unto Solomon, (1 Kings ix, 
7-9.) This declaration of the parting Messiah has 
been literally fulfilled, not only by the destruction of 
the Temple, but also by the futile attempt of Julian 
the Apostate to rebuild it, and by the condition of 
Jerusalem up to this day. 

Verse 39. For I say unto you. A solemn 
declaration. — Ye; that is, the whole generation of 
stubborn unbelievers, including the descendants, as 
verse 35 includes the ancestors. — Shall not see me 
henceforth; that is, in the discharge of my Mes- 
sianic functions. After his resurrection he appeared 
only to his disciples.- — Till ye shall say. "To 
understand by these words the involuntary acknowl- 
edgment of the coming Judge, is against the 
'blessed is he' and the whole 118th Psalm; their 
plain meaning is, and only can be, till ye, that is, 
your distant descendants, shall acknowledge and 
welcome him whom ye reject. The Lord takes leave 
of Israel, clearly foretelling that the day shall come 
when Israel as a nation does him homage. The 
final restoration of Israel after the flesh is foretold 
throughout the whole Old Testament, from Deuter- 
onomy iv, 30, to Zechariah. Whoever has not found 
this in the prophets, has not yet read them aright. 
(1 Chron. xv, 3, 4; Hos. iii, 4, 5; Zech. xii, 10; xiv, 
8-11; compare Rom. xi, 25, 26.)" (Stier.) 



CHRIST PREDICTS THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE. 



525 



OHAPTEE XXIV. 

§9. OUR LORD'S PREDICTION OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE, 
AND THE DISCIPLES' INQUIRY ABOUT THAT EVENT. 



"Verses 1—3. 



(Compare Mark xiii, 1-4; Luke xxi, 5-7.) 



(1) And Jesus went out, and departed from the Temple : and his disciples came 
to him for to shew him the buildings of the Temple. (2) And Jesus said unto 
them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not he left 
here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. (3) And as he sat 
upon the Mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, 
when shall these things be ? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the 
end of the world ? 



Verse 1. And Jesus went out. Before he left 
the Temple, some incidents, related by the other 
Evangelists, took place. (See Synoptic Table, Nos. 
161 and 162.) The day— Tuesday of the passion- 
week — was far spent, and he leaves for Bethany. — 
His disciples came to him [a usual form of expres- 
sion when they were about to address him on some 
particular subject] to show him [that is, to call his 
attention to the subject. They did so, no doubt, under 
the impression made upon them by his declaration, in 
chap, xxiii, 38 ; Luke xix, 44] the buildings of the 
Temple ; that is, the Temple with its courts, walls, 
towers, etc. The second Temple was enlarged and 
beautified by Herod the Great, who employed 18,000 
men on the work for nine years, before the building 
could be used at all; and additions were continually 
making afterward till 64, A. D. According to Mark, 
they direct his attention especially to the stupendous 
size of the structure. Some of these stones, Jose- 
phus tells us, were forty-five cubits long, five high, 
and six broad. These stones composed the wall built 
up from the bottom, on three sides of the hill Moriah, 
and filled in with earth, so as to form an area on 
which to rear the edifice. Luke notes how it was 
"adorned with goodly stones and gifts." Among 
the costly gifts belonging to the Temple was a golden 
table given by Pompey, and several golden vines of 
great size, having clusters, as Josephus says, as tall 
as a man. The same Jewish historian says, that the 
marble of the Temple was so white that at a distance 
it appeared like a mountain of snow, and the gilding, 
when the sun shone upon it, was so dazzling and 
beautiful, that it caused those who forced themselves 
to look upon it to turn away their eyes as they would 
have done at the sun's own rays. Even Tacitus, ac- 
customed as he was to the splendor of Roman 
architecture, speaks of the Temple as of unmeasured 
opulence. 



Verse 2. See te not all these things? This is 
an emphatic confirmation of the declaration he had 
made a few moments before of the speedy desolation 
of that which appeared so grand and so stable. 
What ye see now, shall soon and surely disappear. — 
Verily I say unto you. When Christ uttered the 
prediction of the total destruction of the Temple, few 
things in the history of the world seemed less likely 
to transpire. The massive structure seemed inde- 
structible, as Titus himself confessed. (Jos., Wars of 
the Jews, VI, ix, 1.) And what people existing at 
this time would desire to destroy such an edifice? 
Would the Jews ? The thought was inconceivable to 
a Jew. Would the Romans? Rome and Judea at 
this time were on tolerably-friendly terms. Besides, 
though Rome might in coming years lay siege to 
the city, would it not spare, according to its custom, 
such a magnificent building, as a trophy of its victo- 
rious arms? Yet scarcely had forty years passed 
away, before the Temple was utterly destroyed in 
spite of the earnest efforts of the Roman general to 
save it. The Jews, themselves, in the depth of 
their desperation, set fire to it; and one of the 
Roman soldiers, contrary to the will of the Roman 
commander, threw a burning firebrand in through 
one of its windows, and thus consummated the catas- 
trophe. A short time after, one of the Roman gen- 
erals, left in command of Jerusalem, demolished the 
Temple and the places about it so entirely, that our 
Lord's prophecy has been fulfilled to the utmost 
letter. Some of the deep substructions, which re- 
mained to show where the Temple once stood, be- 
longed to Solomon's original Temple, which was not 
the object of our Lord's malediction. 

Verse 3. And as he sat. The foregoing predic- 
tion was spoken as they were leaving the Temple. 
They had now passed out of the city and ascended 
the Mount of Olives, from which a commanding 



526 



MATTHEW XXIV, 1-3. 



view was had of the Temple and whole city. Here, 
as our Lord lingered, taking, as it seems, a lonely 
seat, a few of the prominent disciples — Peter, James, 
John, and Andrew, according to Mark — came to him 
privately; the prediction, which they knew would be 
regarded by the Jews as blasphemous, was so amaz- 
ing to them, that it seems they did not dare to 
speak of it even among themselves. — Tell us, etc. 
Most expositors contend that the disciples inquire 
after two distinct events, namely: 1. The destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem, (when shall these things be?) 2. 
The personal second coming of Christ to the final 
judgment. This view we regard to be entirely un- 
tenable, and the root of the confused expositions of 
our Lord's answer to the inquiry. Let us first com- 
pare the parallel passages. In Mark we read: "Tell 
us, when shall these things be? and what shall be 
'the sign, when all these things shall be fulfilled?" 
In Luke: "Master, when shall these things be? and 
what sign will there be, when these things shall come 
to pass?" We see Mark and Luke agree with Mat- 
thew in inquiring after two points — the time when, 
and the prevenient sign. The only difference is, that 
Matthew explains the term, " these things " — used 
by him, as by the other Evangelists, with reference 
to the destruction of the Temple, in the first ques- 
tion about the time, in the second question about 
the prevenient sign — by substituting for " these 
things" the words, " thy coming and the end of the 
world." That it is one and the same event, concern- 
ing which the disciples wish to know the time and 
the sign, appears still more clearly, when we com- 
pare the words used by Mark in the original with 
those of Matthew. The word used by Mark, and 
translated fulfilled, is awTekzia&ai, expressive of the 
same idea as the ovvrsTieia rat ovovoc — the end of 
the age — in Matthew. Before we examine into the 
meaning of the term, "end of the world," let us 
place ourselves on the stand-point of the disciples, 
and ask ourselves, what idea they could, at that 
time, connect with their Master's coming. Let us 
remember, they had not been able to understand 
what the Lord had told them repeatedly of his death 
and resurrection. They believed him to be . the 
Messiah, and as such, they thought with their coun- 
trymen, he would abide forever, and establish the 
kingdom that should not pass away or be destroyed. 
Judge Jones is the only English commentator who 
considers the passage in this light. He says, in his 
Notes on Scripture, p. 311: "The disciples had heard 
their Master's parting words: 'Ye shall not see me 
henceforth till ye say, Blessed is he that cometh in 
the name of the Lord.' This declaration implied 
that his ministry at Jerusalem was ended, and that 
he was about to withdraw from the city, and remain 
absent from it, at least for a time, the length of which 
would depend upon the disposition of the people to- 
ward him. But it contained no intimation of the 
place he was about to retire to, nor of any sign or 
token of his return, after the people should be willing 



to receive him. On these points, or such as these, 
the disciples desired him to speak; but their own 
conceptions of them, we are justified by other pas- 
sages in saying, were very imperfect. We must not 
suppose the disciples had in their mind the Lord's 
appearance from heaven in glory and power, or that 
they intended to inquire about such an appearance. 
They did not at that time even know whither he was 
going; but wherever it might be, it is probable they 
expected to accompany him, and remain with, and 
return with him. This is evident from John xiii, 36, 
37; xiv, 5; xvi, 17, 18, 28, 29. They had no con- 
ception or thought of his going out of the world, nor 
of the means by which his exit from the world would 
be accomplished. We must, therefore, understand 
the word -Kapovcia — translated coming, in its primary 
signification — of being present in person, as in 2 
Cor. vii, 6, 7, where Paul speaks of the personal com- 
ing (Trapovma) of Titus. See 1 Cor. xvi, 17; 2 Cor. 
x, 10; Phil, i, 26; ii, 12. where it is used as the 
contrasting word to anovnia, being absent." We 
add: irapovala means to be or become present; re- 
ferring to a future event, it is, properly, translated 
coming. Before the ascension the apostles did not 
expect the Lord's coming, as a return from heaven, 
(comp. Acts i, 6, with i, 11 ; iii, 20;) and even then, 
whenever his coming is referred to in the Epistles, it 
is, as Meyer remarks, connected with the idea that 
he will come to establish fully his Messianic reign 
on earth. The full manifestation and establishment 
of his kingdom on earth, the coming of the Lord hi 
his kingdom, (chap, xvi, 18,) was evidently upper- 
most in the minds of the disciples, when they pro- 
posed their question to the Lord. And, "that the 
disciples," remarks Auberlen, " should associate, in 
their thoughts, the coming of their Master, to estab- 
lish his reign on earth, with the judgment falling on 
the Jewish people in consequence of their rejection 
of the Messiah, is not surprising. It would have 
been analogous to God's dealings with his people 
and their enemies in the Old Testament — the 
heathens which had been used as instruments in the 
Divine chastisement of Israel, having always them- 
selves been given up to judgment sooner or later. 
The prophetic passage in Zech. xiv, where Jehovah 
is represented as smiting on the Mount of Olives all 
the people that had fought against Jerusalem, may 
have been before the disciples' minds. However 
that may be, it is natural to suppose, that when the 
disciples were told of the certain destruction of the 
old theocracy, they would — in the state of mind in 
which they were then, not having received the Holy 
Ghost — expect Jesus, the Messiah, to establish a new 
one of greater glory. It is, therefore, his personal 
coming for that purpose, to which their inquiry is 
chiefly directed. We see this not only from the 
form of the question, as recorded in full by Matthew, 
but also from the answer of Jesus, which is almost 
entirely confined to his coming." The establishment 
of the Messiah's kingdom was naturally and properly 



OUR LORD'S ANSWER TO THE QUESTION CONCERNING HIS COMING. 



527 



viewed by the disciples as the closing of the former 
dispensation, the end of the then existing aion, 
translated world. It is of importance to observe 
that the Greek word for "world" here, and wherever 
"the end" is spoken of, is not /«5cy/of, the planetary 
system, but aiCiv^ age or- dispensation. To express 
the idea of the close of the then existing al6v or 
age, the following terms of like import are used in 
other passages: "The last days," (Acts ii, 17; Heb. 
i, 2;) "these last times,"' (1 Pet, i, 20;) "the last 
time," (1 Pet. i, 5; 1 John ii, 18.) When in other 
passages (chap, xiii, 39, 40, 49; xxviii, 20) the term 
"end of the aion" is used as synonymous with the 
final judgment or dissolution of the present planet- 
ary system, it is on the same principle on which the 
prophets of the Old Testament speak of the Messiah 
without distinguishing clearly his second from his 
first coming. The full establishment of the Messi- 
anic reign is represented as a concomitant of the 
final judgment, inasmuch as the former is in reality 
the earnest of the latter — a point which we shall 
elucidate more fully toward the close of our investi- 
gation. For the present we will only add another 
remark of Judge Jones: "The disciples took it for 
granted that the Levitical economy would continue 



till it should be superseded by Messiah's reign. This 
is evident from the form of their question, 'What is 
the sign of thy coming and of the end of the aion?' 
One and the same sign, they supposed, would serve 
for both these events. Had they understood the Di- 
vine purpose to open a dispensation of the Gospel 
to the Gentiles, of long continuance, between these 
two events, it is natural to suppose they would have 
changed the order of their questions, and asked a 
sign for each event — 'What will be the sign of the 
consummation of this dispensation, and what the 
sign of thy coming fully to establish thy kingdom?' 
Not knowing of the dispersion of their nation, and of 
the calling of the Elect Church out of the Gentiles, to 
be continued through many generations, they thought 
the kingdom would immediately succeed the Levitical 
economy. (Acts i, 6.) The Savior knew the miscon- 
ception, but left it for the Holy Spirit to correct; while 
he adapted his language to the course of events as 
he foresaiu them." Considering, then, the destruc- 
tion of the Temple, the coming of their Master to 
establish his kingdom, and the end of the age as 
concomitants, the disciples are anxious to know at 
what time and by what signs they might expect 
these great events. 



§60. OUR LORD'S ANSWER TO THE QUESTION CONCERNING HIS COMING. 

This prophetic discourse of our Lord has always, and justly, been considered one of 
the most difficult problems of exegesis. All the interpreters, however great in number 
and differing in detail, may be reduced to three classes : 

1. The whole prophecy has been applied exclusively to the destruction of Jerusalem 
and of the Jewish polity, up to verse 43, " where there is," according to Owen, who 
adopts this view, " a distinct and well-marked transition, and following which there is 
nothing which can well be referred to the destruction of Jerusalem, but every thing 
points to the final coming of our Lord at the day of judgment, which event is still 
further developed in the following chapter, especially in verses 31-46." The only appar- 
ent support for this view can be found in verse 34 : " This generation shall not pass, till 
all these things be fulfilled," on the supposition that the word ysvsd (generation) has no 
other meaning than "the then living Jews." That this is not so we shall show in loco. 
How unnatural and untenable the exposition is which is built upon this supposition will 
appear in our exegetical notes, especially on verses 29-31. 

2. Most of the modern expositors apply the whole prophecy literally to the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem, and typically to the final judgment, so that the former predominates 
up to verse 28, after which — that is, from verse 28 — the lesser subject begins to be swal- 
lowed up in the greater, till in the latter part of the chapter, and in the whole of the 
next, the second advent and, at last, the final judgment are the only subjects spoken of. 
This double-sense interpretation is entirely rejected by Owen and Whedon as self-contra- 
dictory, arbitrary, and fanciful — the latter, however, admitting that the first part of our 
Lord's discourse, from verse 4 to 42, treats of both events, the destruction of Jerusalem 
and the final judgment, and venturing upon an entirely-novel interpretation, according 
to which he assumes that "our Lord, in describing the destruction of Jerusalem and its 
prevenient signs, distinguished that event at the same time from his second coming, 



528 MATTHEW XXIV, 4-14. 



(1.) By a general caution not to confound the destruction of the city with the end of the 
world, (vs. 4-6;) (2.) By contrasting the commotions and persecutions preceding the de- 
struction with the evangelization of the world before the end, (vs. 7-14;) (3.) By a con- 
trast between the coming of the false Christs and the advent of the true Christ, (vs. 
15-27 ;) (4.) By a contrast between the prolixity of the slaughter and captivity attendant 
upon and, through ages, succeeding the destruction of the city on the one hand, and the 
suddenness of the end on the other hand, (vs. 28-31; Luke xxi, 24;) (5.) By a contrast 
between the easy calculability of the approaching destruction of the city and between 
the Divine concealment of the knowledge of the end, (vs. 32-41.)" This theory appears 
to us entirely unsupported by the text, and far more arbitrary and fanciful than the 
double-sense interpretation. In support of the latter it may be urged that it is the 
peculiar character of prophetic vision to make the successive appear as coordinate. Just 
as the prophets of the Old Testament beheld the first and second coming of Christ so 
closely joined together that the distinction of the two events could not be understood 
without the light shed upon the latter by the fulfillment of the former, so the destruction 
of Jerusalem and the final judgment appear to coalesce in the prophecy of Christ. To 
this we object, however, that though the destruction of Jerusalem may be considered a 
type of the final judgment, the former stands, in this discourse of our Lord, not only in 
a typical, but also in a historical, and therefore chronological, relation to the coming of the 
Son of man, described in verse 30. To ignore the chronological order of the prophecy, 
so unequivocally expressed in verse 29, appears to us incompatible with the principles of 
sound exegesis. 

3. Such is the force of the chronological order pointed out in verse 29, that the most 
distinguished modern expositors, such as Stier, Lange, Ebrard, Auberlen, Alford, and 
others, find themselves compelled to adopt the interpretation of the premillenarians, ac- 
cording to which at the close of the long period of tribulation — during which Jerusalem 
shall be trodden down of the Gentiles — Christ will appear in person on earth to usher 
in the millennium. Philologically this interpretation is more natural than any other. 
That our Lord describes, from verse 4 to 28, the condition of his Church prior to his sec- 
ond coming to establish fully his reign on earth — after the establishment of which the 
disciples inquired — and that from verse 29 to 31 the ushering in of the millennium is 
portrayed, can, we think, be shown conclusively. But whether we have to understand 
verses 29-31 literally of a personal coming of Christ to introduce the millennium, or 
whether we may take it figuratively and understand by it a judicial visitation of nom- 
inal Christendom by Christ, in order to destroy all ungodly institutions and principles in 
Church and State, of which judicial visitation the overthrow of the Jewish polity was 
but a type, and which in itself is, in turn, the full type of the final and total overthrow 
of all powers of darkness on the great day of judgment — this question we shall examine 
when we come to the exegesis of that part of the discourse. 

After these preliminary remarks let us proceed to the analysis of the discourse. Its 
strictly-prophetic part extends to verse 36. What follows after this is a hortatory appli- 
cation of the prophecy. In his answer to the disciples' question, the true import of 
which we have ascertained, the Lord shows them (vs. 4-28) that not only the destruction 
of the Jewish Temple and city, but many other judgments and great events should pre- 
cede his coming, in order fully to establish his reign on earth. This part of the proph- 
ecy falls, according to Lange, into two parallel cycles, (vs. 4-14 and 15-28,) each of which 
describes the same period of time, but for different purposes. Having indicated the 
divisions of the discourse, we will now consider each one by itself. 

A. A GENERAL SURVEY OP WHAT MUST PRECEDE CHRIST'S JUDICIAL COMING. 

In this first cycle, (vs. 4-14,) as Dr. Lange calls it, whose interpretation we follow, the 
Lord gives to his disciples the general outlines of what shall precede his coming and the 



A SURVEY OF WHAT MUST PRECEDE CHRIST'S JUDICIAL COMING. 529 



end of the world, after which they had inquired. Instead of especial outward signs, he 
delineates the fundamental features of the course of the world, the dangers surrounding 
them and awaiting his future followers, and requiring the utmost vigilance and perse- 
verance. "Take heed that no man deceive you." With this warning the Savior opens 
his discourse, portraying to them the daring pretensions of men who shall arise to 
assume, in different ways and shapes, his office and work in relation to the human race. 
He then prepares their minds for the perturbations of nations, the persecution of his fol- 
lowers, the manifold distresses which shall characterize the whole period, the apostasy 
of many, and the increasing wickedness of the masses. The impression made upon the 
mind is evidently that it will be difficult for the Church and the individual believer to 
pass safely through all these dangers. Yet " he that shall endure unto the end, the same 
shall be saved." And the cheering key-note echoing through and above all the doleful 
sounds of this prophecy is: "This Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the 
world, for a witness unto all nations." Though ever so many dazzling pseudo-Messiahs 
arise, though bloody wars and wild tumult fill the world, though the existing order of 
things be overturned by the storm of revolutions or by the migrations of whole nations, 
though the earth be visited by devastating pestilence, or be shaken in its very founda- 
tions—notwithstanding all this, the Gospel of the kingdom, of that glorious kingdom of 
God and his Anointed, shall be published to all nations, so that all may have an oppor- 
tunity to accept it, and that it may be a witness against them if they reject it. — It ia 
evidently the intention of Christ to raise his disciples, who viewed his coming as simul- 
taneous with the destruction of Jerusalem, to a loftier and broader stand-point, bidding 
them to look beyond the narrow confines of Jerusalem and Israel out upon the almost 
boundless world of Gentile nations, reminding them, at the same time, that these nations 
are not, as the Jews imagined, to be an object of Divine vengeance, but that, on the con- 
trary, they must first receive the glad tidings of salvation. "And then," not before, 
" shall the end come." 

Verses 4—14. (Compare Mark xiii, 5-13; Luke xxi, 8-19.) 

(4) And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive 
you. (5) For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive 
many. (6) And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not 
troubled : for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. (7) For 
nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom : and there shall be 
famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. (8) All these are the 
beginning of sorrows. (9) Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall 
kill you : and ye shall he hated of all nations for my name's sake. (10) And then 
shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. 
(11) And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. (12) And be- 
cause iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. (13) But he that 
shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. (14) And this Gospel of the 
kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations ; and 
then shall the end come. 

Verse 5. For many shall come in my name. All i the Roman yoke. Owen remarks: " Josepkus says 
those who apply the prophecy exclusively to the de- ! that, during the procuratorship of Felix, there were 
struction of Jerusalem find a perfect fulfillment of ] numbers 'who deceived and deluded the people 
these words in those men who arose in the apostolic j under the pretense of Divine inspiration,' instanc 
age falsely promising to the Jews deliverance from ing an Egyptian false prophet who got together 

34 



530 



MATTHEW XXIV, 4-14. 



thirty thousand deluded men, and led them to the 
Mount of Olives, where they were met by the Roman 
soldiers, and the greater part slain or made prison- 
ers. He also speaks of Theudas — not the one men- 
tioned in Acts v, 36, 37, who must have lived nearly 
forty years previous — a certain magician who per- 
suaded many people to follow him to the Jordan, 
which he promised to divide for their easy passage 
over it, He and his followers perished miserably, 
having been unexpectedly fallen upon by a troop of 
Roman horsemen. Simon Magus, Dositheus, and 
others might be mentioned as among the deceivers 
of that time." We do not deny that the general 
prediction and warning, which the Lord gave con- 
cerning false Christs, found a first and partial ful- 
fillment in those political impostors who inspired the 
people with vain hopes that the time of deliverance 
from the Roman servitude was at hand; but inas- 
much as these men did not profess to be the Mes- 
siah (Christ) in the proper sense of the word; and 
as the Christians were in no great danger of being 
led astray by them, we are not justified in applying 
the warning of Christ specifically and exclusively 
to those deceivers that arose prior to the destruction 
of Jerusalem. As many prophecies of the Old 
Testament had a primary and secondary fulfillment, 
so we may also ascribe to this prophecy of our Lord, 
more or less, a repeated fulfillment, "correspond- 
ing," as Judge Jones remarks, " to the different con- 
ceptions which the disciples and the Savior had of 
the things inquired about, as appears most clearly 
in verse 14. The universal promulgation of the 
Gospel is the true sign of the end, both in the sense 
in which the disciples put their question, and in the 
sense which, in the Savior's mind, it really involved. 
The end of the Jewish State or polity came when 
the Gospel had been preached throughout the inhab- 
ited portions of the earth. The answer, thus under- 
stood, fully met the question in the sense it was put 
by the disciples. They were, in fact, incapable at 
that time of understanding it in any other sense, 
owing to their ignorance of the Divine purposes in 
regard to the calling of the Gentiles. But accord- 
ing to our Lord's conception of the question, as in- 
terpreted by the Divine purposes, the end will not 
come before this Gospel shall have been preached 
throughout a much more extended area than that 
then occupied by the nations." 

Verse 6. With regard to the rumors of war, 
Owen remarks: "For many years previous to the 
final war, there were rebellions, outbreaks, and ris- 
ings of the people against Roman rule, so that the 
whole land was in a state of commotion, and much 
blood was shed. Reference is thought, by some, to 
be had also to the wars and commotions which, 
about that time, agitated the Roman Empire, in 
which four emperors, in the short space of eighteen 
months, came to a violent death. The country was 
kept in agitation and alarm by reports of wars and 
invasions which never actually took place. Josephus 



particularly refers to several of these reported hos- 
tilities, as the declaration of war against the Romans 
by Bardanes, and afterward by his brother, Vola- 
gases, both Parthian kings. But special reference 
is doubtless had to rumors and reports of risings 
and rebellions in the land of Judea against Roman 
domination, and of threats of Roman invasion to 
punish the refractory Jews, which kept the people in 
a state of continual agitation and alarm. It is 
worthy of note, that, when our Lord uttered this 
prediction, the Roman Empire, internally, was in the 
enjoyment of profound peace." — Foe nation shall 
eise, etc. Commentators refer for illustration to 
the disturbances among the Jews at Alexandria, the 
massacre of fifty thousand Jews at Seleucia, and 
a similar tumult at Jamnia, a city near Joppa. But 
the prediction evidently takes a much wider sweep, 
and prominent as wars, famines, pestilences, and 
earthquakes may have been in the years preceding 
the destruction of Jerusalem, they are more or less 
common to every age prior to the promised millen- 
nium. — Famines, and pestilences, and earth- 
quakes. Owen remarks: "Although the clause 'in 
divers places' belongs grammatically to earthquakes, 
yet it is to be referred in sense also to the preced- 
ing evils, famines and pestilences. All these were 
widely prevalent in the earth. Famines and pesti- 
lences are often joined together in profane writings, 
inasmuch as pestilence usually follows upon the 
footsteps of famine. The Greek words, %ifi6g, fam- 
ine, and Xoifiog, pestilence, are nearly alike. The 
etymological signification of both is a pining or 
wasting away. This predictioh of our Lord was 
fully verified. The famine in the days of Claudius, 
mentioned in Acts xi, 28, which, by a reference to 
the historian Josephus, will be seen to have lasted 
with greater or less severity for many years, under 
the two procuratorships of Caspius Fadus and Tibe- 
rius Alexander, was probably but one of many 
which raged, not only in Judea, but in the neigh- 
boring country. There were also pestilences, one 
of which is recorded by Josephus as having raged 
in Babylonia in the reign of Caius Caligula, and 
another is spoken of by Tacitus as having visited 
Italy A. D. 66. Earthquakes were regarded by the 
ancients as evidence of the anger of the Deity and 
the impending" of Divine judgments. Some take 
the word here as metaphorically denoting civil com- 
motions; but the context, in which natural events 
are spoken of, forbids such an interpretation. In 
the time referred to, there were many violent earth- 
quakes. One took place, according to Tacitus, in 
the reign of Claudius. In Asia Minor, during 
Nero's reign, several cities were destroyed by an 
earthquake. Pompeii was nearly destroyed by a 
similar convulsion of nature. Luke adds in this 
connection, 'and fearful sights and great signs 
shall be from heaven.' Although there is scarcely 
any thing which is to be received with more caution, 
and even distrust, than reports of remarkable sights 



A SURVEY OF WHAT MUST PRECEDE CHRIST'S JUDICIAL COMING. 



531 



and appearances seen by individuals, and even by 
an excited community, yet there is no doubt that 
many strange and wonderful sights preceded the 
downfall of Jerusalem. Josephus says that 'a star 
[that is, meteor] resembling a sword stood over the 
city, and a comet that continued a -whole year.' 
Previous to the final rebellion and war, while the 
people in crowds were attending the feast of unleav- 
ened bread, at the ninth hour of the night, a light 
shone around the altar and the holy house, as bright 
as day, and lasting for half an hour. The eastern 
gate of the Temple, which was so heavy that it was 
with difficulty shut by twenty men, and had been 
as usual strongly barred and bolted, was seen to be 
opened of its own accord about the sixth hour of 
the night. A little before sunset chariots and troops 
of soldiers in their armor were seen running about 
among the clouds and surrounding cities. At the 
feast of Pentecost, as the priests were going by night 
into the inner temple to perform their accustomed 
ministrations, they felt a quaking, after which they 
heard a great noise, and the sound as of a multitude 
saying, Let us go hence. A man of the common 
people, Jesus by name, four years before the war be- 
gan, when the city was in peace and prosperity, came 
to the Feast of Tabernacles, and began on a sudden to 
utter in a loud voice woes against the city. This he 
continued to do, by day and night, in all the streets 
and lanes of the city. He was terribly scourged, 
but, at every stroke of the whip, his reply was, 'Woe, 
woe to Jerusalem !' He continued this melancholy 
cry for seven years and five months; when, during 
the siege, as he was going round upon the wall, he 
cried in his loudest tones, 'Woe, woe to the city 
again, and to the people, and to the holy house!' 
and, just as he added, 'Woe, woe to myself, also!' he 
was struck by a stone from one of the enemy's en- 
gines, and killed instantly. No one will charge 
upon Josephus that he forged these stories in order 
to meet the terms of our Lord's prediction. It is 
doubtful whether he had even read or heard of it; 
and, had it fallen under his eve, such was his Jewish 
prejudice against the Christians, that he would have 
been unwilling to do or say any thing which could 
advance their cause." We make this large quota- 
tion, in order to let the reader know all that may 
be said in favor of the fulfillment of our Lord's 
prophecy prior to the destruction of Jerusalem ; 
but we do not think this militates against the 
position we take, that the prophecy was intended 
to have a more general and abiding application, 
the reasons of which we shall presently see. Our 
view is unwittingly confirmed by the following re- 
mark of Dr. Whedon: "Our Lord further cautions 
the disciples that the ensuing troubles are not the 
tribulation preceding the end, from the fact that the 
Gospel must have a universal sway before the world 
ends. As the atonement is for all the race, so the 
preached Gospel is for all the world. Hence the 
disciples, in supposing that the end of the world 



was nigh at hand, and, confounding the tribulation 
of Jerusalem with the tribulation that precedes the 
end of the world, were destroying the true length 
and breadth of the Christian dispensation." 

Verse 9. Then; that is, at this time, during this 
period, not "after these things have happened." 
"Hence it does not conflict with Luke xxi, 12: 'Be- 
fore all these, [commotions, calamities, and fearful 
sights,] the) - shall lay their hands,' etc., the beginning 
of persecution being there referred to, which, waxing 
more bitter and deadly, reached in time the culmin- 
ating point, at which Matthew takes it up and groups 
it with the fearful and ominous signs of coming 
wrath, spoken of in verses 6-8." (Owen.) — And 
shall kill you. Luke says: "And some of you 
shall they cause to be put to death." This was ful- 
filled in some whom the Lord addressed. James, 
and probably Peter, and Paul, and James the Less, 
were put to death before the destruction of Jerusa- 
lem. Others of the apostles also may have suffered 
martyrdom before that event. But the prediction 
of persecutions is certainly not to be restricted in its 
application to the apostolical age. The apostles are 
here addressed as the representatives of the follow- 
ers of Christ up to the end; they were the first-fruits 
of the innumerable company of Christian martyrs. — 
And te shall be hated of all nations. (Compare 
Acts xxviii, 22; 1 Pet. ii, 12; iii, 16; iv, 14.) Taci- 
tus charges them with being enemies of the human 
race. 

Verses 10-12. The apostasy from Christianity, 
as described here, in consequence of the persecu- 
tions of its professors by the world, and the corrup- 
tions gaining ground in the Church, manifested 
themselves even in the lifetime of the apostles, as 
plainly appears from many passages of the apostolic 
writings, (Rom. xvi, 17, 18; 2 Cor. xi, 13; Gal. i, 
7-9; CoL ii, 18; 1 Tim. i, 6, 7, 20; vi, 3-5, 20, 21; 
2 Tim. ii, 18; iii, 1-9; iv, 16; Jude 4,) and espe- 
cially from the Epistle to the Hebrews and that of 
James. Yet it was only a faint image of the subse- 
quent constantly-increasing corruption of the Church, 
which Paul (2 Thess. ii, 3) characterizes as the fall- 
ing away, and against which the apostles raise their 
warning voice in other passages. (Acts xx, 30; 2 
Pet. ii, 1-3.) On verse 12 Meyer makes the very 
appropriate remark: "The abounding of iniquity — 
that is, of the non-fulfillment of the Divine law, 
against which the Epistle of James is for the most 
part directed — among Christians will be the cause 
of brotherly-love waxing cold with the majority 
of them. The moral degeneracy of the Christian 
world will have in its train, along with other evils, a 
wide-spread heartlessness, the very opposite of genu- 
ine Christianity." • 

Verse 13. But he that shall endure. (Comp. 
chap, x, 22.) This is the opposite of the apostasy 
from either the Christian faith altogether or from 
the genuine Christian life, designated in verse 10 a 
"being offended," and verse 12, "a waxing cold." 



532 



MATTHEW XXIV, 15-28. 



— Unto the end; that is, till the distress or persecu- 
ticfns from within and -without shall have come to an 
end. In the case of the Church at large this end 
means the second coming of Christ; in the case of 
the individual Christian, who does not live till that 
event comes to pass, it means the day of his death. 
It is absurd to understand by the "end" the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem, and by the "being saved" the de- 
liverance of the Christians at Jerusalem by their 
flight to Pella. 

Verse 14. The deplorable state of things, both 
within and without the Church, described in the pre- 
ceding part of the discourse, is more than counter- 
balanced by the preaching of the Gospel in all the 
world. That more is meant by this than the preach- 
ing of the Gospel in the Roman Empire, previously 
to the destruction of Jerusalem, appears plainly 
from the addition : For a witness unto all na- 
tions; AND THEN SHALL THE END COME. By the 
"end" the destruction of Jerusalem can be meant 
only in a very limited, subordinate sense, with refer- 
ence to the conceptions of the disciples at that time, 
as explained in the note of Judge Jones to verse 5. 
In the sense which the Savior attached to it, the end 
of the whole great period is meant during which 



Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, till 
the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled, closed by the 
judicial coming of the Lord. The Gospel, that is, 
the tidings of the fullest revelation of God, must be 
preached unto all, so that each and every man is 
thereby, as it were, compelled to take the part either 
for or against Christ. The preaching of the king- 
dom of God itself prepares thus the way for the 
judgment of the nations, as is indicated by the ad- 
dition for a witness. "Although the Gospel had 
been preached prior to the destruction of Jerusalem 
in all parts of the then known world, yet these 
words of the Lord did not find their literal, complete 
fulfillment in those days. After the Roman world 
had been for a long time the theater of the kingdom 
of God, a new world opened with the so-called mid- 
dle ages, and another with their close; and even in 
our days the kingdom of God is almost completely 
shut out from more than one-third of the human 
family — in the interior of Africa, and in Eastern and 
Middle Asia; yet there is ground to expect that 
even these parts of the world will soon be thrown 
open unto us. The gigantic missionary operations 
of our days have brought us considerably nearer to 
the fulfillment of this word of our Lord." (Gerlach.) 



B. THE PREMONITORY SIGNS OF CHRIST'S JUDICIAL COMING. 

In the second cycle (vs. 15-28) the Lord describes the same period as in the first, but 
with special reference to the destruction of the Temple and city of Jerusalem. After 
having placed the disciples on the right stand-point with regard to his second coming 
and the end of the world, which events they erroneously considered as simultaneous with 
the destruction of the Temple, after having raised their narrow Jewish views to the night 
of the universal scope of the Gospel, the Lord returns to the subject which, in the mind 
of the disciples, was the most prominent. The particle ouv, in verse 15, improperly trans- 
lated therefore, is simply used to note the recurrence to the question in verse 3; but it is 
worthy of special note that our Lord does not treat of the destruction of the Temple for and 
by itself, as the disciples, according to their question, desired him to do. Instead of giv- 
ing to the question, "When [at what time] shall these things [that is, the destruction of 
the Temple] take place?" a direct answer, such as, "When this or that shall take place, 
then the desolation shall come," he says: "When the desolation shall come, flee," etc. 
He refers to that fearful catastrophe only parenthetically and for a double purpose; 
namely, not only to enable such of his followers as would then be in or near Jerusalem 
to save themselves by a timely flight, but also to enlighten his apostles concerning the 
nature and extent of that judicial visitation. "When ye see," the Lord means to say, 
" the abomination of desolation in the Temple, as foretold by Daniel, then do not think 
that the end has come — that I shall come for your miraculous deliverance by taking 
vengeance on the destroyers of the Temple. On the contrary, leave the Temple to its 
doom, and flee without delay." The prophecy of Daniel, (chap, ix, 27,) to which the 
Lord refers, literally reads thus : " Till the determined consummation [of the judgment] 
it [the curse] shall be poured upon the desolate." We have, here, not a momentary catas- 
trophe — the destruction of Jerusalem forthwith to be followed by the Messianic judg- 
ment on the Eoman, and the erection of his kingdom on the ruins of the old theocracy, 
as the disciples fondly supposed— but the whole long period of affliction, those " days of 
vengeance and wrath," (Luke xxi, 22, 23,) during which "Jerusalem shall be [being] 
trodden down [so-rat xazounlvq, not -Kazfj^aszai] by the Gentiles, until their times be ful- 



THE PREMONITORY SIGNS OF CHRIST'S JUDICIAL COMING. 



533 



filled," (Luke xxi, 24,) exactly corresponding to what the Lord had said in Matt, xxiii, 38, 
and to the period which, in the Apocalypse, (chap, xi, 2,) is said to last forty and two 
months, and which (chap, vii, 14) is designated by the term "the great tribulation." It 
is the times of the Gentiles, the period in which there is no visible theocracy on earth, 
the old having disappeared with the fall of Jerusalem, and the Messianic dispensation 
being not yet developed into a visible organism, although the Gospel shall be preached 
unto all nations, and believers shall thereby be gathered out from all nations, and kin- 
dred, and people, yet so that they shall not constitute the ruling party, but be subject to 
hatred and persecution, the Church of Christ being, in her state of humiliation, analogous 
to the state of her head during his sojourn on earth. (Comp. Auberlen's remarks on the 
Kingdom of God, Matt, vi, 10.) This period of tribulation for the people of Israel is, at 
the same time, a period of tribulation for the true disciples of Christ, for the people of 
God in the ISTew Testament, because, as we are taught in other passages of Holy Writ, 
the millennial state of the Church of Christ shall not commence before the restoration 
of Israel. The insuperable difficulties we meet with, if we limit the phenomena de- 
scribed from verse 23 to 28 to the state of things before the destruction of Jerusalem, we 
shall show in the exegetical notes. 

Verses 15—28. (Compare Mark xiii, 14-23; Luke xxi, 20-24.) 

(15) When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by 
Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand,) 
(16) then let them which he in Judea flee into the mountains: (17) Let him which 
is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house : (18) ISTeither 
let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes. (19) And woe unto 
them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! (20) But 
pray ye that your flight be not in the Winter, neither on the Sabbath day: (21) For 
then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world 
to this time, no, nor ever shall be. (22) And except those days should be short- 
ened, there should no flesh he saved : but for the elect's sake those days shall he 
shortened. (23) Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there ; 
believe it not. (24) For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and 
6hall shew great signs and wonders ; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall 
deceive the very elect. (25) Behold, I have told you before. (26) Wherefore if they 
shall say untoyou, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the 
secret chambers ; believe it not. (27) For as the lightning cometh out of the east, 
and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man he. 
(28) For wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together. 



Verse 15. When te, therefore, shall see. 
Some readings have for "ovv — therefore," "6i — but." 
At all events, the particle used here does not con- 
nect the command given, verse 16, with the last 
mentioned "end" (v. 14,) but forms the transition 
from the general instruction of verses 4-14, that the 
disciples should not look for the end as so near at 
hand — to the first terminus, the first type of the end 
of the world. — The abomination of desolation. 
As this was to be the God-given sign for the flight 
of the disciples, we can not understand by it, after 
the example of most of the early fathers, any event 



which took place after the taking of the Temple by 
Titus, such as the erection of the statue of Titus or 
Hadrian. But no more can we understand by the 
"abomination of desolation" the Roman standards 
or ensigns, because they were seen in the holy place 
many years before the destruction of Jerusalem, yea, 
at the very time when Christ uttered these words. As 
Luke designates the siege of Jerusalem as the sign 
for the flight of the disciples, it might seem that the 
Lord meant this very siege by the abomination of 
desolation. To this Meyer objects, justly contending 
that by the "holy place" the Temple itself must be 



534 



MATTHEW XXIV, 15-28. 



understood, and not the environs of Jerusalem. It 
is best to understand, with Sti'er and Alf'ord, by the 
"abomination," a desecration of the inside of the 
Temple by the zealots, coincident in point of time 
with the approach of the besieging army mentioned 
by Luke, so that the Christians received a double 
warning to flee, and the words of Christ contain the 
idea: the desecration of the sanctuary by Israel is 
consummated and revenged by its total destruction 
through the Romans. We can not be at a loss about 
the reasons why Matthew and Mark, who wrote 
mainly for Jewish converts, pointed out the inner 
sign, the desecration of the Temple, while Luke, who 
wrote his Gospel mainly for heathen converts, called 
attention to the state of things from without, simul- 
taneous with this internal sign. To this Stier adds: 
"According to Daniel, the abomination proceeds 
from Israel itself, and only when thus viewed it an- 
swers both to its earlier analogy before the exile, 
(2 Kings xxiv, 2-7; Ezek. v, 11; vii, 8, 9; viii, 6-16,) 
and to its final fulfillment in its antitype, when the 
two ingredients meet, where Antichrist himself 
comes forth from out of the midst of Christendom 
and takes his seat with his idolatry in the midst of 
the Temple of God (2 Thess. ii, 4.)" — Spoken of 
by Daniel the prophet. The Lord does not quote 
the passage, Dan. ix, 27, verbatim, but only ad sen- 
sum, in connection with Dan. xi, 31; xii, 11. To 
enter into a full exposition of this prophecy of 
Daniel, would lead us too far. "The Lord calls 
Daniel expressly a prophet, probably because some 
of the Jews did not number him with the prophets; 
in this way he confirms, plainly and solemnly, the 
authenticity of the book bearing his name in the 
Jewish canon, thus refuting beforehand every other 
result of learned criticism." (Stier.) — Whoso read- 
eth, let him understand. De Wette, Meyer, and 
others, take these words for a parenthetical addition 
of the Evangelist, indicating thereby that the signs 
spoken of are drawing nigh already; Stier, however, 
rejects this view, and says: "These words come 
from the lips of Christ himself, and exhort to a 
proper understanding of the dark saying, referring 
to the passages (Dan. chap, xii, 4, 10; ix, 23, 25) 
where Daniel himself is exhorted to listen closely in 
order to understand." 

Verses 16-19. So suddenly will destruction then 
set in, that nothing but a bare escape with life is 
possible. The mountains, mean the mountainous 
regions in the neighborhood, well known as places 
of refuge. "Many of the Jewish Christians, in 
obedience to this command of their Savior, at the 
siege, fled to Pella, a town forming the northern 
boundary of Perea, (see Jos. Jewish Wars, III, iii, 3,) 
and thus preserved their lives. On their way thither 
they had to pass over mountains, and it is not im- 
probable that many of them fled still further north to 
Mount Libanus itself. It was a very remarkable 
fact, that when the Romans, under Cestius Gallus, 
first marched against the city, and taking advantage. 



of the consternation caused by his unexpected and 
sudden approach, was on the point of obtaining pos- 
session of it, he recalled his soldiers from the place, 
and retired from the city, as Josephus says, without 
any reason in the world." (Owen.) — Which is on 
the housetop. From the flat roofs one could come 
by means of the outer staircases into the streets, and 
likewise on the city walls. — Which is in the field; 
that is, whoever is at work in the field, having on no 
outer garment. — Woe unto them that are with 
child. A woe, not of cursing, but of compassion, 
expressive of the Lord's strong sympathy with suffer- 
ing humanity. (Comp. chap, xxiii, 29.) 

Verse 20. The instruction, which Jesus here 
gives to his disciples to pray for alleviating circum- 
stances at the consummation of the woes foretold 
here, teaches us that special interpositions of Di- 
vine Providence are dependent on Christian prayer. 
Winter and Sabbath are mentioned as circum- 
stances impeding traveling and flight. "By leaving 
the city on a Sabbath, at a time when fanaticism 
was at its hight, the Christians would have been in 
the utmost danger of the worst persecutions by the 
Jews. They would thereby have exposed themselves 
to the charge of heretics and traitors." (Lange's 

fieben Sefn.) 

Verse 21. With these words the Lord refers 
again to a prophecy of Daniel, (chap, xii, 1, etc.,) 
which, like the one quoted in verse 15, did not find 
its full and last fulfillment in the destruction of Je- 
rusalem, but pointed to a judicial coming of the 
Lord, of which the judicial destruction of Jerusalem 
was but a type. Whoever understands by the 
"great tribulation" nothing but the destruction of 
Jerusalem meets with insurmountable difficulties in 
explaining verses 22, 24, and 27. An expositor of 
the Scriptures has here only two ways left open; 
namely, either to refer the whole section, inclusive 
of verse 28, to the destruction of Jerusalem, or to 
adopt the view that the Lord, having given his disci- 
ples the necessary warnings and instructions con- 
cerning the approaching destruction of Jerusalem, 
now speaks of the tribulation connected with this 
catastrophe as the type of the tribulation, which 
shall be connected with his judicial coming described 
in verses 27-31 ; or, in other words, that what took 
place shortly before and at the destruction of Jeru- 
salem and the Temple is only a type of what is 
coming to pass when the end, described in verses 
14-28, shall come, or, as Luke has it, when the 
times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled. 

Verse 22. And except those days should be 
shortened, etc. "If God had not in his mercy 
shortened those days — the days of vengeance, (Luke 
xxi, 22) — the whole nation — in the ultimate fulfill- 
ment, all flesh — would have perished; but for the 
sake of the chosen ones — the believing or those 
who should believe — or perhaps for the preserva- 
tion of the chosen race whom God has, not cast off, 
(Rom. xi, 1) — they shall be shortened. It appears 



THE PREMONITORY SIGNS OF CHRIST'S JUDICIAL COMING. 



535 



that, besides the cutting short in the Divine coun- 
sels, (Mark xiii, 20,) which must be hidden from us, 
various causes combined to shorten the siege. 1. 
Herod Agrippa had begun strengthening the walls 
of Jerusalem in a way which, if finished, would have 
rendered them impregnable, but was stopped by 
orders from Claudius, A. D. 42 or 43. (Jos. Autiq., 
XIX, vii, 2.) 2. The Jews, being divided into fac- 
tions among themselves, had totally neglected any 
preparation to stand a siege. 3. The magazines of 
corn and provisions were burnt just before the arri- 
val of Titus. (Jos. Bell., V, i, 5.) 4. Titus arrived 
suddenly, and the Jews voluntarily abandoned parts 
of the fortifications. (Bell., VI, viii, 4.) 5. Titus 
himself confessed: 'God himself has been our ally; 
it is he who took the fortifications, for what could 
human power and engines avail against these tow- 
ers?' (Bell., VI, ix, 1.) Some such providential 
shortening of the great days of tribulation, and 
hastening of God's glorious kingdom, is here also 
promised for the latter times." (Alford. ) 

Verses 23-28. These verses have only a partial 
and subordinate reference to the time of the siege. 
They would, indeed, tend, as Alford remarks, ''to 
correct the idea of the disciples that the Lord's com- 
ing was to be simultaneous with the destruction of 
Jerusalem, and to guard them against the impostors 
who led people out into the wilderness, or invited 
them to consult them privately, with the promise of 
deliverance." But their principal reference is to 
the latter days. We find no where any record in 
profane or sacred history that, before or at the de- 
struction of Jerusalem, there arose "false Christs 
and false prophets, showing great signs and won- 
ders, insomuch that, if it were possible, they would 
deceive the very elect." Again, by the lightning 
coming out of the east and shining unto the west, 
the judicial coming of Christ to destroy the city by- 
means of the inarch of the Roman legions under 
Titus has been understood, but this theory, started 
by Bishop Pearce, and adopted by others without 
examination, has no foundation. We learn from 
Josephus that the Roman legions did not attack 
Jerusalem from the east; they came from the south- 
western frontier of Judea, marched in a north-west 
direction, and assembled on the north, not on the 
east, side of Jerusalem to lay siege to the city. 
There is no other way left us but to apply what is 
said from verse 21-28 to the whole period of tribu- 
lation — to the times of the Gentiles — terminating in 
the judicial visitation of the nominally-Christian 
nations, which will then be ripe for judgment, just 
as the Jewish nation was at the destruction of Jeru- 
salem. On this very account we find also the 
phenomena preceding each catastrophe similar in 
character. Those false Messiahs and impostors, 
arising in the Jewish nation before the overthrow 
of their polity, were faint types of those false Christs 
and false prophets that, according to Paul, (2 Thess. 
ii,) as well as according to various passages in the 



Apocalypse, (chap, xix, 20; xiii, 13, 14,) are to arise 
in the latter times, during the long period of tribula- 
tion, and perhaps more especially toward its close, 
when the times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled. 
By those false Christs and false prophets, as we re- 
marked above, are meant various pseudo-Christian 
principles, appearing in new phases and exerting an 
almost magical influence — showing great signs and 
wonders — upon the Church and the world, so that 
even true .believers are in danger of being led 
astray; the more so because they long for a fuller 
manifestation of Christ's reign on earth than is real- 
ized during this period of tribulation. But these 
false pretenses of establishing the kingdom of Christ 
may be readily detected by the partial and contra- 
dictory representations which are made of Christ: 
"io, here is Christ, or there; behold, he is in the 
desert; behold, he is in the secret chambers." The 
true coming of the kingdom of Christ, as well as of 
Christ personally, needs no heralds; lightning-like, 
it will force a sudden and general conviction. a For 
wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles [or 
vultures] be gathered together." Cadaver-like, such 
as the Jewish Church was before the destruction of 
Jerusalem, will be the condition of nominal Chris- 
tendom — not of the true believers — when the times 
of the Gentiles are coming to a close. " The funda- 
mental law," says Stier, "in all Divine judgments is 
the same; a city or nation ripe for destruction brings 
down upon itself its punishment, not only deservedly, 
but by a kind of self-evident necessity, just as eagles 
or vultures belong to, and are found, where there is 
a carcass. The corpse passes into putrefaction, and 
the putrid mass is removed by God's appointed in- 
struments and servants in order to purify the air." 
The relation of this yet distant Divine judgment to 
the destruction of Jerusalem is forcibly set forth by 
Van Osterzee: "The downfall of the city and the 
Temple was the first of those great catastrophes 
which ushered in the establishment of the kingdom 
of Christ on earth. In increasing glory Christ ap- 
pears on the ruins of fallen temples and thrones. 
At last the kingdom of light celebrates its highest 
triumph, after the kingdom of darkness has shortly 
before gathered all its forces, and the downfall of the 
present and yet future powers hostile to Christ, is 
but the continuation and completion of the downfall 
of Jerusalem." In full accordance with the above, 
and preparatory for the subsequent results of our 
investigation, are the following remarks of Dr. 
Schenkel in his "2)oc]tnatif," (p. 1190:) "The more 
the Gospel spreads in the world, the more stir there 
is among the powers of darkness, the more fiercely 
they prepare for the last decisive struggle. The 
present is the time of development in the midst of 
two great judicial epochs in the history of the 
Church of God. Jerusalem, the seat of the demor- 
alized old theocracy, destined to destruction with 
all subsequent false churchism, and Rome, the cen- 
ter of all ungodly secular power, which, after having 



536 



MATTHEW XXIV, 29-36. 



executed God's judgment on Jerusalem, lent in turn 
its aid to a false theocracy for the persecution of the 
true believers, are the pivots on which turns the de- 
velopment of the kingdom of God up to the time of 
its consummation. The Apocalyptic Babylon is 
idolatrous Rome, the prophetic emblem of that 
secular power, which, though at first in league with 
the false theocracy, is destined to be the means of its 
final destruction, and whose overthrow in turn ushers 
in the complete establishment of Christ's reign ou 
earth. Inasmuch, therefore, as Christ's victory com- 
mences with the destruction of Jerusalem, and be- 
comes complete with the destruction of Rome, the 
development of his kingdom on earth is a continued 
judgment on an unscriptural ecclesiasticism and on 
an antichristian world-power, both of which, at first 
in league, then in deadly conflict with each other, 



must finally give way to the Church of Christ, When 
the whole manifestation of Antichrist in Church and 
State shall have been overcome by the spirit and 
power of Christian truth and liberty, then Satan 
shall be bound; that is, the kingdom of darkness 
shall no longer exist in an organized form, but only 
here and there in individuals. There will then be a 
time of rest and peace, a time of undisturbed com- 
munion with the Lord and with the brethren, figura- 
tively set forth by the marriage of the Lamb with 
his bride. This is the epoch of the so-called millen- 
nium, that grand triumph of God's cause on earth, 
which, though once more to be momentarily inter- 
rupted by an uprising of the power of Satan, will 
issue in such a total and final defeat as to render it 
forever impossible for him to do further injury in 
the universe of God." 



C. THE JUDICIAL COMING OF THE SON" OF MAN THE VIRTUAL BEGINNING OF THE 

FINAL JUDGMENT. 

Having given, in the two preceding parallel cycles, the premonitory signs of Ms com- 
ing and of the end of the world, after which the disciples had inquired, the Lord pro- 
ceeds now to describe this " coming of the Son of man," from verse 29 to 36, stating that 
it will take place immediately after the tribulation, which he had portrayed, and which, 
according to Luke xxi, 24, is to terminate with the fulfillment of the times of the Gen- 
tiles. But what have we to understand by this coming of the Son of man, here de- 
scribed? Let us examine the different views. 

1. Those commentators who apply the whole prophecy, up to verse 36 or 43, to the 
judgment executed by Christ on the Jewish nation, take it to be a highly-figurative de- 
scription of that judgment. We admit freely that the phenomena mentioned in verse 
29 — the darkening of the heavenly bodies, sun, moon, and stars— are often figuratively 
used by the prophets to indicate great commotions and revolutions in Church and State, 
heavy judgments impending over nations and smaller or greater portions of the human 
family. (Isa. xiii, 10; xxxiv, 4; Bzek. xxxii, 7, 8; Amos viii, 9; Hagg. ii, 21.) But how 
can we find in verse 29 a figurative description of the destruction of Jerusalem, when 
it is expressly declared that these phenomena will take place — whether sooner or later 
matters not here — after the tribulation of those days mentioned in verse 21, by which 
they themselves understand the destruction of Jerusalem? They endeavor, indeed, to 
avoid this contradiction by claiming that the dissolution of the Jewish polity, in conse- 
quence of the destruction, is meant by the obscuring of the sun, etc. But this will not 
do; for, according to Josephus, this dissolution took place before, not after the destruction 
of Jerusalem. This interpretation is beset with so many difficulties that every effort to 
remove one creates two new ones, and must, therefore, be abandoned as untenable. It 
must be borne in mind that, a few days before, Christ, at his solemn entry into Jerusa- 
lem, foretold its destruction before all the people in the following plain words : " The days 
shall come upon thee that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee and compass thee 
round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy 
childi-en within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another." In 
equally-plain, historical language the Lord had described the destruction of the city in 
verses 15-21. (Compare the parallel passages in Mark and Luke.) How, then, can we 
suppose that what Christ had described in language so plain he should now clothe in lan- 
guage so highly figurative as to lead the apostles to the notion that the destruction of Je- 
rusalem would forthwith be followed by the great final judgment of the world? It is 
still more surprising that Dr. A. Clarke and nearly all the commentators who understand 



THE VIRTUAL BEGINNING OF THE FINAL JUDGMENT. 537 

by the darkening of the luminaries the dissolution of the Jewish polity, appeal, in con- 
firmation of their view, to Joel iii, 4-20, a prophecy in which the prophet evidently de- 
nounces judgments not against Israel, but against the surrounding heathen nations, for the 
wrong done to the people of God, promising the most gracious deliverance to Jerusalem. 
1 This prophecy therefore must refer to the time of Israel's restoration, foretold by all the 
prophets, which the Lord calls "the fulfilling of the times of the Gentiles." (Luke 
xxi, 2L) The application of the prophecy by Peter to the outpouring of the Holy Ghost 
on the day of Pentecost is by no means contradictory to this view. The period pre- 
dicted by Joel is ushered in by the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, and Peter appeals 
to the prophecy in order to show that the period, called by the prophets "the last days," 
had commenced, that the outpouring of the Holy Ghost was the conclusive proof of it, 
and that "these days," ushered in by the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, will continue 
"until the times of restitution of all things which God has sjDoken by the mouth of all 
his holy prophets," (Acts iii, 21 ;) that is, till the end of Israel's tribulation and the ful- 
filling of the times of the Gentiles. — If, in addition to all this, we consider the unnatural 
interpretation of verses 30 and 31 (see the notes on these verses) to which those are 
forced who see in this coming of the Son of man, nothing but the judicial visitation upon 
the Jews, it is unaccountable how any expositor can still hold this view. 

2. Most of the modern expositors, both English and German, understand by it the 
visible coming of Christ to the final judgment, the destruction of the present planetary 
system and the general resurrection of the dead. But the " immediately after the tribula- 
tion of those days," or, as Mark has it, "in those days after that tribulation," presents an 
insurmountable difficulty to this view. The period of tribulation immediately preceding 
the coming of the Son of man, and lasting till the times of the Gentiles shall have been 
fulfilled, is, as we have seen, a time "in which iniquity shall abound, and the love of 
many shall wax cold;" a time in which "there shall rise false Christs and false prophets, 
and shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall de- 
ceive the very elect;" a time in which the Gentile nations shall be like the Jewish people 
at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, "a carcass, around which the eagles are gath- 
ered;" a time of which the Lord says, in verse 38, that it will be "like the days before 
the Flood." Now, if such a time immediately precedes the coming of Christ to the final 
judgment, where is there any room left for the glorious epoch of the so-called millen- 
nium, in which, no matter what we understand by it, the kingdoms of this world shall be 
God's and his Christ's, that is, shall be under the rule of the Spirit of Christ; in which 
all Papal errors and all antichristian scandals shall have been removed, and at the close 
of which an abounding of iniquity, as it was in the days before the Flood, is both incom- 
patible with the testimony of the Scriptures and psychologically inconceivable? In 
oi'der to obviate this difficulty the advocates of the theory in question maintain that the 
iu'liux; of verse 29 merely means the suddenness of the opening of this epoch, and that it 
ought to be translated, "suddenly;" that is, unexpectedly. But granted that i^diax; means 
unexpectedly, nothing is gained. Whether the event predicted in verses 29-31 shall take 
place sooner or later after that tribulation — the total omission of the intervention of a 
period of time long enough to account for those religious phenomena which, by the clear- 
est declarations of many Bible passages, must take place before the final judgment — we 
mean the complete victory of the Gospel and the binding of Satan, etc. — would be too 
great a chasm in the whole prophecy, and utterly unaccountable. Such an abounding 
of iniquity, as was before the Flood, can not be the characteristic mark of the time 
immediately preceding the final judgment. 

3. It is, therefore, no wonder that some of the most distinguished expositors, such as 
Stier, Ebrard, Auberlen, Alford, adopt the premillenarian interpretation of this passage; 
namely, that Christ will appear in person on earth to usher in the millennium. Philo- 
logically this interpretation is more natural than any other ; but there seem to be insu- 



538 MATTHEW XXIV, 29-36 



perable dogmatical difficulties in the way. Paul (1 These, iv, 13-17) connects Christ's 
coming down from heaven with the resurrection of the dead in Christ, and with the 
being caught up of the then living in the clouds, and in 2 Thess. i, 7-9, he says: " The 
Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in naming fire, 
taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our 
Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the pres- 
ence of the Lord and from the glory of his power." And Peter says in his second 
Epistle, (chap, iii, 10:) "The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in 
the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall 
melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned 
up." Now, if these events are simultaneous with the visible coming of Christ, his visible 
coming involves the last judgment, a total breaking up of the planetary system ; the 
present state of probation ceases, and we see — on this theory also — no room left for the 
millennium, for the perfect moral victory of Christianity over the powers of darkness, 
for the complete realization of the idea of the Church of Christ, all of which the Word 
of God declares most distinctly will take place under the dispensation of the Gospel; for, 
even assuming that a state of probation might continue, it would have to be conceived as 
taking place on the new earth, and constituting a new order of things, entirely different 
from the dispensation of the Gospel. 

4. After weighing all the difficulties besetting the case, we venture to suggest a new 
solution. It is this: that we take what is said of the coming of Christ, in verses 29-36, 
figuratively, and understand by it a judicial visitation of nominal Christendom by Christ, in 
order to destroy all ungodly institutions and principles in Church and State, of which (provi- 
dential) visitation the overthrow of the Jewish polity was but a type, and which itself is, in 
turn, the full type of the final and total overthrow of all powers of darkness on the great day 
of judgment. Since commentators have not hesitated to take the destruction of Jerusa- 
lem for a type of the final judgment, no one should find it strange that, in the descrip- 
tion of the judgment upon Antichrist, which, in its extent and consequences, is of much 
greater importance than the judgment on Jerusalem, figurative expressions are used, 
that shall be fulfilled literally in the final judgment. 

The great error in the figurative interpretation of verse 29 is, that it is referred to 
the overthrow of the Jewish commonwealth, while according to the context it must be 
referred to the restoration of Israel and to the overthrow of the nominally-Christian but 
apostate nations of the world. Now, inasmuch as this great judgment on apostate 
Christendom, or Antichrist, is not only a type but the very beginning of the final judg- 
ment, the Lord uses, in describing it, figurative expressions, which will be literally ful- 
filled in the total change of the present heavens and the present earth, when he comes to 
the final judgment. In a similar manner he had described the events taking place be- 
fore and at the destruction of Jerusalem in words, which are to be completely fulfilled at 
his coming for the introduction of the millennium. The difference between this and the 
common view, which, taking the destruction of Jerusalem as the type of the final judg- 
ment, refei's the words of the Savior, in verses 29-31, to his visible coming to the final 
judgment, is very great, inasmuch as the latter view is irreconcilable with the plain 
words, "Immediately after the tribulation of these days." 

The only question to be answered is: Are we warranted to ascribe to a prophecy a 
double meaning? All expositors, with the exception of the premillenarian literalists, 
return an affirmative answer to this question. We agree, however, with the literalists 
in so far as to admit that the literal import of such words of the Lord as are recorded in 
verses 29-31 must not be deviated from, except the literal sense is contradicted by other 
plain declarations of the Bible — this we believe to be the case with the interpretation 
that, at the opening of the millennium, Christ will appear in person, and that then the 
righteous will be raised — or by well-authenticated historical facts ; and such, we think, 



THE VIRTUAL BEGINNING OF THE FINAL JUDGMENT. 539 

forbid us to find, in verses 29-31, a literal declaration of the personal coming of Christ to 
the final judgment. In allowing to these words a double meaning, in order to avoid the 
difficulties that beset the two other interpretations, we arrive at almost the same conclu- 
sions as Stier, who, though he applies the whole of chap, xxiv, and chap, xxv, 1-30, to 
the personal premillenial coming of Christ, and only chap, xxv, 31—46, to his final com- 
ing to judgment, discourses in his introductory remarks to the prophecy as follows: 
"The fundamental error, which most interpreters of this prophecy commit, consists in 
their losing sight of the relation which the great catastrophes sustain to each other. For 
the destruction of Jerusalem is, in itself, the first coming of the Son of man; only as 
such it has prophetic significance. It is a typical judgment of the world; the kingdom 
of the Lord appears typically established among the nations, in opposition to the rejected 
theocratic people; the two subsequent catastrophes— the Lord's coming at the opening 
and at the close of the millennium — are typified in the judgment on Jerusalem. In this 
light the Lord beholds the latter, and this is the reason why he uses, in chap, xxiv, 4-14, 
and again in 23-28, so strong expressions, that they find their complete fulfillment in the 
more distant events, although the intervening verses (15-22) contain a plain and une- 
quivocal reference to Jerusalem. While in verse 29 the first (typical) coming of Christ — 
to the destruction of Jerusalem — disappears almost entirely out of view, and a second 
(typical) coming of the Son of man for the purpose of gathering his elect into a visible 
kingdom appears in the foreground, it must not be overlooked that this second coming is 
likewise not the coming of Christ to the final judgment, but an intermediate one, and 
this intermediate coming of Christ is the key to the full understanding of the whole 
prophecy. From this intermediate coming of the Son of man is greatly to be distin- 
guished the great final judgment day of the King of kings, the real end of the world, 
Christ's final coming for the purpose of separating the righteous and the wicked, and 
fixing their everlasting destinies immutably, (chap, xxv, 31-46.)" 

To determine in detail how the events connected with the close of the days of Israel's 
tribulation will correspond to the portraiture given in verses 29-31, and in what the sign 
of the Son of man will consist, is impossible before the prophecy shall have been fulfilled. 
Yet the characteristic marks are fully revealed to us; namely, a dissolution of those pow- 
ers and institutions of the world that are arrayed in hostility against Christ and his 
cause, (v. 29;) a conviction forcing itself upon all the inhabitants of the earth that a reve- 
lation of Christ's judicial power is near at hand, a complete consternation of the wicked 
and the subsequent transformation of the kingdoms of this world into the kingdom of 
Chi'ist, (v. 30;) which necessarily involves a partial separation of the wicked from the 
righteous, the union of all the true followers of Christ, and the conversion and restora- 
tion of Israel, (v. 31; comp. Rev. xix, and xx, 1-6.) 

Is it not perfectly Scriptural to assume such a radical change of the moral state of the 
world by means of moral or providential instrumentalities and agencies, so that the pres- 
ent state of probation, which is founded on faith, not on sight, continues uninterrupted 
up to the end of the millennium? But if such an assumption is both rational and 
Scriptural, how could this moral revolution of the world be symbolized more fitly than 
by the sublime scenes at the personal coming of Christ to the final judgment; namely, 
the dissolution and transformation of the present heavens and the present earth — that 
final completion of the probationary state of which the establishment of the millennial 
reign of Christ by moral means is both the earnest and germ? In short, what is more 
natural than that the Lord should describe the opening of the great judicial epoch with 
a providential judgment and its closing with his visible coming, by the same words, 
since the typical meaning of the first will fully correspond to the literal fulfillment of 
the latter? 

In conclusion, the interpretation upon which we have ventured differs from all others 
in this: We do not take the judicial visitation of Israel, in the destruction of Jerusalem, 



540 



MATTHEW XXIV, 29-36. 



as the full type of the final judgment; but we take as such a second providential coming 
of the Lord for the purpose of taking vengeance on the antichristian powers, which have 
come out of nominal Christendom. We need scarcely say that, while we understand by 
the Lord's coming, described in verses 29-36, a providential coming, we do not thereby 
throw any doubt on the reality of his final, personal coming. On the contrary, we can 
well apply to our view what Lange says on the relation of a spiritual or providential 
coming of Christ to his final, personal coming : " The talk of a spiritual coming of Christ 
is in reality an absurdity, if this spiritual coming is not at the same time taken as the 
warrant of his final personal coming. The spiritual coming of Christ is related to his 
final personal coming, as the period is to the epoch. A new epoch comes in reality in 
every moment of the preceding period, especially with every forward move of this period. 
In the same manner, Christ's personal coming is prospectively seen in all that the Church 
and the individual believer passes through, but especially in all Divine judgments upon 
every corrupt form of theocracy, in all reformations and purifications of the Church. 
This was the consciousness that iully pervaded the apostles. They knew that the Chris- 
tian age or world had commenced already in the center of the world's history, in the 
center of their own hearts, in the heart of the human race; and, therefore, they con- 
stantly anticipated the last times, the final winding up of all sublunary affairs. They 
had the inward consciousness that Christ had conquered sin, and Satan, and death, and 
thereby the whole old-world system, and from this overflowing feeling they declared : 
He is at the door. They could not doubt that the Church would welcome her Lord at 
his coming, as the bride does her bridegroom. . . . Yet they did not determine the 
exact time, day or hour, but referred frequently to those conditions from which it 
appeared improbable that the Lord's visible coming was near at hand." 

"Verses 29-36. (Compare Mark xm, 24-32; Luke xxi, 25-33.) 

(29) Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, 
and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the 
powers of the heavens shall be shaken : (30) And then shall appear the sign of 
the Son of man in heaven : and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and 
they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and 
great glory. (31) And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, 
and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end 
of heaven to the other. (32) Now learn a parable of the fig-tree : "When his 
branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that Summer is nigh : 
(33) So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even 
at the doors. (34) Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all 
these things be fulfilled. (35) Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words 
shall not pass away. (36) But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the 
angels of heaven, but my Father only. 



Verse 29. Immediately after the tribulation 
of these days. In order to let the reader fully see 
how those, who refer this and the subsequent verses 
either to the destruction of Jerusalem or to the final 
judgment, interpret this passage, we quote from 
Owen and Whedon. Owen remarks: "I can have 
no hesitancy in referring these verses to the coming 
of Christ to inflict the final stroke, and close up the 



scene of calamity and suffering by the total destruc- 
tion of the city. His messengers had gone before 
him. Pestilences, famines, earthquakes, wars, com- 
motions, had been raging in the earth. The Roman 
armies had beleaguered Jerusalem. The Christians 
had fled to the mountains. F'alse Christs and false 
prophets had arisen and lured multitudes to ruin. 
The nation was ripe for destruction. Around the 



THE VIRTUAL BEGINNING OF THE FINAL JUDGMENT. 



541 



carcass the birds of prey were beginning to hover. 
Immediately after these preliminary events the Son 
of man was to come, and the destruction of the city 
was no longer to be deferred. This is the obvious 
and natural explanation of the passage. That the 
language is similar to that in which Christ's final 
coming is described, can not be denied. But this is 
not strange, when we consider that the one event is 
typical of the other, and that his coming to destroy 
Jerusalem is a representation, faint, indeed, but 
real, of his glorious and awful coming to take ven- 
geance upon the finally impenitent, and that lan- 
guage is therefore used of it, which seems appropri- 
ately to belong to the final judgment. Dr. Robinson 
refei'S verses 29-31 'to the overthrow and complete 
extirpation of the Jewish people fifty years later 
under Adrian, when they were sold as slaves, and 
utterly driven out from the land of their fathers, 
which was the final catastrophe of the nation, and 
far more terrible than that of the destruction of 
Jerusalem; though the latter, in consequence of the 
vivid description of it by Josephus, has come to be 
usually considered as the last act in the great tragedy, 
which it was not' There is no serious objection to this 
view, but yet the great key-passage (v. 34) compels 
us to refer it rather to the time of the burning of the 
city and the Temple." The refutation of this inter- 
pretation we have already given in our introductory 
remarks, though we are inclined to agree with that 
commentator in taking the darkening of the heavenly 
bodies, the falling of the stars, and the shaking of 
the heavens, in a metaphorical sense. His comment 
on these atmospherical phenomena is as follows: 
" Shall the sun be darkened. Professor Stuart re- 
marks, ' nothing is more frequent in the Scripture 
than the indication of great changes, especially great 
calamities, by a description of earthquakes, and 
tempests, and eclipses of the heavenly luminaries, 
or the mention of their bloody aspect, occasioned by 
a murky atmosphere.' The ancients almost always 
connected eclipses and changes of the heavenly 
bodies with the wrath and judgment of the Deity. 
The language employed here has reference to the 
sun's obscuration in a total eclipse, or by a smoky, 
lowering atmosphere, such as usually precedes earth- 
quakes, tornadoes, and similar convulsions of na- 
ture. The moon, etc. There is a parallelism be- 
tween this and the preceding clause, after the man- 
ner of Hebrew poetry. The darkening of the moon 
is to be referred to the same causes which obscured 
the sun. Luke calls these obscurations 'signs in 
the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars,' because 
they were regarded as the signs or symbols of God's 
wrath. The stars shall fall. The atmospheric 
heavens, the region of the falling-stars or meteors, is 
here referred to. The cause of these falling bodies 
being inexplicable, they were regarded by the an- 
cients with great terror. And the powers of the 
heavens shall be shaken. The same general idea of 
calamities and dangers is continued in this parallel- 



ism. The heavenly bodies, in highly-figurative lan- 
guage, are said to be shaken — literally, tossed to 
and fro, as a ship on the waves of the sea — so that, 
although after the notion of the ancients they were 
fixed in the heavens, as in a solid expanse, some of 
them became loosened and fell to the earth, (Isa. 
xxxiv, 4; Rev. vi, 13.) The language is based on 
what is philosophically untrue. But it was not the 
province of the sacred writers to teach philosophy or 
natural science. They employed the current - lan- 
guage of the times in which they lived. They drew 
their illustrations and figures of speech from the 
forms of thought and expression, familiar to the age 
and country in which they lived. They described 
the movements and changes of the heavenly bodies 
according to their phenomenal appearance; that is, 
as they appeared to the senses. All this was just as 
it should be. The terms of science are ever chang- 
ing and inconstant. But the phenomenal appear- 
ance of the heavenly bodies is the same now as it 
was when Moses, David, Isaiah, Matthew, and other 
sacred writers looked upon them. Their language, 
founded upon this appearance, is familiar to us, and 
will be so to all who shall come after us. The sun 
will ever, in common language, rise and set, the 
heavens will be concave, the extremities of the sky 
will touch the earth, etc. Had the sacred writers de- 
parted from these universal and familiar forms of 
speech, their revelation would have been dark, ob- 
scure, incapable of translation, from want of sympa- 
thy with the common forms, idioms, and laws of 
language. In respect to the falling of the stars be- 
ing represented as preceding the shaking of the 
heavens, commentators find what is called a hysieron 
proteron; that is, an inversion of terms, or placing 
of the last first. But it is better to regard the latter 
clause as an emphatic repetition of the preceding one. 
Luke adds other convulsions of nature, such as ' the 
sea and the waves roaring,' a phenomenon which 
l> usually accompanies violent earthquakes." Dr. Whe- 
don rejects entirely all metaphorical interpretation 
of this passage, and applies it to Christ's visible 
coming to the final judgment. The objections to 
this interpretation we have also stated. There is 
certainly great force in the reasons he adduces 
against the figurative interpretation of Owen; but, 
if we take the passage in a literal sense, we have no 
other alternative left than to understand our Lord to 
speak of his personal coming at the beginning, not 
at the end of the millennium. Dr. Whedon's com- 
ment is as follows: "We have obviously here a 
picture of the visible phenomena of the heavens at 
the visible appearance of Christ to judgment. First. 
This whole passage (29-31) is evidently the forepart, 
of which chap, xxv, 31-46, is the afterpart. If either 
is figurative both are figurative. If either is literal 
both are literal. Secondly. This passage embraces 
six particular events: 1. The visible firmamental 
convulsions. 2. The sign of Christ's coming. 3. 
The visible judge. 4. The consequent wailing of t.ie 



542 



MATTHEW XXIV, 29-36. 



tribes of the earth. 5. The angels with the trumpet 
sound. 6. The gathering of the elect. None of 
these things took place at the destruction of Jerusa- 
lem, nor any literal events worthy to be described in 
these terms. Thirdly. The contenders for a figura- 
tive interpretation quote instances of similar lan- 
guage, as they think, used in the Old Testament 
figuratively, as Isa. xiii, 9; Ezek. xxxii, 7. But 
these passages are very poor parallels indeed; they 
simply describe an obscuration of the heavens, such 
as takes place when smoke or vapor fills the con- 
cave, as at an earthquake or conflagration of a great 
city. Such passages present at best but the first of 
the above six particulars. In fact, they are far from 
filling out that. These false parallels describe an 
obscuration of the heavens; the present passage, a 
sensible convulsion of earth and heaven, with an 
outline of specific and peculiar events. Let any one 
study the clear, specific import of the last five of the 
six particulars — of which the first is a comparatively- 
unimportant prelude — and say whether any thing in 
the supposed parallels quoted from the prophets at 
all meets this case. These five particulars are 
plainly an organic part with chap, xxv, 31-46. 
Fourthly. The suddenness of the event described in 
this passage is the entire point illustrated by verses 
36-51. The suddenness of the judgment advent is 
one of the points frequently asserted in the New 
Testament. But the destruction of Jerusalem was 
not a sudden, but a very slow, long-foreseen, well- 
forewarned event. There was no suddenness or sur- 
prise about it. The war slowly approached; the 
city was gradually surrounded with an overpowering 
force.; post after post was painfully taken, and there 
was no particular day on which the downfall could 
be dated. Fifthly. Some commentators defend the 
allegorical interpretation by finding here what they 
call a double sense. Both great events, they think, 
are described in the same language. Now we admit 
that prophecy does sometimes describe one event in 
terms that allusively picture another event. But the 
language ought, in such case, when reduced to liter- 
al ity, not to express falsehood. Now, if this passage 
describes the destruction of Jerusalem, it does con- 
tradict the truth of history. It describes it as a sud- 
den, incalculable event. History contradicts such 
prophecy. Sixthly. If this passage be figurative, 
where do we find a literal description of the judg- 
ment-day? What passage describes or announces 
that event, which may not be with equal propriety 
reduced to figure? Seventhly. We have shown in 
our note on verse 21, that the term tribulation 
covers the entire period of Jewish downfall. But 
the firmamental phenomena were after that tribula- 
tion, and were no part of it." 

Verse 30. And then shall appear the sign of 
the Son of man in heaven. Wherein this sign shall 
consist, the Lord does not say; and the comment- 
ator, as a matter of course, does not know. This 
much, however, is certain, that all the inhabitants of 



the earth will thereby be convinced of the nearness 
of Christ's coming to judgment, as lightning filling 
the whole horizon forebodes the impending storm. — 
And then shall all the tribes of the earth 
mourn; that is, all unbelievers, all hypocrites, all 
enemies of Christ. Those expositors, who apply 
this section to the destruction of Jerusalem, trans- 
late "all the tribes of the \_Jeioish~] land." This is 
not only a very forced interpretation, but altogether 
inconsistent with the parallel passage in Luke, which 
reads: "And upon the earth [shall be] distress of 
nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves 
roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear and for 
looking after those things which are coming on the 
earth." (Luke xxii, 25, 26.) — And they shall see 
the Son of man coming- in the clouds of heaven. 
The prophets speak likewise of the coming of 
Jehovah in the clouds of heaven, when they an- 
nounce the execution of Divine judgments upon the 
nations, (comp, Isa. xix, 1; Neh. i, 3.) — With 
power and great glory. Stier, though apparently 
believing in the visible coming of the Lord for the 
establishment of the millennium, understands, never- 
theless, these terms figuratively; he says: "By 
'■power' we must not understand hosts of angels or 
saints attending the Lord, but in contrast with the 
before-mentioned powers of the heavens which are 
shaken, an overwhelming manifestation of Divine 
power in his coming to the judgment, as the ''great 
glory] the flood of light encircling him, now shines 
alone, after the luminaries of heaven have been 
darkened, as the last type of what will literally be 
fulfilled at his last coming." Luke here adds, sig- 
nificantly: "When these things begin to come to 
pass, then look up and lift up your heads; for your 
redemption draweth nigh." 
Verse 31. And he shall send his angels, etc. 
I To apply this verse to the Jewish Christians, who 
saved themselves by fleeing to Pella at the approach 
,of the Roman armies, or to understand by the an- 
gels the apostles, and by the trumpets the preaching 
of the Gospel, is deservedly characterized by Meyer 
as exegetical outrages. Such forced interpretations 
carry their refutation in themselves. In explaining 
this passage, the only question is whether the com- 
ing of the Lord spoken of will take place at the 
beginning or at the end of the millennium, and 
whether it is a personal and visible, or a providen- 
tial and spiritual coming. For dogmatical reasons 
we declare, as we have remarked before, in favor of 
a spiritual, providential coming of the Lord for the 
purpose of establishing the millennium, which com- 
ing is, at the same time, typical of, and preparatory 
to, his last visible coming to judgment. According 
this view, " the angels" mean — in the first fulfill- 
ment of the prophecy — not angels proper, that visi- 
bly appear, but the manifold visible and invisible 
powers and instruments, which God at that time 
shall set in motion and make use of as ministering 
servants. — His elect are all true Christians living 



THE VIRTUAL BEGINNING OF THE FINAL JUDGMENT. 



543 



at that time upon the earth, and especially Israel, 
that shall have embraced with penitence and faith 
its rejected Messiah. It is not necessary here to 
discuss all the prophecies that speak of the return 
of Israel to Canaan, the land of its fathers; it 
may suffice merely to quote the principal ones, as 
Leviticus xxvi, 40-45; Deuteronomy xxx, 1-9; Ho- 
sea iii, 4, 5; Joel iii, 19-26; Amos ix, 14, 15; Micah 
vii, 15-20; Ezekiel xxxvii, 21-28; Jeremiah xxviii, 
5-8; Isaiah xi, 12, 13; Zechariah xii, 7-12. Com- 
pare Romans xi, 1—7, 25-28. It is true, most of 
those expositors who understand these and similar 
passages literally, and refer them to the conversion 
of Israel as a nation and its return to Canaan, con- 
nect therewith the visible appearance of Christ, his 
personal reign upon earth, the first resurrection, and 
the change of the then living believers on earth, etc., 
appealing in support of this view to Ephesians i, 9- 
14; 1 Thessalonians iii, 13; iv, 13-17; Judel4; 1 
Corinthians xv, 23, 52; Philippians iii, 20, etc. Much 
might be said, indeed, in favor of a visible appearance 
of Christ at the beginning of the millennium, and 
of a first resurrection connected with it, and this 
very text (v. 31) is mainly relied on in support of 
this view. But the difficulties that may beset our 
interpretation are by no means as great and as 
many as are those of the premillenarian view. The 
New Testament passages which are generally quoted 
in support of it we shall examine impartially when 
we get to them. Stier, although favoring the pre- 
millenarian view, does not express himself distinctly 
when he comments on this verse: "Although we do 
not know these things in detail, yet the return of 
Israel is evidently most intimately connected in the 
word of prophecy with the (intermediate) coming of 
Christ for the purpose of establishing the millen- 
nium. This mystery, as well as the resurrection, 
the Lord still vails here, yet the gathered elect are 
mainly the believing portion of Israel, as appears 
also from the close resemblance of the expressions 
used here and in Deuteronomy xxx, 4; Isaiah xi, 
11, 12; Isaiah xliii, 5, 6; Zechariah ii, 6-13. Yet 
the fullness of the Gentiles is added to his elect, 
both together forming his people, that were dis- 
persed, but are now brought together. (1 Pet. i, 1; 
Jam. i, 1.) Opposed to the mourning generations 
of the earth is the chosen generation as the people 
of heaven, hence gathered from the ends of heaven — 
whereby the resurrection is again obscurely hinted 
at. The somewhat different expression used by 
Mark, ' from the uttermost part of the earth to the 
uttermost part of heaven,' indicates that heaven and 
earth shall then have been brought wonderfully near 
each other." Lange also seems to adopt an inter- 
mediate, visible appearance of Christ, and remarks 
on this passage: "That the end of the world is not 
brought about suddenly, abruptly, is also taught by 
Paul, (1 Cor. xv, 23, 24:) 'Christ, the first-fruits; 
efterward they that are Christ's at his coming; then 
(cometh) the end.' Between the first and the sec- 



ond event intervenes a long period, wherefore there 
will probably be one also between the second and 
the third. This period is only hinted at in John v, 25. 
(Compare verse 28.) But in our section a succession 
of judicial acts is clearly distinguished. First, judg- 
ment is executed on the ministerial office, (v. 45;) 
then on the Church in general, (chap, xxv, 1-13;) 
on her individual members, (chap, xxv, 14-30;) then 
on all nations, (chap, xxv, 31-46.) This succession 
of judicial acts points to a period of Christ's reign 
on earth, which is represented in the developed es- 
chatology, (Rev. xx,) as the millennium in symbol- 
ical form. The Church that, up to this time, had 
been scattered and hid among the nations of the 
world, will be gathered by his appearance and put 
on her bridal array. As the great catastrophe of 
the destruction of Jerusalem is thus developed into 
a period that does not come to its close before the 
appearance of Christ, so is the act of Christ's ap- 
pearance in turn the germ of a period that comes 
to its full close with the universal judgment and the 
end of the world. The millennium is, even in its 
totality, the great day of separation, the last cos- 
mical catastrophe, from out of which the present 
world shall go forth transformed into heavenly 
splendor." 

Verses 32, 33. Now learn a parable of the 
fig-tree. " The fig-tree differs from other trees in 
producing blossoms before the leaves, and in devel- 
oping the fruit simultaneously with the formation of 
the leaves. When, therefore, the leaf bursts, Sum- 
mer or harvest is at hand. The leaves are, con- 
sequently, the signs that have been described." 
(Lange.) Stier remarks: "In this parable the Lord 
reminds his disciples of that fig-tree that had with- 
ered away in consequence of his curse, but which 
now again brings forth leaves and fruit. He thus 
points out the revival of Israel, an increasing suc- 
cess attending the mission among the Jews, as infal- 
lible signs that the Lord's coming to his people is 
near at hand, as the addition in Luke, 'all trees' 
points to the blessed results of the preaching of the 
Gospel among all the nations of the earth. (Com- 
pare Rev. xxii, 2.)" — So likewise te, etc. As the 
nearness of harvest is to be inferred from the fig- 
tree putting forth its leaves, so believers, when they 
see the premonitory signs above described, shall infer 
that the coming of the Lord is nigh. But in this 
very way the Lord intimates to his disciples that his 
coming, in the way in which they expected it, could 
not take place during their lifetime. In a similar 
manner the apostle Paul instructs the Thessalonians, 
(2 Thess. ii, 1-3.) — When te shall see all these 
things, etc.; that is, the signs preceding the coming 
of Christ, given in verses 14 and 23-28. 

Verse 34. Verily I say unto you, this genera- 
tion [oh fir) ■Kaptldi) 7) yevea avrrf] shall [certainly] 
not pass, [away,] till all these things [which he 
had told them should precede his coming] be ful- 
filled; that is, shall have come to pass, (eug dv 



544 



MATTHEW XXIV, 29-36. 



travTa ravra yZvqrai..) Those expositors that refer 
the whole prophecy to the destruction of Jerusalem, 
as a type of the final judgment, consider this pas- 
sage the key to the whole prophecy, and contend 
that the word yevea can mean nothing else than the 
then living Jews. We readily admit that, in itself 
considered, this might be the meaning of the text, 
and that, if this were the only meaning of yevea, 
nothing but the destruction of Jerusalem could be 
meant by "all these things.'' Rationalistic writers, 
denying that yevea ever has any other meaning than 
the one under consideration, refer "all these things" 
to the destruction of Jerusalem, and do not hesitate 
to assert that our Lord was mistaken both with 
regard to the events that he foretold in verses 23- 
27, as preceding the destruction of Jerusalem, and 
with regard to his coming to the final judgment 
immediately afterward! But, happily, it can be 
proven, beyond the possibility of a successful con- 
tradiction, that yevea. has other meanings than that 
of a generation living at a certain time. In classic 
Greek this is, in reality, only the last of its mean- 
ings; its first is actual birth, the second, descent, 
lineage, pedigree, and the last, generation, in the 
sense stated. In Iliad, VI, 146, e.g., the yeverj <j>vX?mv 
may mean both the generation, the annual growth 
of leaves, which issue in Spring and drop in Au- 
tumn, or it may mean the race, the kind, equal to 
(j>vAka, that is, perishable as leaves are so are men, 
(yevei) avSpuv;) but ibid, VI, 151, it has evidently the 
meaning of descent, lineage, pedigree, including his 
ancestors as well as Glaukos himself. In the same 
sense the word is used in the New Testament. In 
Matthew xxiii, 36, the Jews living in the days of 
our Savior are declared by Christ to be liable to the 
whole punishment due to the crimes of their ances- 
tors, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the 
blood of Zacharias, whom the Savior says "ye slew." 
The then living Jews were not only like their ances- 
tors in disposition, but formed an organic whole with 
them ; and on this rests the justice of what the Savior 
tells them, that, upon this generation — ■" inl ttjv yev- 
eav ravTTiv" — all the punishment due to the crimes 
of their ancestors should be inflicted. In the same 
sense the term is used in Matthew xvii, 1*7, and Acts 
ii, 40. (Compare with Acts vii, 51-53.) In Philip- 
pians ii, 15, where the English version renders it 
"nation," it has evidently the same meaning — 
not that of a generation living at a certain time, 
but of "race," embracing ancestors and descendants 
as a unit, an organic whole, looking both forward 
from father to children and children's children, and 
backward from the children to the father and his 
ancestors. The LXX translated the Hebrew dor 
with yevea, and Jeremiah viii, 3 — rendered in the 
English version by "this evil family" — means evi- 
dently the Jews as a race, looking forward from the 
fathers to the children and children's children. And 
this meaning, it seems to us, the word has evidently 
in our text. "All these things" were certainly not 



fulfilled before the then generation of Jews had died 
out, as the violent and unnatural attempts of those 
writers who refer them to the destruction of Jerusalem 
too plainly show. But they will be fulfilled before 
the Jews cease being a race, a nation distinct from 
all others. Thus we have in this word of the Lord 
a very significant reference to the historical miracle 
of God's hand resting upon Israel — according to 
the ancient prophecy, Numbers xxiii, 9— whose con- 
tinued existence as a separate, peculiar people, even 
under the curse of Jehovah, has for nearly two 
thousand years withstood the power and wisdom of 
all the nations, and contravened all the laws of his- 
tory. The answer of that divine was, therefore, 
most appropriate, who said, when Frederic the Great 
desired him to give in one word a striking proof of 
the divinity of the Bible, "the Jews." 

Verse 35. Heaven and earth shall pass away, 
not by being annihilated, but by being changed into 
a new and more beautiful form. (2 Pet. iii, 12, 13; 
Heb. i, 11, 12; Isa. Ii, 6; Rev. xxi, 1.) "What the 
Lord had said in the opening of the Sermon on the 
Mount, (Matt, v, 18,) and again, (Luke xvi, 17,) of 
the law, what the Old Testament had testified of the 
Word of God in general, (Ps. cxix, 89, 96 ; Isa. xl, 8,) 
the same the Lord says here of his own words, 
whose prophetic portion will, therefore, also be ful- 
filled. Yea, his words find their final fulfillment 
when heaven and earth shall pass away; that is, 
when their present form shall be changed." (Stier.) 

Verse 36. But of that day and hour. Accord- 
ing to the common view the Lord speaks, in verse 
34, of the destruction of Jerusalem, and here of the 
universal judgment, But this exposition destroys 
the connection of the whole discourse, while by the 
interpretation adopted by us the connection is pre- 
served, and all its parts beautifully harmonize. In 
one sense the Lord has clearly marked the time of 
his coming described in verses 29-34 — he will not 
come "before the Gospel of the kingdom shall have 
been preached in all the world for a witness unto all 
nations;" again the sign of the Son of man shall not 
appear in heaven before the period of great tribula- 
tion, during which Jerusalem shall be trodden down 
of the Gentiles, comes to a close, the time of the 
Gentiles be fulfilled, and Israel, the withered fig-tree, 
puts forth leaves again. The Lord has mentioned 
certain premonitory signs by which his people can, 
and shall, know when his coming is at hand; but the 
knowledge of the exact time, both as to when these 
signs shall have fulfilled their mission, and when this 
present world period — ovtoq 6 aluv — shall be com- 
pleted, is hidden in the bosom of the Deity alone. 
Mark adds: "Neither the Son knoweth." Lange 
considers this not knowing of the Son as a humble 
unwillingness on his part not to know it, as opposed 
to the unauthorized curiosity of the disciples. Ac- 
cording to this scholar the Lord, by not desiring to 
ascertain the exact point of time, set his Church an 
example which she should imitate. Stier, on the 



CLOSING EXHORTATIONS. 



545 



other hand, says more correctly: "The Lord does 
not say, 'This I have not to tell you; this I do not 
know for you;' but plainly, 'The Son knoweth it 
not' To say that Christ, as a man, knoweth it not, 
but as God knoweth it, is self-contradictory; to 
know and at the same time not to know a thing 
would destroy the unity of the personality of the 
God-man, and can not be ascribed to the Son of 
man, who is, indeed, the Son of God, but for the 
time being in the form of human existence. It was 
proper for him, who became like unto us to be our 



pattern in his walking by faith, that in the state of 
his humiliation he should not know the completion 
of the aeon. But that he now knows it, sitting at 
the right of his Heavenly Father, no one doubts. As 
to whether the 'revelation of Jesus Christ to show 
his servants' (Rev. i, 1) includes also the revelation 
of the day and hour, we doubt, and all the manifold 
calculations made on this point can not but confirm 
us in our view. We simply believe that it will not 
be given to any believer to know more before the 
end than Christ knew during his stay on earth." 



D. CLOSING EXHORTATIONS. 
Verses 37-51. (Compare Mark xiii, 33-37; Luke xxi, 34-36.) 

(37) But as the days of iNoe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of 
man be. (38) For as in the days that were before the Flood they were eating and 
drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that ISToe entered into 
the ark, (39) and knew not until the Flood came, and took them all away; 
so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. (40) Then shall two be in 
the field ; the one shall be taken, and the other left. (41) Two ivomen shall be 
grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left. (42) Watch there- 
fore; for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. (43) But know this, that 
if the goodman of the honse had known in what watch the thief would come, he 
would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. 
(44) Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of 
man cometh. (45) "Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath 
made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season? (46) Blessed is 
that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. (47) Verily I 
say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all bis goods. (48) But and if 
that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming ; (49) and 
shall begin to smite Ms fellow-servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken ; 
(50) the lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and 
in an hour that he is not aware of, (51) and shall cut him asunder, and appoint 
him his portion with the hypocrites : there shall be Weeping and gnashing of teeth. 



Verses 37-39. Having instructed his disciples 
that his coming, which they had conceived of as 
intimately connected with the destruction of Jeru- 
salem, and, therefore, as near at hand, was, in the 
sense of a full establishment of his kingdom, still 
afar off, the Lord informs them, and through them 
the Church of all times, that the world would utterly 
disregard the signs of his judicial coming, and this 
very disregard is represented as a frightful sign of 
approaching judgment. The coming of the Son of 
man here is identical with that spoken of in verse 30. 
To his coming to execute judgment on Jerusalem, 
or to the final judgment, the state of things described 
here is only in so far applicable as a disregard of 
God's Word and warnings precedes the execution of 



every Divine judgment, or, rather, forms part of the 
judgment itself; as it was the case in the days of 
the Flood. "The security here spoken of is not in- 
consistent with the fear spoken of by Luke, (xxi, 26.) 
They say, peace, and outwardly act as if it was 
really so, but in their hearts and consciences they 
feel the pangs of the approaching judgment, (1 
Thess. v, 3.)" (Stier.) 

Verses 40-44. In full accordance with the train 
of ideas we have presented in the Lord's answer 
to the question of his disciples, Stier defines the con- 
nection as follows: "With the repeated, 'so shall 
also the coming of the Son of man be,' the Lord 
comes back to the general warning — take heed — with 
which he set out. But the first warning — the end is 



35 



546 



MATTHEW XXIV, 37-51. 



not yet near at hand — passes over into the very op- 
posite one — the Lord comes unexpectedly ; be, there- 
fore, always ready ! This contrast gives much ma- 
terial for serious thought, and forms part of the 
wonderfully deep import of the whole discourse. In 
verses 40, 41, we are told, in the first place, that in 
the very midst of the ordinary labors of life the 
sifting judgment will come upon men. Then this 
sifting is represented as breaking all the bonds of 
society. These verses, moreover, contain also the 
hint, that those worthy of the kingdom, though 
keeping themselves in constant readiness by watch- 
ing and' prayer, shall, nevertheless, not separate 
themselves from the natural order and avocations of 
life." Alford calls attention to the fact, that verses 
41, 42, can not possibly be referred to the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem, as verses 16-18. He says: 
" Then it is a question of voluntary flight; now of 
being taken [by the angels, v. 31] or left. Nor 
again do they refer to the great judgment of chap, 
xxv, for then (v. 32) all shall be summoned — but 
they refer to the millennial dispensation, and the 
gathering of the elect to the Lord then." We have, 
however, to remark that, what the Lord says in 
verses 42, 43, of our not knowing the hour of his 
coming, and the consequent necessity to be always 
ready, is applicable to any period, when the Lord 
comes as the Judge to individuals, (in the hour of 
death,) or to whole nations, (in national judgments,) 
or to the whole race, (on the great judgment-day.) 
The point of comparison with the "thief of the 
night" (comp. 1 Thess. v, 24; 2 Pet. iii, 10; Rev. 
iii, 3; xvi, 15) is the perfect surprise. If the lord 
of the house knew the exact time of the thief s com- 
ing, there would be no necessity for constant watch- 
ing. "The Son of man will come at a time when 
the world lies buried in deep sleep. When men 
open their eyes, all their possessions are taken away, 
the whole appearance of the world, wherein they en- 
joyed their false existence, will be gone." (Lange.) 
The advocates of Christ's personal, visible coming 
for his millennial reign appeal in support of their 
view mainly to the often-repeated, express declara- 
tion of the Lord, that his coming to judgment shall 
take place quite unexpectedly, and that, for this 
very reason, believers ought to be always ready. 
Rev. D. D. Buck, in his Harmony and Exposition 
of Matt, xxiv, remarks: "The coming of the Lord 
is represented to us, not as the gradual disappear- 
ance of the night, not as a slowly-approaching morn- 
ing of the millennium, but as a sudden event, unex- 
pected to the most watchful, whence follows the 
necessity of being always ready, since it will come so 
suddenly that there is no time left for preparing for 
it, after the premonitory signs have appeared. But 
how can we reconcile this state of things with the 
commonly-entertained view, that the Lord shall not 
come personally before the lapse of a thousand years 
of uninterrupted righteousness and blessedness? If 
the second Advent does not take place before the I 



millennium comes to a close, how shall we account 
for it, that our Lord and his apostles speak of it as 
something that might take place at any time during 
the Gospel dispensation? Christ tells us expressly, 
that he will come speedily after the tribulation of 
that time, or when the times of the Gentiles should 
be fulfilled. But when their times shall be fulfilled, 
whether sooner or later, God has not revealed to us, 
and no man can determine it. And it is surprising, 
that those, also, who contend for a literal interpreta- 
tion of the prophecies, are nevertheless inclined to 
determine the time of Christ's coming by this or that 
event, without any regard to the fact, that it will not 
take place before the Jews have repossessed Jeru- 
salem and the nations of the earth meet for the con- 
flict against Israel, (Zech xiv.) Since it is not 
revealed unto us when the times of the Gentiles 
shall be fulfilled, and the time of Israel's tribulation 
be ended, it is incontestably certain, that the day of 
the Lord, together with the preceding premonitory 
signs, will come suddenly and unexpectedly, like a 
thief of the night or the travail of a woman, like the 
Flood, like the destruction of Sodom." This argu- 
ment, which we have given in a condensed form, ap- 
pears to us conclusive as to the point, that the mil- 
lennium will be ushered in, not like the dawn of 
morning, but by a sudden and fearful catastrophe, 
though we prefer — with the light we have at present 
upon the subject — -to take this catastrophe, described 
in verses 29-31, in a symbolical sense. 

Verse 45. The proper readiness or preparedness 
the Lord now illustrates in three successive parables, 
closing chap, xxv, 30. The first parable (verses 
45-51) refers evidently to the servants of the Lord 
in the proper sense of the term ; that is, to the min- 
isterial office. According to Luke (xii, 42-46) the 
Lord had spoken this, as well as the parable of the 
talents, (xxv, 14-30; comp. Luke xix, 12-27,) on an 
earlier occasion. Mark (xiii, 34-37) seems to have 
condensed the two parables about the servant into 
the one idea expressed in verse 43. (See more about 
this in Mark.) — Who then is? This question the 
Lord asks in order to arouse and exhort every one 
to ask himself the question: Is it I? At the same 
time the question seems to suggest the idea, whether 
there will be many such servants when the Lord 
comes. — Whom his lord has made ruler over his 
household. "It is worthy of note that the servant, 
who ministers to his fellow-servants, giving them 
their meat — -spiritual food, the Word — in due season, 
is represented by the Lord as having been made 
ruler over his household, while the evil servant, who 
acts the despot toward the whole household, is not 
represented as having been thus appointed, and ap- 
pears in his quasi-official maltreatment of his inferi- 
ors as a criminal abuser of his fellows." (Lange.) 

Verse 48. And if that evil servant shall say 
in his heart. In his official capacity he can not 
publicly express his unbelief, for which reason he 
will have his portion appointed with the hypocrites. 



THE PARABLE OF THE TEN VIRGINS. 



547 



(V. 51.) — My lord delayeth his coming. As in 
chapter xxv, 5, so is here a tarrying of the Lord 
hinted at. 

Verse 49. Lange has on this verse the ingenious 
remark: "The evil servant is guilty, on the one 
hand, of despotic overbearing and abuse of those to 
whom he ought to give their meat in due season; 
and, on the other hand, of too great laxity in his in- 
tercourse with the evil members of the household 
and the unbidden guests with whom he riots. One 
can here scarcely help being reminded of the great 
contrast in the dealings of the Church of Rome, of 
the Inquisition, and her indulgences." — The con- 
duct of the evil servant who, in the delusion that his 
lord delayeth his coming, smites his fellow-servants, 
and indulges in the gratification of carnal desires, is 
very instructive. If the coming of the Lord to judg- 
ment were a living reality for the professors of Chris- 
tianity, if they would constantly look for it, as the 
first Christians did, there would certainly not be so 
much strife and contention, bitterness, envy, ambi- 
tion, domineering, revengefulness among the differ- 
ent branches of the Church and the members of tho 
same Churches; they would, on the contrary, rather 
take to heart the exhortation of the apostle: "There- 
fore, judge nothing before the time, until the Lord 
come, who both will bring to light the hidden things 
of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of 
the hearts, and then shall every man have praise of 
God." (1 Cor. iv, 5.) Nor would there be so much 
luxury and extravagance in the Church; the contri- 
butions for the support of the preaching of the Gos- 
pel at home and abroad would be much more liberal. 
To the doctrine of the visible coming of Christ at the 
opening of the millennium it has been objected, that 
it would dampen the missionary zeal of the Church 
for the conversion of the world. This objection, 
however, is unfounded, if for no other reason, at 
least for this: that those, also, who do not look for 
Christ's visible coming before the end of the millen- 



nium, do not believe that all men will be converted 
to God before Christ comes to judgment. It is not 
more than just to listen to what the premillenarians 
have to say to the objection in question ; we quote 
again from Buck's Harmony and Expositions: "But 
who will contribute to the missionary cause, if 
the premillenial-advent doctrine prevails? Who will 
contribute? Do you think 'the evil servant' will, 
who says in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming ? 
Will he give largely, regularly, and from principle, to 
the cause of missions? What is the chief impedi- 
ment to the world's conversion? What is it that 
locks up the hearts and hands of the wealthy and 
would-be-wealthy Christians ? Is it not the seem- 
ingly-irresponsible extravagance, lusts, and worldly 
ambition of the present age? How should we all 
feel if we were deeply impressed with the reality of 
the Lord's judgment-coming, and with the certainty 
that it may be immediately? Would there be as 
much vanity and disposition to consume not only 
our wealth, but our religion too? Would the gen- 
eral cry be, What shall we eat? what shall we drink? 
and wherewithal shall we be clothed? (Titus ii, 12, 
13.) Would there be so much laying up treasure on 
earth? What is the principal difficulty in the way 
of the largest liberality? Could the infidelity of the 
world and the worldliness of the Church withstand 
the general, clear, and Scriptural conviction that the 
Gospel must be preached to all nations before the 
Lord shall come in order to destroy Antichrist, but 
that he will come as a thief in the night, not at the 
end of the millennium, yea, that the day of the Lord 
will come as a snare upon all them that dwell on 
the face of the whole earth." 

Verse 51. And he shall cut him asunder; a 
capital punishment common in ancient times, (1 
Sam. xv, 33,) answering to our "quartering," point- 
ing to that punishment that will be connected with 
the dividing asunder and laying open of the wicked 
heart. (Heb. iv, 12.) 



CHAPTEE XXV. 



§61. THE PARABLE OF THE TEN VIRGINS. 



"Verses 1—13. 



(1) Then shall the kingdom of heaven he likened unto ten virgins, which took 
their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. (2) And five of them were 
wise, and five were foolish. (3) They that were foolish, took their lamps, and took 
no oil with them . (4) Bat the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. 
(5) While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. (6) And at mid- 
night there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh ; go ye out to meet 
him. (7) Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps. (8) And the 



548 



MATTHEW XXV, 1-13. 



foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. (9) But 
the wise answered, saying, Not so ; lest there be not enough for us and you : hut 
go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves. (10) And while they went 
to buy, the bridegroom came ; and they that were ready went in with him to the 
marriage : and the door was shut. (11) Afterward came also the other virgins, 
saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. (12) But he answered and said, Verily I say unto 
you, I know you not. (13) "Watch therefore; for ye know neither the day nor the 
hour when the Son of man cometh. 



Verse 1. Then; that is, at the time of Christ's 
judicial coming, at the time spoken of in chap, xxiv, 
45-51. The premillenarians refer all that is said 
from chap, xxiv, 45, to chap, xxv, 30, to Christ's 
judicial coming at the beginning of the millennium, 
when, by the first resurrection and by the transform- 
ation of the living believers, he completes his Church, 
which shall reign with him during the millennium. 
On this point we shall say more in our introductory 
remarks to § 63. — Shall the kingdom of heaven 
be like unto ten virgins. Ten was a favorite 
number with the Jews, indicative of completeness; 
ten men formed a congregation in the synagogue, 
and a family to eat the passover; ten lamps or 
torches were also the usual number in marriage 
processions. The bride herself is not mentioned, 
because the Church is not the bride, in the full 
sense, while in her mixed, terrestrial condition. In 
that condition she is represented by the parable of 
the Marriage-feast as the guests who have accepted 
the invitation; here, as bridal virgins waiting for 
the bridegroom. The ten virgins, therefore, consti- 
tute the aggregate of all that have a part in the 
kingdom of heaven on earth, of all that know them- 
selves called to it and are distinct from the world 
that lieth in wickedness. According to the premil- 
lenarian theory the restored Jewish Church is the 
bride, and the ten virgins represent the Gentile 
congregations, accompanying her, a notion which is 
rather favorably noticed by Stier and Alford. In 
chap, xxiv, 38, 39, the Lord had described the carnal 
security of the great bulk of mankind at the time of 
his coming, in verses 45-51 the corruption and 
apostasy of the pastorate of his Church, and here he 
sets forth the mixed condition of its membership in 
general. — Which took their lamps. The mar- 
riages in the East taking place invariably at night, 
the friends and attendants are mentioned as carry- 
ing lamps or torches. — And went forth to meet 
the bridegroom. The circumstances of an Oriental 
wedding, so far as they supply in part the ground- 
work of the present parable, are these: The bride- 
groom, accompanied by his friends, goes to the 
house of the bride, and brings her with pomp and 
gladness to his own home. She is accompanied 
from her father's house by some of her young friends 
and companions, while others — as the virgins in this 



parable — meet at some convenient place to join the 
procession and enter with the rest of the bridal com- 
pany info the hall of feasting. This last-mentioned 
circumstance was the one best adapted to the scope 
of the parable. Stier and Alford make a distinction 
between the going forth of the virgins, in verse 1, 
and that in verse 6. But there is no ground for 
this. The whole story is given in a condensed form 
in verse 1. 

Verses 2-4. There was no outward distinction 
between the wise and the foolish. The foolish were 
not conscious of their fatal defect, nor was it dis- 
covered by the wise before the very last decisive 
moment. They were all companions of the bride; 
they all went forth to meet, and waited for, the bride- 
groom; they all had sufficient oil in their lamps to 
make them burn up to a certain time. For these 
reasons, and oil being the standing symbol of the 
Holy Spirit, it is mistaking the aim and scope of the 
parable to understand by the foolish virgins nominal 
professors, having a dead faith and being without 
the Spirit. The only difference between the wise 
and the foolish consisted in this, that the one made 
provision for the supply of oil, the others did not. 
The meaning of this is: The wise ones give all 
diligence to make their calling and election sure, 
(2 Pet. i, 5-8, 10,) providing a supply of spiritual 
food for the light within, by seeking in the appointed 
means of grace more and more of God's Holy Spirit, 
that they may be " sanctified wholly by the God of 
peace, and their whole spirit, and soul, and body be 
preserved blameless unto the coming of the Lord 
Jesus Christ." (1 Thess. v, 23.) The foolish vir- 
gins — vainly imagining that the light, once burning, 
would burn forever — make no such provision for the 
strengthening of the inner man ; having tasted the 
good Word of God and the powers of the world to 
come, they are satisfied therewith and feel no need 
of growing in grace and knowledge. Whether the 
division of the number ten into two equal parts has 
any symbolical meaning or not, we can not say; it 
may be so. 

Verse 5. While the bridegroom tarried. It 
was not tarrying on the part of the bridegroom, (2 
Pet. iii, 9,) but the virgins considered it such, having 
expected him at an earlier hour. This feature of 
the parable was, undoubtedly, designed as a hint to 



THE PARABLE OF THE TEN VIRGINS. 



549 



the disciples that the second coming of the Lord was 
not so near at hand. — They all slumbered and 
slept — literally, they all nodded and fell asleep. The 
expression denotes the gradual approach of sleep to 
such as occupy a sitting position, and strive at first 
to withstand the disposition to slumber. These vir- 
gins made efforts to keep awake, but finally yielded 
to the influence of sleep. To understand by this 
falling asleep a spiritual drowsiness or lukewarm- 
ness involves a self-contradiction; for, how can such 
a state exist when the heart is filled with the Holy 
Spirit, as is indicated by the wise having oil in their 
vessels? Though the wakefulness of the holiest 
Christian may be called a sort of slumber when 
compared with what it should be, how improbable is 
it that our Lord would make the wise and foolish 
alike on this point, and that he would make, as it 
were, an allowance for a certain degree of negli- 
gence in a parable, the vei - y aim of which is to 
teach that we should be found ready at all times! 
Most expositors, therefore, modern as well as an- 
cient, understand by this sleeping the sleep of death. 
But this interpretation is inconsistent with the unity 
and scope of the parable. It may be, as Trench sug- 
gests, merely "a circumstance required by the con- 
veniencies of the parabolic narration. For, had the 
foolish virgins been in a condition to mark the lapse 
of time, and the gradual waning of their lamps, 
they, knowing that they had not wherewith to re- 
plenish them, would naturally have bestirred them- 
selves before the decisive moment arrived to procure 
a new supply. The fact that they fell asleep, and 
were not awakened except by the cry of the advanc- 
ing bridal company, gives an easy and natural ex- 
planation of their utter and irremediable destitution 
of oil at the moment when there was most need that 
they should have it in abundance. And had the 
wise virgins not slept as well — had they been repre- 
sented as watching while the others were sleeping — 
it would have seemed like a lack of love upon their 
part not to have warned their companions of the 
lapse of time and the increasing dimness with which 
their lamps were burning while yet help was possi- 
ble." If, however, the jailing asleep constitutes a 
point in the interpretation, it is best, with Stier and 
Lange, to understand by it a giving up of the ex- 
pectation that Christ would speedily appear. The 
fact, that only a comparatively-small number of 
Christians cherish the expectation of Christ's speedy 
coming is to be accounted for on the same ground 
as the fact that the day of our death generally ap- 
pears to us as afar off, however well prepared we may 
be for it. To be ready for the coming of the Lord 
does not consist in expecting it at a certain time, 
but in having made the proper provisions for it. 

Verse 6. And at midnight there was a cry 
made. Midnight is the time when every thing is 
shrouded in darkness and buried in slumber, (comp. 
Luke xviii, 8,) the most unsuitable time to make up 
what has been neglected. The cry we may suppose 



to have been made by a part of the retinue running 
before. "The spiritual signification of it," says 
Trench, "has been variously given. Most are 
agreed to find in it an allusion to 'the voice of the 
archangel and the trump of God,' (1 Thess. iv, 16,) 
which shall be heard when the Lord shall descend 
from heaven with a shout. Some, however, explain 
the cry as coming from watchers in the Church, 
such as shall not be altogether lacking in the last 
times — by whom the signs of the times have been 
observed, and who would proclaim aloud the near 
advent of the Lord, the Heavenly Bridegroom, when 
he draws nigh, accompanied by the angels, the 
friends of the Bridegroom, and leading home his 
bride, the triumphant Church, and looking to be 
met and greeted by the members of his Church yet 
militant on earth, themselves a part of that mystical 
bride, so that he may bring her to the glorious man- 
sion, the house of everlasting joy and gladness 
which he has prepared for her." Lange remarks: 
"It is midnight for the Church of Christ when the 
spirit of the world has so far the ascendency that it 
seems as if the development of the Church was no 
other than that of the world and of nature, as if the 
kingdom of God on earth was not to be completed, 
as if Christ was not to come again. In such a time 
the believers are more strongly tempted than ever to 
lose their consciousness of the final regeneration of 
the world. More than once is the cry raised in the 
dark hours of the Christian Church, Behold, the 
Bridegroom cometh! These cries are, undoubtedly, 
the prophetic warnings of faithful watchmen in con- 
nection with the solemn signs of the times. Heavy 
judgments and powerful revivals preach also the 
nearness of the Lord's coming, and at last he actu- 
ally comes. In such times the Church is sifted." 

Verses 7-9. Then all those virgins arose, [lit- 
erally, were awakened,] and trimmed their lamps. 
The trimming means to pour on fresh oil and to re- 
move the fungi from the wick. The wise virgins 
found no difficulty in getting their lamps burning, 
but the foolish discovered, to their dismay, that 

THEIR LAMPS WERE GONE OUT, which OUght to be 

translated, were going out, were on the point of ex- 
piring for lack of nourishment, and that they had 
not wherewith to replenish them. "When the day 
of Christ comes it will be impossible for any to re- 
main ignorant any longer of his true state, for that 
day will be a revelation of the hidden things of men, 
of things which had remained hidden even from 
themselves; a flood of light will then pour into the 
darkest corners of all hearts, and show every man to 
himself exactly as he is, so that self-deception will 
be no longer possible." (Trench.) Lange remarks. 
" The difference between the wise and foolish is al- 
ways existing and more or less discernible, but it 
comes to full light in the day of judgment. They 
all have lamps, professions of faith, their various 
creeds, and ecclesiastical positions. But in that de- 
cisive hour it will appear whether or not the outward 



550 



MATTHEW XXV, 14-30. 



forms of religion are the genuine expressions of the 
Spirit of Christ or not." Stier says: "With some 
Christians all would be right if the Lord would come 
for them at once, when their lamp is being lit, when 
their first love is in a full blaze. But he will tarry 
and then surprise tbem. At present thou prayest 
fervently. See to it that the Lord may find thee 
watching and praying. At present thy lamp blazes, 
but consider that the good oil is being consumed; 
lay in a supply, therefore, for the hour of need." — 
But the wise answered. The request of the foolish 
virgins, and the refusal which it calls out — like the 
discourse between Abraham and Dives — are only 
the clothing and outer garment of the all-important 
truth, that we shall be miserably disappointed if we 
think to borrow, at the close of our probation, what 
we ought to have bought, that is, won, by earnest 
prayer and diligent endeavor in our day of grace. — 
Not so — literally, never. The answer in the Greek 
is strongly elliptical, as spoken in a moment of earn- 
estness and haste. — Lest there be not enough. 
These words constitute a conclusive argument 
against the Romish doctrine of works of superero- 
gation; see also 1 Pet. iv, 18. — But go te rather 
to them that sell; that is, procure oil where it is 
to be obtained. According to Revelation iii, 18, we 
are admonished to buy of the Lord gold, white rai- 
ment, and eye-salve, and every thing that we need; 
the sellers, then, must be those whom God has ap- 
pointed as channels of his heavenly grace, or as 
some would explain it, the prophets and apostles, 
from whose teaching they are told to learn how to 
revive the Word of God in their souls if yet there be 
time. Two weighty truths are inculcated by this fea- 
ture of the parable; namely, the necessity of hearing, 
learning, and receiving through the divinely-appoint- 
ed channels of grace in the time of probation, and 
the solemn warning that it will be impossible to do 
this after that time has come to a close. 

Verses 10-12. And the door was shut. "What 
door?" exclaims the author of an ancient homily 
quoted by Trench. "That which now is open to 
them coming from the East and from the West, that 
they may sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob 
in the kingdom of heaven — that Door which saith, 
Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. 
Behold how it is now open which shall then be closed 



for evermore. Murderers come, and they are ad- 
mitted; publicans and harlots come, and they are 
received; unclean, and adulterers, and robbers, and 
whosoever is of this kind, come, and the open door 
does not deny itself to them; for Christ, the Door, 
is infinite to pardon, reaching beyond every degree 
and every amount of wickedness. But then what 
saith he? The door is shut. No one's penitence, 
no one's prayer, no one's groaning shall any more 
be admitted." — Afterward came also the other 
virgins. Not that they have now found the oil, but 
having sought it in vain they come looking for 
mercy, when now it is the time of judgment. — Sat- 
ing, Lord, Lord. In addressing the bridegroom 
Lord they claim to stand in a near relation to him, 
and their repeating it is an evidence of the earnest- 
ness with which they now claim admission. — I know 
you not. He does not know them in the sense in 
which he says, "I know my sheep, and am known 
of mine." On the exclusion of the foolish virgins 
Bengel observes, "That there are four classes of per- 
sons: those that have an abundant entrance into the 
kingdom, entering, as it were, with sails set into the 
haven; those again that are saved, as shipwrecked 
mariners, reaching with difficulty the shore. On the 
other side, there are those who go evidently the 
broad way to destruction, whose sins go before them; 
while again there are those who, though they seemed 
not far off from the kingdom of God, yet miss it 
after all; such were these five foolish virgins, and the 
fate of these, who were so near, and yet after all fall 
short, appears the most miserable of all. Lest that 
may be our fate, he says to us, Watch, therefore." 
Three great evils fall upon these unwise virgins. 1. 
Their labor was lost, all the preparations they had 
made, the lamps which they had purchased, the 
amount of oil they consumed for naught, the cold, 
dark hours in which they had been watching. So with 
those professors of religion who will ultimately fail 
of salvation. 2. The opportunity of redress was 
lost, and with it, 3, their hope forever. 

Verse 13. For ye know neither the day nor 
the hour. This being so, the only certain way to 
be ready' on that day, is that you be ready on every 
day. Unreadiness on that day is without a remedy; 
the work, which should have been the work of a life, 
can not be huddled up into a moment. 



§62. THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS. 

"While the virgins were represented," says Trench, "as waiting for the Lord, we 
have here the servants working for him. There the inward spiritual rest of the Christian 
was described — here his external activity. There, by the end of the foolish virgins, we 
are warned against declensions and decays in the inward spiritual life — here against 
sluggishness and sloth in our outward vocation and work. That parable enforced the 
need of keeping the heart with all diligence — this the need of giving all diligence also to 



THE PARABLE OP THE TALENTS. 



551 



the outward woi'k, if we would be found of Christ in peace at the day of his appearing." 
Alford finds in the two parables also this contrast, that the foolish virgins "failed from 
thinking their part too easy, while the wicked servant fails from thinking his too hard." 
As to the relation of this parable to that in Luke xix, 12, etc., it is true that the latter 
has several features in common with the parable here recorded. But this similarity does 
by no means prove the identity of the two parables ; for the time, place, scope, and 
arrangement of the two parables are quite different, as we shall fully show in our notes 
on the parable in Luke. 

Verses 14-30. 

(14) For the kingdom of heaven is as a man traveling into a far country, who 
called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. (15) And unto one 
he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one ; to every man according 
to his several ability; and straightway took his journey. (16) Then he that had 
received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five 
talents. (17) And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two. 
(18) But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord's 
money. (19) After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth 
with them. (20) And so he that had received five talents came and brought other 
five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have 
gained beside them five talents more. (21) His lord said unto him, Well done, 
thou good and faithful servant : thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will 
make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. (22) He 
also that had received tw T o talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me 
two talents : behold, I have gained two other talents beside them. (23) His lord 
said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over 
a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things : enter thou into the joy of 
thy lord. (24) Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, 
I knew thee that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and 
gathering where thou hast not strewed : (25) And I was afraid, and went and hid 
thy talent in the earth : lo, there thou hast that is thine. (26) His lord answered 
and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap 
where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strew T ecl : (27) Thou oughtest 
therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I 
should have received mine own with usury. (28) Take therefore the talent from 
him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents. (29) For unto every one that 
hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance : but from him that hath not 
shall be taken away even that which he hath. (30) And cast ye the unprofitable 
servant into outer darkness : there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 



Verse 14. For the kingdom of heaven is as a 

MAN TRAVELING INTO A FAR COUNTRY. The words, 

"The kingdom of heaven is," are supplied by the 
translators. Our Lord commences with, "For as a 
man traveling," etc., as though he would close the 
parable with the application, " so shall the Son of 
man do." Christ is the man that traveled into a far 



country. This withdrawal of the Lord from his 
Church, after the object of his first coming was 
accomplished, corresponds with the withdrawal of 
God from his people after they had been settled in 
Canaan. (Comp. chap, xxi, 33.) But the absence ia 
only temporary, and is followed by a return. — Who 
called his own servants. The word W/oi'f, trans- 



552 



MATTHEW XXV, 14-30. 



lated own, is used pleonastically; yet by the serv- 
ants slaves are meant. The Christian's relation to 
Christ being that of unqualified dependence — we are 
not our own — it is set forth by the relation of a 
slave to his master. But to understand the outward 
circumstances of the parable, we must bear in mind 
the peculiar relation that existed between master 
and slaves in antiquity. Slaves were often artisans, 
or were allowed otherwise to engage freely in busi- 
ness, paying a fixed yearly sum to their master; or, 
as here, they had money given them wherewith to 
trade on his account; the gain belonged to the master, 
who, however, rewarded his faithful servants hand- 
somely. ■ — And delivered unto them his goods. 
The parable was first addressed to the apostles, and 
the goods signify primarily the powers which Christ 
has given to his Church. They were most mani- 
festly and most abundantly communicated to his 
servants on the day of Pentecost; but he has been 
from that day evermore bestowing his gifts to each 
successive generation. This being so, the parable 
has a general application to all times. All Chris- 
tians have a spiritual vocation, and are intrusted 
with gifts, more or fewer, for which they will have 
to render an account. While it has a relation first 
to spiritual gifts, it has also a relation to other en- 
dowments, such as wealth, reputation, ability, which, 
though not in themselves spiritual, are yet given to 
men that they may be turned to spiritual ends, and 
for the use or abuse of which the possessor will have 
to render an account. An illustration of this is the 
English word talent, which has come to signify any 
mental endowments, faculties, or powers whatever. 
(Condensed from Trench.) In relation to the dis- 
tribution of the goods, note, 1. That the talents of 
all were the free gifts of the master. This being 
the case, the man of the greatest talent has no 
cause for self-boasting, and the man with the least 
need have no self-reproach. 2. That the talents of 
all were given in trust. The giver still retained a 
claim upon them. The receiver did not become 
the proprietor, but merely the steward. 3. That 
the talents of all were given to be employed. They 
were not to be wrapped in a napkin. As the man 
who borrows money on interest is responsible to the 
owner for the interest as really as the principal, so 
we are responsible to God for the use we make of 
our powers as much as for the power itself. The 
man of one talent was no less bound to employ his 
one talent than the man of five to employ his five. 
Verse 15. And unto one he gave five talents, 
etc. To one a larger sphere of usefulness in the 
kingdom of God is assigned than to another; but the 
services expected of each are in exact proportion to 
what has been intrusted to him. — To every man ac- 
cording to his several ability. "The natural gifts 
are as the vessel, which may be lai-ge or may be small, 
and which receives according to its capacity; but in 
each case the vessel is filled ; so that we are not to 
think of him who had received the two talents as 



incompletely furnished in comparison with him who 
had received the five, any more than we should 
affirm a small circle incomplete as compared with 
a large. Unfitted he might be for so wide a sphere 
of labor, but altogether as perfectly equipped for 
that to which he was destined; for 'there are diver- 
sities of gifts, but the same Spirit;' and, as the body 
is not all eye, nor are all in an army generals ob, 
captains, so neither in the Church are all furnished 
to be leaders or governors. Yet while we speak of 
natural capacity as being the vessel for receiving 
the wine of the Spirit, we must not leave out of ac- 
count that comparative unfaithfulness will narrow 
the vessel, even as fidelity has the tendency to dilate 
it, so that the person with far inferior natural gifts, 
yet often brings in a far more abundant harvest 
than one with superior powers, who yet does bring 
in something." (Trench.) Let us learn from this 
feature of the parable, 1. That spiritual gifts are 
apportioned to men, generally, according to their 
natural attainments and capacities, whether mental 
or physical. Thus natural endowments become spir- 
itual gifts; but the former are not less the gift of 
God than the latter, since no man has created and 
made himself what he is. 2. Every one has his 
duties assigned according to his ability. There is 
in the kingdom of Christ a variety of higher or 
lower callings; but no one receives a calling for 
which his strength is insufficient; and, since the 
gifts are the Lord's, and he distributes them accord- 
ins to his supreme wisdom and goodness, every one 
ought to be satisfied with his position; he that stands 
higher ought not to despise him that stands lower, 
nor the latter envy the former. ■ — ■ And straightway 
he took his journey. " In the things earthly the 
householder's distribution of the gifts naturally and 
of necessity precedes his departure; in the heavenly 
it is not altogether so; the ascension, or departure, 
goes before Pentecost, or the distribution of gifts; 
yet the 'straightway' still remains in full force: the 
interval between them was the smallest, one follow- 
ing hard upon the other, however the order was 
reversed. The four verses which follow (16-19) em- 
brace the whole period intervening between the first 
and second coming of Christ." (Trench.) 

Verses 16, 17. Two of the servants — those to 
whom the largest sums have been intrusted — lay 
them out with equal diligence and success. These 
are the representatives of all that are diligent and 
faithful in their office and ministry, whatsoever that 
may be. The case, so frequently occurring, that 
even faithful laborers may differ from one another 
in diligence and success, is brought out in the para- 
ble, recorded by Luke, and not mentioned in this 
because it does not come within its scope, which is 
the truth, that according as we have received will be 
expected from us. 

Verse 18. But he that had received one. Not 
one of the servants can say, " Lord, thou hast given 
me nothing." — Went and digged in the earth. 



THE PARABLE OF THE TEN TALENTS. 



553 



This trait of tho parable seems to have no other de- 
sign than to set forth the absurdity of his conduct. 
Instead of putting forth any efforts in order to gain 
another talent with the one he had, he goes to the 
trouble of digging in the earth and hiding it. We 
must not infer from this feature of the parable, that 
our Lord meant to teach that only those who have 
little intrusted to them are indolent or faithless in 
the trust committed to them. The contrary is fre- 
quently the case; but this truth did not come within 
the scope of the parable. (See note on verses lf>, 
17.) — His lord's money. It was given to him to 
trade with it, not simply to guard it against loss and 
theft What was the real cause of his strange con- 
duct? We answer, want of love to his master, mani- 
festing itself clearly in his slavish dread of him. 
What characterizes this servant is a cold, selfish in- 
difference toward his master. "The class of men 
represented by this unworthy servant," says Owen, 
"are by no means to be regarded as the naturally 
inactive and indolent. They are often the most dili- 
gent and enterprising. But in their Master's service 
they manifest no energy and industry. They are as 
worthless to him as though they slept during their 
whole lives. Every man, be he ever so active and 
successful in his worldly pursuits, comes within the 
class here spoken of, if he does not labor with au 
eye single to the glory of his Savior and the good of 
his fellow-men." 

Verses 20-23. The good servants, whose ac- 
counts are first settled, come with a joyful conscious- 
ness of having done their duty, yet they do not claim 
any praise for themselves, but gratefully confess that 
they were enabled, solely through their master's good- 
ness, to make what they made, as indicated by say- 
ing, Thou deliveredst unto me, etc. Every gift of 
God has the inherent virtue of reproduction and in- 
crease, if faithfully improved. The smallest talent 
intrusted to us will double itself if we use it consci- 
entiously. What a momentous thought, that tho 
Lord commits to us trusts, in which the interests of 
his kingdom are involved! — I will make thee 
ruler over mant things. This implies either new 
spheres of activity in the kingdom of glory, or, as 
Stier and Alford think, enlarged fields of usefulness 
during the millennial reign. — Enter thou into 
the joy of thy Lord. "The image underlying this 
language is, that the master celebrates his return by 
a great festival, to which each of the servants, as 
soon as he has rendered his accounts, and shown 
that he has been true to his master's interests in his 
absence, is bidden freely to enter. (Comp. Luke xii, 
37.) It is well known that under certain circum- 
stances the master's inviting his slave to sit down 
with him at table, did itself constitute the act of man- 
umission; henceforth he was free." When we have 
served Christ on earth, we shall reign with him in 
glory. (Rev. iii, 20.) The joy into which the faith- 
ful servant enters is called the Lord's joy, because 
he participates in the same kind of joy which the 



Lord himself has, and which arises from the com- 
pletion of his own redeeming work in his faithful 
servants. (Heb. xii, 2.) 

Verses 24, 25. Then he which had received 
the one talent came. At last the wicked serv- 
ant's turn comes to render his account; but he has 
no cheerful "behold!" before his lord, like his fellow- 
servants. Trench sees in this servant the represent- 
ative of the fearful, (Rev. xxi, 8,) or of those who, 
shrinking from the liberty of evangelical activity, 
abide, as the Jew, in the law and in the spirit of 
bondage, or of such as would make excuses such as 
this: The care of my own soul is sufficient to occupy 
me wholly; the responsibility of any spiritual work 
is so great, so awful, that I dare not undertake it; 
while I am employed about the souls of others, I 
may perhaps be losing my own. "In his speech, half 
cowering and half defying, he gives, evidence that 
he has mistaken the nature of the work to which he 
was called as entirely as the character of the master 
for whom it should have been done. He did not be- 
lieve in his Lord's forgiving love, and in his gracious 
acceptance of the work with all its faults, which was 
done for him out of a true heart, and with a sincere 
desire to please him. This was his willful and 
guilty ignorance concerning the true character of 
the master whom he was called to serve. To know 
God's name is to trust in him. They, indeed, who 
undertake a ministry in his Church, or any work for 
him, are well aware that they shall commit manifold 
mistakes in that ministry, which they might avoid if 
they declined that ministry altogether. But would 
they be justified or excused in doing so? Would 
they not, so acting, share in the condemnation of 
this servant? Would they not testify, thereby, that 
they thought of God as he thought of his master, 
that he was a hard lord, extreme to mark what was 
amiss, making no allowances, accepting never the 
will for the deed, but watching to take advantage of 
the least failure or mistake on the part of his serv- 
ants?" Stier takes a different view of the case of 
this wicked servant, ascribing his conduct not to his 
'pretended fear — the falsehood of which is proved 
by his impudent charge against his master — but to 
his heartless, selfish indifference about his master's 
cause. This wicked servant reasoned thus: If I 
gain something it, will not be mine, but I shall have 
to give it up to my master; but if I lose any thing, 
I shall be held responsible for the loss ; it is, there- 
fore, best for me to have nothing at all to do with 
his money. Of this cold egotism, of this black in- 
gratitude against God, all those nominal Christians 
are guilty, who, without committing acts of gross 
immorality, are unwilling to do any thing for the 
Lord and his cause, suffering their time, talents, and 
opportunities of doing good to pass by unimproved. 
They do not love the Lord Jesus Christ. To say 
that God requires more of man than he can do, 
without imparting the needful grace, is the grand lie 
by which the sinner ever tries to excuse and deceive 



554 



MATTHEW XXV, 31-46. 



himself. — Lo, there thou hast that is thine. 
"By those words," says Stier, "the servant confesses 
that he never really accepted the gift or trust of his 
master. He was unwilling to have any thing to do 
with it." It need scarcely be remarked, that a gift 
of God can not he thus restored to him. "Suffering 
God's gifts to lie idle is, in fact, one form of wasting 
them. It is only that men imagine they can be 
given back, when they suppose that keeping the 
negative precepts is all that God requires of them, 
and that by doing this they will restore to him his 
gifts entire, as they received them." (Trench.) Dr. 
Whedon paraphrases in his nervous style: "I gave 
you back all you gave me. I have done no harm. 
We now are about even." 

Verses 26, 27. The wicked servant has con- 
demned himself. The master does not concede his 
allegation, but, admitting it for argument's sake, he 
draws the opposite and legitimate inference from it; 
namely, that this very fact of his believing him to be 
a hard master ought to have stimulated him to do at 
least something for his master, which he might have 
done even without toil or risk; an idea indicated by 
the words, " Thou oughtest therefore to have put 
my money to the exchangers." A literal render- 
ing of the Greek would read, "Thou oughtest to 
have thrown my money to the exchangers;" ex- 
pressive of the perfect ease with which the thing 
might have been done. The exchangers, brokers, 
and bankers, then, as now, received money on de- 
posit at interest, in order to loan it out to others at 
a higher rate. They are introduced here to com- 
plete the parable, but have no further significance 
than the one mentioned. 

Verse 28. Take therefore the talent from 
him. " This taking away of the unused talent, 
which will find its complete consummation at the 
day of judgment, is, also, in this present time, con- 
tinually going forward. And herein is mercy, that 
it is not done all at once, but by little and little, so 
that, till all is withdrawn, there is still the opportu- 
nity of recovering it; at each successive withdrawal 
there is some warning to hold fast what still is left, 
'to strengthen the things which remain that are 
ready to die.' It is true that at each successive 
stage of the decline the effort required is greater, 
while the strength for it is less; this is the course 



of sin. Yet it is possible, till the last spark is ex- 
tinguished, to blow up that spark again into a flame; 
even the sense of the increasing darkness may be 
that which shall arouse the man to a serious sense 
of his danger, and to the need of an earnest revival 
of God's work in his soul. But this servant had 
never awoke to the sense of his danger till it was 
too late — till all was irrevocably lost." (Trench.) 
— And give it unto him which has ten talents. 
Another takes his crown. We see this even in the 
present state of probation. By the providence of 
God one steps into the place and opportunities 
which another left unused, and so has forfeited. 

Verse 29. For unto every one that has, etc. 
"Here, in the last parable which our Lord spoke," 
says Stier, " we have again the same fundamental 
law of God's kingdom and economy by which the 
parables were introduced. (Matt, xiii, 12.) This is 
worthy of notice, and indicates that both the giving 
and the taking away by the Lord take place accord- 
ing to the same rule. The giving, distributing, and 
sowing of the Lord are, indeed, general, his offers 
being made to all; but a real giving is possible only 
where there is a willingness to receive the gift. 
Only those servants who had come at the Lord's 
bidding, had trusts committed to them. A small 
trust was committed to the slothful servant, because 
the ability to improve more was not to be expected of 
him. But in that little he might and ought to have 
been faithful. Instead of being so, he had it as if 
he had it not — he made no use of it; his receiving 
it was therefore only apparent, not real; and it was 
accordingly taken from him. According to this 
principle God deals with every man: whoever wishes 
to have a permanent possession of God's gifts must 
conscientiously improve them." Roos, understand- 
ing the Lord's words as referring to the still remain- 
ing natural endowments, says: "We can form no 
conception of the utter nakedness and deformity of 
such a man, because there is no man living on earth 
from whom his talent is quite taken away, however 
wicked he may be." 

Verse 30. And cast out the unprofitable serv 
ant into outer darkness, etc. While there is light, 
and joy, and feasting within, where the faithful serv- 
ants enjoy the fruit of their labors, his portion is 
without in the place of darkness and torment. 



§63. THE FINAL JUDGMENT OF ALL NATIONS. 

The Lord closes his discourse on his coming and the end of the present world-period 
by a description of the final judgment of all nations. Lange finds in this description the 
following points: " 1. The Son of man appears now as the judge of the whole world, and 
reveals his sovereign glory, (Acts x, 42; xvii, 31;) 2. He now sits in judgment on the- 
whole human race, on all nations of the earth, and on all ages of the world. The gen- 
eral resurrection must, therefore, be connected with this judgment; 3. He judges now 



THE FINAL JUDGMENT OF ALL NATIONS. 555 

every individual member of the human family according to his individual character, and 
finding in every one his moral character fully developed, he separates them from each 
other, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats; 4. Every one is judged according 
to his works, as the fruit and evidence of his real character, good works being repre- 
sented as works of love and mercy; 5. These works of love and mercy spring from an 
acknowledgment of the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. The verdict of every one 
will therefore turn on his pei-sonal relation to Christ: Ye have done it unto me — ye have 
not done it unto me. Active manifestations of Christian philanthropy or of philanthropic 
love of Christ, being the exponents of faith and a sincere heart, will alone avail before the 
Judge ; 6. The sentence to be formally passed on every one is decided beforehand by the 
individual's personal relation to Christ, but is now executed, by one party inheriting their 
Father's kingdom, while the other departs into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil 
and his angels ; 7. "With this final separation of the righteous and the wicked coincides 
the transformation of the earth. On the one hand, we have now the kingdom of God in 
its completion ; on the other, hell with its wretched inmates. 

According to the premillenarian view, advocated by Olshausen, Stier, and Alford, the 
judgment here described does not include those that constitute the Church triumphant; 
that is, those who, at Christ's personal coming to introduce the millennium, are either 
raised from the dead, or, if still living, are glorified and caught up together into the air, 
to meet the Lord, (1 Thess. iv, 16, 17 ; 1 Cor. xv, 23, 24, 51, 52)— to reign with Christ, 
and with him to judge the world, (1 Cor. vi, 2.) The term "all nations," (rtavra rd s>?^,) 
it is said, is used in the same sense as the Hebrew "the nations, or Gentiles," as distin- 
guished from God's chosen people, and stands here in antithesis to the " brethren " of 
verse 40, who had already received their reward as wise virgins and faithful, servants. 
In support of this view the following arguments are advanced : 1. " Those only are said 
to be judged who have done it or not done it to my brethren ; but of the brethren them- 
selves being judged there is no mention." In this argument we can see no point. The 
love of the brethren is the mark by which, our Savior says, all men shall know that ye 
are my disciples. 2. "The verdict turns upon works, and not upon faith." Surely this 
will be the case with every believer or Christian, when he is brought before the judg- 
ment-seat of Christ, whether at the beginning or close of the millennium, in so far as 
works are the fruit of faith, or true saving faith is only that which worketh by love, 
(Matt, vii, 21; Eom. ii, 6; 2 Cor. v, 10; Gal. vi, 8,) and in so far as our good works spring 
from sincerity of heart, to which the Lord looketh, (Acts x, 35.) Moreover, unless the 
plan of salvation is entirely changed in the millennial state — which, if we mistake not, 
the premillenarians deny — the nations living during the millennium will be judged ac- 
cording to their works, no more and no less than those that lived before the millennium. 
3. Another objection to the common view is stated by Alford thus: "The answer of the 
righteous appears to me to show plainly that they are not to be understood as being the 
covenanted servants of Christ. Such an answer it would be impossible for them to make, 
who had done all distinctly with reference to Christ, and for his sake, and with his declara- 
tion of chap, x, 40-42, before them. Such a supposition would remove all reality, as, 
indeed, it has generally done, from our Lord's description. See the remarkable differ- 
ence in the answer of the faithful servant, (vs. xx, 22.)" The reply that the language 
in question is that of humility is said not to be satisfactory ; but we know not why. 
Besides, the difficulty appears to us to be the same with regard to the people that have 
lived during the millennium. If they are to be saved, they also must have done their 
works for Christ's sake, and, if so, they must have been conscious of it. We have given 
the grounds on which the premillenarian interpretation is based. In objection to it, it 
may further be urged that it is against common Scripture language to call any other than 
believers, the members of Christ's mystical body, "sheep," or "righteous," or "the blessed 
of the Father, for whom the kingdom was prepared from the foundation of the world." 



556 



MATTHEW XXV, 31-46. 



With regard to the difficult question of our Lord's second advent, Alford makes, at the 
close of his comments on the twenty-fifth chapter, a declaration breathing the docile spirit 
of the true Christian and of the thorough scholar. He says, (p. 238:) "I think it proper 
to state, in this third edition, that having now entered upon the deeper study of the pro- 
phetic portions of the New Testament, I do not feel by any means that full confidence 
which I once did in the exegesis, quoad prophetical interpretation here given of the three 
portions of this chapter xxv. But I have no other system to substitute, and some of the 
points here dwelt on seem to me as weighty as ever. I very much question whether the 
thorough study of Scripture j)rophecy will not make me more and more distrustful of all 
human systematizing, and less willing to hazard strong assertion on any portion of the 
subject. July, 1855." 

Verses 31—46. 

(31) When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with 
him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: (32) And before him shall be 
gathered all nations : and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd 
divideth his sheep from the goats: (33) And he shall set the sheep on his right 
hand, but the goats on the left. (34) Then shall the King say unto them on his 
right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you 
from the foundation of the world: (35) For I was a hungered, and ye gave me 
meat : I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink : I was a stranger, and ye took me in : 
(36) Naked, and ye clothed me : I was sick, and ye visited me : I was in prison, 
and ye came unto me. (37) Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, 
when saw we thee a hungered, and fed theef or thirsty, and gave thee drink? (38) 
"When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed theef (39) 
Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee ? (40) And the King 
shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done 
it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (41) Then 
shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into ever- 
lasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels : (42) For I was a hungered, and 
ye gave me no meat : I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink : (43) I was a 
stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in 
prison, and ye visited me not. (44) Then shall they also answer him, saying, 
Lord, when saw we thee a hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or 
in prison, and did not minister unto thee ? (45) Then shall he answer them, say- 
ing, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, 
ye did it not to me. (46) And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: 
but the righteous into life eternal. 



Verse 31. When the Son of man shall come. 
Not the Father will hold the judgment, but the Son 
of man, whose divinity, when he performs this most 
solemn act of judging mankind, will no longer be 
vailed by his humanity. — In his glory. These 
words say more than "with power and great glory," 
of chapter xxiv, 30. — And all the holy angels 
with him. "The first-born of God, the morning 
stars of creation — beings that excel in strength, 



whose intelligence is immense, whose love for God 
and his universe glows with a quenchless ardor, and 
whose speed is as the lightning. Who can count 
their number? They are the bright stars that crowd 
in innumerable constellations every firmament that 
spans every globe and system throughout immens- 
ity." — Then shall he sit upon the throne of his 
glory. A throne is the highest symbol of earthly 
glory, and hence Christ is here represented as ap- 



THE FINAL JUDGMENT OF ALL NATIONS. 



557 



pearing on it. John represents him as coming on a 
great white throne. It is called "great, as the fount- 
ain of all authority — that to which all intelligent 
creatures are amenable; while, because it is the cen- 
ter of unsullied purity and incorruptible justice." 

Verses 32, 33. And before him shall be gath- 
ered all nations. "All nations are now before 
him, and ever have been. He sees them; he sus- 
tains them; he speaks to them by his providence 
and his Word. But millions have denied his very 
existence, and millions more have lived in utter in- 
difference to his claims, but now all nations are 
brought into conscious contact with him. The blas- 
pheming atheist, the cruel idolater, the degraded 
savage, the foul apostate, and the hardened world- 
ling will feel his presence more intensely than Isaiah 
did when he fell down and cried, Woe is me! All 
the men that ever have been, that are, or that ever 
will be, will see him in the overwhelming glory of his 
character as the judge of all mankind. As the great 
Sun of righteousness, he will pour his burning rays 
upon every human soul. All nations shall see him, 
ay, and see every thing through him — see them- 
selves, see the past, the present, and the future, as 
we see nature through the light of heaven." (Hom- 
ilist.) There seems to be no room left whatever to 
the idea of a final resurrection preceding that of the 
wicked by a thousand years. Yet premillenarians 
contend that the separation which is to be made at 
the close of the millennium between the unnumbered 
millions of the earth's population during the millen- 
nial age, as well as between the dead, that died not 
in the Lord, and did, therefore, not belong to the tri- 
umphant Church, without being on that account lost, 
is comprehensive enough for the term " all nations." 

AS A SHEPHERD DIVIDETH HIS SHEEP FROM THE 

goats. The wicked are compared with goats, partly 
on account of their uncleanness, partly on account 
of their wild stubbornness in contradistinction to the 
meekness of sheep. Meyer and De Wette find the 
point of comparison in the inferior value of the 
goats. — And he shall set the sheep on his right 
hand. The right hand denotes a position of the 
highest honor; the left, if put in antithesis to the 
right, that of dishonor. (Eccl. x, 2.) Perhaps there 
is an allusion to the Sanhedrim, by which the acquit- 
ted was put on the right hand, and the condemned 
on the left. 

Verse 34. Ye blessed of mt Father. Being 
saved from the curse of sin, and, therefore, the 
blessed of the Lord, their character is now mani- 
fested in its full glory. — Inherit the kingdom; the 
kingdom of God in its full completion, the new 
earth, wherein righteousness dwelleth, where noth- 
ing impure can enter. — From the foundation of 
the world. Instead of aird t from, we find the prep- 
osition npb, before, in Ephesians i, 4; John xvii, 
24; 1 Peter i, 20; the meaning is the same, the cor- 
responding preposition in Hebrew — the letter mem 
as prefix — being used in both senses, and, as Ben- 



gel remarks, there being no need of making a dis- 
tinction between eternity and the foundation of the 
world. The words prepared for you teach no un- 
conditional predestination to eternal life. Although 
no one can be saved and sanctified without the Di- 
vine will and election, yet the Divine prescience 
takes in the election man's free self-determination 
into account. It is the eternal purpose of God to 
save all that believe in Christ, and persevere to the 
end. The gates of heaven are thrown open for all 
descendants of fallen Adam; whoever will may in- 
herit heaven. 

Verses 35, 36. That merit is out of the question 
appears from the preceding "blessed" and "inherit." 
The conjunction u for" introduces, accordingly, not 
the cause of their blessedness, but must be viewed 
as the proof of their having been in a state of 
grace — similar to the "as we forgive" in the Lord's 
Prayer. Heubner says: "The acts of love here 
named are not such as require merely an outlay of 
money, but such as involve also the sacrifice of time, 
strength, rest, comfort," etc. 

Verses 37-40. The righteous are introduced as 
declaring, by word of mouth, what they feel in their 
hearts; true humility knows nothing of its good works, 
and has to advance no claims founded on merit. 
Stier, rejecting the view that works of love wrought 
in conscious faith in Jesus Christ are here spoken of, 
says: "All those are blessed whose hearts have not 
been closed against the love of God that draws all 
nations ; that a dogmatically-developed faith in the 
Lord is not required of all men is here positively de- 
clared against all narrow dogmatism that would set 
limits to God's infinite love." The same sentiment 
is expressed by Alford: "The sublimity of this de- 
scription surpasses all imagination — Christ, as the 
Son of man, the Shepherd, the King, the Judge — as 
the center and end of all human love, bringing out 
and rewarding his latent grace in those who have 
lived in love — everlastingly punishing those who 
have quenched it in an unloving and selfish life — 
and in the accomplishment of his mediatorial office, 
causing even from out of the iniquities of a rebell- 
ious world his sovereign mercy to rejoice against 
judgment." — Inasmuch as te have done it unto 

ONE OF THE LEAST OF THESE MY BRETHREN, YE HAVE 

done it unto me. Most interpreters understand by 
u the least of these my brethren" the apostles and 
all the preachers of the Gospel to the end of time, 
and appeal in support of their view to Matthew x, 40. 
Meyer, however, objects to this, and says: "The 
apostles and preachers of the Gospel are, indeed, 
represented as the brethren of Christ, (Matt, xxviii, 
10; John xx, 17,) but not as the least of his brethren 
compared with other Christians. But as Christ was, 
during his ministry on earth, generally surrounded 
by the poor and the despised — publicans and sinners, 
etc. — that sought his salvation, so he represents 
himself here as surrounded by the same characters 
at the judgment. Their ardent desire of him and 



558 



MATTHEW XXV, 31-46. 



his salvation (2 Tim. iv, 8) has brought them near 
the throne of his glory, and the Lord, as it were, 
singles them out. They are the poor in spirit, the 
mourners, the meek, the persecuted, who were pro- 
nounced blessed in the Sermon on the Mount, and 
are now receiving the promised blessing." Watson 
understands by "my brethren" all men, and remarks 
in support of his view: "Those who restrain the 
term brethren to poor and destitute Christians, have 
no warrant from the words or from the scope of the 
discourse. To narrow up the obligations of benefi- 
cence to those of our own faith would have been 
rather in the spirit of Judaism than according to the 
liberal and expansive genius of Christianity; the 
term brethren is to be taken in its largest sense for 
all mankind. By taking upon him our nature, 
Christ became the brother of every man, and even 
in his exalted and glorified state recognizes us un- 
der that relation." Worth}' of note is also what 
Bengel says in his "Gnomon," on the word brethren: 
"The higher men rise the more overbearingly they 
treat their fellow-men. Jesus called his immediate 
followers at first disciples, once little children, 
(John xiii, 33,) and friends, (John xv, 15;) after his 
resurrection he called them children (John xxi, 5) 
and brethren, (Matt, xxviii, 10; John xx, 17; comp. 
xiii, 1,) and by the latter name he shall call them on 
the day of judgment. What an honor for believers! 
(Comp. Heb. ii, 10.) During the time of Christ's 
humiliation the term brethren seems not to have 
been used, lest he might be taken to be a mere 
man ; but since he has been exalted this danger no 
longer exists. At the same time, it must not be 
overlooked that Christ addresses no man directly as 
his brother; the passages, Matthew xii, 48, etc., and 
Hebrews ii, 11, do not disprove this assertion; and 
the Scriptures no where call Christ directly our 
brother. Thus it would have been unbecoming, e. g., 
in Peter, to call Christ 'brother' instead of 'Lord.' 
(John xxi, 15; xx, 7; xiii, 13.) So James, that 
was called by others 'the brother of the Lord,' calls 
himself a 'servant of God and of our Lord Jesus 
Christ,' and Jude calls himself also 'the servant of 
Jesus Christ and brother of James,' (verse 1.) See 
also Matthew xxiii, 8; Luke xxii, 32. — Among men 
the term 'brother' does not always denote equality, 
nor is it used invariably by the two parties at once; 
he that holds a higher office, e. g., while he calls his 
inferiors 'brethren,' is not called by them 'brother.' 
In the same way the term friend is used; so the 
Lord calls his disciples 'friends,' while it would 
have been unbecoming in them to call him 'friend.' 
(John xv, 15.)" 

Verse 41. "The two verdicts of the Judge (vs. 
34 and 41) are so completely decisive, that between 
this right hand and the left no intermediate third is 
henceforth possible. This is the first and last, the 
only and the irrevocable curse from the lips of Him 
in whom all nations were to be blessed. That they 
had before heard a 'come unto me!' in a manner 



that authenticated it as a Divine invitation, and had 
rejected it on their part, is so self-evident, that the 
Judge does not deem it necessary to state it here. 
The banishing sentence of the wicked is couched in 
terms that form a complete antithesis to the terms 
of the gracious acceptance of the righteous; in the 
one case, 'Come,' in the other, 'Depart] strength- 
ened by the addition, 'from me.' Again : 'Ye blessed] 
and 'ye cursed] but not 'of my Father,' as they 
have themselves chosen their curse that banishes 
them forever from the Son, while the others come 
now fully through the Son to the Father. Again, on 
the one side, the kingdom with all its glory and de- 
light, on the other the fire with its insufferable pain. 
The kingdom is ' prepared for you] the fire ' is pre- 
pared for the devil and his angels;' for men there 
was no previous preparation of damnation, no book 
of death, because the blood of Christ has purchased 
life for all; only those that choose to belong to the 
devil will finally share his doom. The kingdom is 
prepared from the foundation of the world; of the 
fire this is not said. For even for the devil, who 
was created an angel, hell was no more foreordained 
than his sin, although it was prepared for him as 
soon as he became a devil. The 'inheriting' of the 
blessed neither has, nor eau have, any other antithe- 
sis than that the cursed are excluded from it. The 
curse shows the termination of the high-priesthood 
of Christ, in which office he only intercedes and 
blesses. Henceforth he is king and Lord, his ene- 
mies being now forever put under his feet." (Stier.) 

Verses 42, 43. Not positive crimes or sins of 
commission are mentioned as causing the condem- 
nation of the wicked, but only sins of omission. That 
every transgression shall meet with condign punish- 
ment is self-evident. But here we are taught that 
those in whom not even one good work can be 
found shall be damned. Each genuine work of love 
is a practical recognition of Christ, who is hid in his 
followers, both because true faith works by love, and 
because love is in general the surest proof of the 
presence of a divine element in the human heart. 
In the same sense, Olshausen remarks: "As he that 
is capable of loving is also capable of receiving 
love, yea, as love in itself is blessedness and eternal 
life, so the destitution of love disqualifies for bless- 
edness." John says: "Love is of God, and every 
one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. 
He that loveth not knoweth not God. For God is 
love." (1 John iv, 7, 8.) The exact repetition of 
details shows with what exactness the Judge shall 
examine every one's case, not overlooking even a 
single item. 

Verse 44. As the righteous are ignorant of their 
good works from humility, so the wicked are igno- 
rant of their misdeeds, of their omissions from the 
arrogant spirit of self-justification. Luther's com- 
ment on this passage is : " That the cursed are un- 
willing to admit the charge of neglected duty shows 
their callousness and hauteur, that made them un- 



OUR LORD FORETELLS THE TIME OF HIS DEATH. 



559 



willing in the time of grace to know either Christ or 
his members; and so the state of their mind is fully 
revealed only on the day of judgment." 

Verse 46. And these shall go into everlasting 
punishment. The adjective qualifying "punishment" 
and "life," though differently rendered in the En- 
glish version, is the same in the original. Life is 
the diametrical opposite of punishment or pain, in- 
cluding not only the idea of self-conscious existence, 
but also of blessedness. If the "punishment" were 
only of limited duration, "life" could, likewise, not 
be endless. "The endlessness of the punishment is 
just as certain as that of life. The endless pain of 
the devil, and of those who share his doom, is as 
deep a mystery as the fall of the devil, but as fully 
attested as eternal life itself, the mark of our heav- 
enly calling in Jesus Christ. Reader, follow the 
Good Shepherd now, when he kindly bids thee to 
come unto him, and thou shalt never hear the fear- 
ful word, 'Depart from me!'" (Stier.) We close 
this solemn section with the following remark of Dr. 



Morison, which ministers, preaching on the final 
judgment, should lay to heart: "The great facts of 
the Divine retribution — the eternal bliss into which 
the righteous are drawn up, and the eternal woe into 
which the wicked are cast down — are too plainly set 
forth to be the subject of criticism. These central 
and indisputable facts stand unaffected by any just 
principles of criticism. The images of uplifting or 
appalling grandeur in which they are enveloped can 
not act too powerfully on the imagination and the 
heart of man. The obscurity in which the particu- 
lars of our future being are left, was undoubtedly 
intentional on the part of our Savior. For, though 
the whole matter, in its blissful or terrible details, 
may have been disclosed to him, he knew that we, 
in our present state of existence, could not compre- 
hend them, and would only be confounded or misled 
by any language in which they might be described. 
We can not understand, except in a general way, 
that which in all its particulars must lie so far be- 
yond all our experience here." 



CHAPTER XXVI 



§64. OUR LORD FORETELLS THE TIME OF HIS DEATH, WHILE HIS ADVER- 
SARIES ARE YET AT A LOSS HOW TO BRING IT ABOUT. 

The Evangelist emphatically indicates the commencement of the history of the Pas- 
sion by connecting the Savior's prediction concerning the time of his death with the 
words, " When Jesus had finished all these sayings." By all these sayings commentators 
generally understand the immediately-preceding discourses of our Lord concerning his 
second coming; and if so understood, they present us with a highly-significant contrast: 
"I shall sit upon the throne of my glory, to dispense eternal woe and eternal life; but 
now I give myself up to be crucified." Stier and Lange, however, take the words all 
these sayings in a wider sense, as including with the last prophetic instructions to his dis- 
ciples all his public teaching, and indicating that his prophetic office had come to a close, 
and that he was now entering upon his high-priestly functions. The Son of man, who 
testified of himself as the Son of God, had given the sublimest and purest witness to the 
truth of God, in unison with a holy life and mighty wonders; but for man's salvation 
something more was wanting than words, be they even the perfect words of the eternal 
Word. They could only work preparatorily, and, dreadful as the thought is, their primary 
effect with the Jewish people was to evoke that enmity that brought about the sufferings 
and death of the Son of God. Henceforth his discourses become naturally and necessa- 
rily fewer and fewer, while the passion of the silent Lamb itself speaks forth all the 
more impressively. 

Worthy of consideration is also the connection in which Matthew places our Lord's 
prediction of the time of his suffering and death with the counsel of his enemies, as indi- 
cated by the "then" in verse 3. " This counsel of men against God, although it had been 
foreseen from the beginning, and permissively confirmed in the counsel of God, must 
nevertheless, as man's evil device, be, in some sense, brought to contempt. Before they 
say, 'Not on the feast-day!' the Lord had forewarned that on the feast-day it should and 
it must come to pass; and this serene, sublime assurance, with which the Lord antici- 



560 



MATTHEW XXVI, 1-5. 



pates and meets the well-known design of his enemies can not be too deeply pondered 
and felt. . . . All proceeds, according to outward appearance, naturally, as if men 
did to him whatsoever they listed ; but it is not so, nevertheless. On the part of men 
there is nothing but sin and injustice, from the highest crime of the betraying disciple 
down to the most venial acts of the crucifying soldiers. But in all this, and above it all, 
is the Father's good and gracious will. Therefore, before the Jews take counsel and 
Judas comes to them, the Lord had already spoken these words. The Son of G-od, as the 
Son of man,' gives himself up to the counsel of God, in conscious, voluntary obedience. 
This testimony to his own voluntary self-devotion was included in all the previous an- 
nouncements of his suffering and death, but here mpst simply and impressively. He 
does not say, The Son of man will deliver himself up — although that also was true — but 
he speaks in a purely -passive manner of his Passion. 

"With this section," says Lange, "we enter upon the record of the Savior's Passion, 
the sublimest and holiest history, which reveals unto us the depths of the Godhead, of 
Divine wisdom, justice, and grace, the depths of the human heart, the contrast of the 
immaculate Son of man and of the sinful race of Adam, the mystery of the sufferings of 
the God-man, the depths of the spirit-world, and of Satan. As the Scriptures say of the 
Eedeemer, 'Who shall declare his generation?' — that is, the length of his days — so it may 
also be asked, Who shall declare the depths of his suffering and death?" 

"Verses 1—5. (Compare Mark xiv, 1, 2; Luke xxii, 2.) 

(1) And it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said unto 
his disciples, (2) Ye know that after two days is the feast of the Passover, and the 
Son of man is betrayed to he crucified. (3) Then assembled together the chief- 
priests, and the scribes, and the elders of the people, unto the palace of the high- 
priest, who was called Caiaphas, (4) and consulted that they might take Jesus by 
subtilty, and kill him. (5) Eut they said, JSTot on the feast day, lest there be an 
uproar among the people. 



Verse 1. Whether Jesus finished his sayings 
concerning his second coming (chap, xxiv, 4, to 
xxv, 24, 46) on Tuesday evening or on Wednesday 
morning can not be determined with certainty. In 
either case the time till Wednesday evening is reck- 
oned as one day, and the time from Wednesday to 
Thursday evening as the second day. 

Verse. 2. Ye know that after two days is the 
feast of the Passover. The first day of the feast, 
commencing Thursday evening, the close of the 
14th, and ending Friday evening, the close of the 
15th of Nisan, is meant here. — And the Son of 
man is betrayed to be crucified. At first sight it 
might seem as if our Lord meant to say to his disci- 
ples, Ye know that the Son of man is betrayed, as 
well as ye know that after two days is the feast of 
the Passover. But this is not his meaning. He 
had never before connected his suffering with the 
Passover, and they had never understood his repeat- 
ed predictions. He, therefore, begins with what was 
known to every one and goes on immediately to add 
the hidden purpose of God concerning this Passover, 
as if he had said: As ye know that in two days will 
be the feast of the Passover, so I know, and now tell 



you, that in this Passover I shall be crucified. He 
says is betrayed, making the future present, just as 
he says, After two days is the feast. The point of 
connection between the time of the feast and his 
being betrayed is this, that here, where the Old Test- 
ament finds its consummation and end in the New, 
God's counsel itself preserves the sanctified Old- 
Testament times and seasons. Moreover, the Lord's 
trial and judgment was to be conducted publicly in 
the presence of the multitudes, then assembled in 
Jerusalem. He was not to fall under popular frenzy, 
like Stephen, nor be destroyed by arbitrary violence 
in secret, like the Baptist; but before Jews and Gen- 
tiles, the sentence of death is to be pronounced and 
executed on the Lamb of God that bore the sins of 
the world. "Jesus mentions here again, as in chap- 
ter xvii, 22, as the two prominent points, his betrayal 
by the Jews and his crucifixion by the Gentiles. 
The clearness, certainty, and calmness with which 
he predicted these events, form a strange contrast 
with the uncertainty about his execution in which 
his enemies still are. While they have no control 
over themselves, but are hurried along by the powers 
of darkness more tempestuously than they them- 



JESUS IS ANOINTED AT BETHANY. 



561 



selves desired, he being familiar with the spirit of 
the Scriptures — the typical meaning of the paschal 
lamb — and with the will of God, and the machina- 
tions of Satan, appoints the day which his enemies 
wish to avoid for the day of his death." (Lange.) 

Verses 3-5. Then assembled together the 
chief-priests, etc. It is not difficult to discover the 
occasion of this meeting of the Sanhedrim, which 
was largely attended, as Matthew intimates. Jesus 
had sorely humbled them in the Temple, and frus- 
trated all their designs to involve him in difficulties 
with the civil government. — Unto the palace of 
the high-priest — literally, the open inclosure or 
court, around which the house iiself was built. The 
regular place of meeting for the Sanhedrim was 
called Gazith, and joined, according to the Talmud, 
the south side of the Temple. Their meeting was, 
therefore, no regular, open session, but must be con- 
sidered as a secret conference. — Who was called 
Caiaphas. This was his surname; his real name was 
Joseph. (Jos. Ant., XVIII, ii, 2.) Caiaphas received 
the high-priestly office from the Procurator Valerius 
Gratus, and was deposed from it by Vitellius, (26- 



35; Jos. Ant., XVIII, ii, 2 ; iv, 3.) He was the son- 
in-law of Annas. — And consulted that they might 
take Jesus by subtilty. We see from this clearly 
the impression which the signal victories of Jesus 
over them in the, Temple had produced upon the 
people and themselves. — Not on the feast-day. 
They meant thereby, in all probability, the whole 
time of the feast, which was seven days. They in- 
tended to wait with the execution of their design till 
the many strangers, assembled in the city during the 
feast, had left again. On such occasions there was 
sometimes two millions of men, and there was the 
more reason to apprehend an uproar in favor of 
Jesus, as he numbered so many followers among the 
brave and bold Galileans. The conclusion the San- 
hedrim had arrived at was, however, shortly after- 
ward changed; not by the first offer of Judas, which 
had, most probably, been made ere this, and had led 
them to seek his destruction by stealth or subtilty, 
but by a subsequent call of Judas, when he came to 
them by night after the paschal feats, and acquaint- 
ed them with the fine opportunity which they had to 
secure his person in Gethsemane." (Lange.) 



§65. JESUS IS ANOINTED AT BETHANY. 

Verses 6— 13. (Compare Mark xiv, 3-9; John xii, 1-10.) 

(6) Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, (7) there 
came unto him a woman having an alabaster 1 box of very precious ointment, 2 
and poured it on his head, as he sat at meat. (8) But when his disciples saw it, 
they had indignation, saying, To what purpose is this waste ? (9) For this oint- 
ment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor. (10) When Jesus 
understood it, he said unto them, Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath 
wrought a good work upon me. (11) For ye have the poor always with you ; but 
me ye have not always. (12) For in that she hath poured this ointment on my 
body, she did it for my burial. (13) Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this Gos- 
pel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath 
done, be told for a memorial of her. 



Verse 6. Now when Jesus was in Bethany. 
This anointing, related also by Mark, (xiv, 3, etc.,) 
is not identical with the one recorded by Luke, (vii, 
36, etc.,) but differs from the latter as to time, place, 
circumstances, object and historical connection so 



entirely, that no honest critic will attempt to repre- 
sent the two transactions as one. It is, however, not 
related in its chronological order by Matthew and 
Mark. (Compare the introductory remarks to chap- 
ter xxi.) The statement of John, that the anointing 



1 Alabaster is a calcareous spar resembling marble, 
but softer and more easily worked, and therefore very 
suitable for being wrought into boxes. Pliny represents 
it as peculiarly adapted to the preservation of ointment. 
The expression brake the box, in Mark xiv, 3, implies 
only the removal of the seal upon the mouth of the box, 
by which seal the perfume was prevented from evap- 



orating. 2 This aromatic substance is mentioned in 
Cant, i, 12, where its sweet odor is alluded to, and in 
iv, 13, 14, where it is enumerated with various other ar- 
omatic substances, imported from Arabia or India and 
the far East. The aroma of the plant from which the 
ointment is made is so strong that the air around is per- 
fumed when the roots are crushed or bruised. 



36 



562 



MATTHEW XXVI, 6-13. 



took place six days before the Passover, is not contra- 
dicted by Matthew and Mark; they do not say, "At 
the time when the Sanhedrim was in session, Jesus 
was at Bethany and there came unto him a woman," 
but merely insert an event here that took place dur- 
ing the last stay of Jesus at Bethany. (See similar 
retrogressive statements in chap, xiv, 3, and chap, 
xxvii, 7.) They had probably two reasons for in- 
serting the incident here, one of which is, that it 
stands in a close relation to the betrayal of Judas, 
and the other in order to call attention to the fact 
that Jesus had already foretold the nearness of his 
death several days before the Sanhedrim formally 
resolved on his death; another reason may have 
been to place this preparation for the burial of his 
body significantly at the head of the Passion. Wich- 
elhaus,, on the contrary, maintains that the anoint- 
ing really took place two days before the Passover, 
since, as he thinks, the words "for my burial" have 
not their full force unless they were spoken shortly 
before his death, after he had fully declared himself 
on that subject before his disciples, (v. 2.) As to 
the date given by John, he thinks that John intended 
to say by it merely that Jesus had come to Bethany 
six days before the Passover, after which he related 
the anointing as having taken place during his last 
stay at Bethany, without meaning to convey the idea 
that it took place on the very evening of Jesus' 
arrival there. This interpretation of John's date is 
inconsistent with that Evangelist's accuracy when 
he does give a note of time, and especially with 
John xii, 9. — In the house of Simon the leper; 
a leper, who, as we may well suppose, had been 
healed by Jesus. From the fact, that, according to 
John, Lazarus was one of the guests, while his sister 
Martha waited on them, we have to infer that this 
Simon was a friend of the family. — There came 
unto him A woman. We learn from John that this 
woman was Mary, the sister of Martha. Without 
the least foundation is a tradition of the Church of 
Rome, that this Mary is the same as the sinner, 
(Luke vii,) or Mary Magdalene. It is claimed that 
the anointing to which John (xi, 2) refers must be 
supposed to be an earlier one, and identical with the 
one reported by Luke. But, from the very fact that 
John speaks of this anointing as something so gen- 
erally known, it may be safely inferred that he means 
the one of which Jesus had declared, that it should 
be spoken of all over the world in connection with 
his Gospel, and which he afterward records fully in 
chapter xii. 

Verse 7. And poured it on his head. Not only 
the Jews, but the ancients generally, had the custom 
to anoint the heads of honored guests as a special dis- 
tinction. John adds, that she anointed his feet also. 
As the feet of a guest were generally washed with 
water, it was a mark of great veneration to anoint 
the feet as well as the head. So great was her devo- 
tion that she could not think of retaining a portion 
of the precious ointment. This anointing is a type 



of the never-failing streams of love that shall be 
poured on Jesus by his redeemed throughout time 
and eternity. 

Verses 8, 9. But when his disciples saw it, 
they had indignation. According to John, it was 
Judas alone who openly expressed his disapproval 
of Mary's act; according to Mark, several of the 
disciples did it; Matthew, who is not in the habit of 
going into details, says, only in general terms, that 
the disciples were indignant at the deed. From all 
this we must infer that, misled by Judas's pretended 
zeal for the poor, they seconded his remark. The 
indignation of Judas proceeded from a black heart, 
devoid of love; it was covetousness cloaking itself 
in charity, lucre speaking the language of love. 
Nothing of this kind was in the hearts of the other 
disciples, but they had not yet large enough views 
to perceive and appreciate the spirit of this senti- 
mental act. Stier's remarks on this point deserve 
to be pondered well: "We have here an example of 
objections, based on the utilitarian principle, to out- 
lays on the outward form of public worship that 
worthily express the feelings of reverence and love. 
We are also warned here against those cold judg- 
ments on the pious acts of devout hearts, against 
those frequent criticisms on spontaneous acts of 
feeling, against that bigotry which has for the con- 
duct of others no other standard than that of one's 
own sentiments, and against that officiousness that 
would lay down rules according to which alone good 
works are to be performed." 

Verse 10. Why trouble ye the woman? Why 
do you wound her feelings ? Mark and John add : 
Let her alone. They had no right to interfere in 
this matter. For the mode of expressing our senti- 
ments of loving and adoring worship we are respons- 
ible to no man. Lange describes the scene graph- 
ically in his "Scbcil Scfn:" "We do not know to 
what extent Mary was affected by the unexpected 
blame of the disciples. She had brought unto the 
Lord an offering of love in full confidence and from 
the very depth of her soul, and now the reverend 
college of the disciples judged that she had acted 
foolishly — yea, that she had wronged the poor. 
While the delicious odor of the ointment filled the 
house, a painful feeling of discontent stole upon the 
company, and Mary finds herself the subject of cen- 
sure in the midst of the guests." To this Stier adds: 
" She may have been tempted to think, I have acted 
inconsiderately, and the Lord himself will disap- 
prove of my act." — For she has wrought a good 
[a fine or noble] work upon me. " Tender love at 
the right time, words significantly expressive of the 
inmost emotion — is this not praiseworthy? See, here, 
the moral aesthetics in judging human actions, as 
taught by the Lord ! In other cases he praises the 
faith or love from which a work springs; here, the 
outward work itself, because it was impugned, though 
it was a genuine expression of the love of the heart." 
(Stier.) — Upon me. "Has this no value in your 



COMPACT OF JUDAS WITH THE HIGH-PRIESTS TO BETRAY JESUS. 



5G3 



eyes? Am I not worthy of such honor? Whether 
they were done or not done unto Jesus, shall, on 
the day of judgment, determine the real value of 
the actions of men ! Be, therefore, of good cheer, 
misjudged soul, the Lord knows thee. And even if 
his disciples should blame thee, he will vindicate 
thee, either now or on the day of final reckoning." 
(Stier.) 

Verse 11. For ye have the poor always with 
you; but me ye have kot always. As if he meant 
to say: Have you forgotten that I shall stay with 
you only a short time longer? "There is not always 
an opportunity to give the Lord a token of grateful 
love, neither in his person nor in his followers. On 
this occasion the Lord's heart was to be cheered, as 
he was entering upon his bitter suffering and death. 
Mary perceived the auspicious moment, and per- 
formed a work for which all Christendom will thank 
her to the end of time. The case of the poor is dif- 
ferent. There are always poor, that can and must 
be taken care of. A total removal of poverty from 
the midst of organized society is a materialistic 
illusion, and those that do the least for the poor, are 
generally the loudest in keeping it up." (Lange. ) 

Verse 12. She did it for my burial. The Greek 
word, here translated burial, means to prepare for 
burial, by swathing in bandages with spices. (Gen. 
1,2.) The proper translation of this verse is : "For 
in having poured this ointment on my body, she has 
done it for the preparing of me for burial." She 
has treated my body as if it were a corpse already. 
Interpreters are not agreed as to whether Mary did 
this knowingly, or whether it is the Lord only, who 
interprets her act to this effect. Baumgarten says : 
"While Salome beheld Jesus seated on the throne 
of his glory, and desired nothing more ardently than 
to see her two sons seated on his right and his left 
side, while many looked confidently for the glorious 
ushering in of the kingdom of God at Jesus' solemn 



entry into Jerusalem, Mary — though Jesus sits at 
supper with him, whom he had raised from the 
dead — thinks only of his burial, and that so vividly 
as if he was dead already. She is the only one that 
takes the words of Jesus concerning his impending 
death to heart. She realizes that she shall not 
always have Jesus, and her love has done what she 
could, as the Lord says according to Mark." 

Verse 13. This is the only instance that Jesus 
mentions the praise of posterity as part of the re- 
ward of those that love him, and he does so concern- 
ing an act that had not the semblance of a so-called 
good work, and was even misjudged by his disciples. 
Who else than Christ has the power to promise to 
any act, however highly and universally it may be 
praised for the time being, exemption from oblivion 
in the stream of history? What majestic conscious- 
ness of true divinity is, therefore, expressed in the 
words : " Verily I say unto you !" In the very face 
of death Jesus expresses the firm conviction that his 
Gospel, the good tidings of peace and grace, whose 
very center his death will be, shall be preached all 
over the world. In addition to this, Alford says : 
"We may notice, 1. That this announcement is a 
distinct prophetic recognition by our Lord of the ex- 
istence of written records, in which the deed should 
be related, for in no other conceivable way could the 
universality of mention be brought about; 2. That 
we have here — if indeed we needed it — a convincing 
argument against that view of our first three Gospels 
which supposes them to have been compiled from an 
original document; for, if there had been such a 
document, it must have contained this narrative, and 
no one using such a Gospel could* have failed to 
insert this narrative, accompanied by such a promise, 
in his own work, which Luke has failed to do ; 3. 
That the same consideration is equally decisive 
against Luke having used, or even seen, our present 
Gospels of Matthew and Mark." 



§66. COMPACT OF JUDAS WITH THE HIGH-PRIESTS TO BETRAY JESUS. 

The supper at Bethany and the anointing took place, as we have shown, on Saturday 
evening, before our Lord's entry into Jerusalem; and on that evening Judas made up his 
mind to betray Jesus. Whether he went that very night to Jerusalem, or on Tuesday 
evening, when the chief-priests were assembled, (v. 3,) in order to make them the offer 
described in the following section, we have no certain data to determine. " It is very 
remarkable," says Lange, " that the thought of betraying Jesus matured in the mind of 
Judas at two social repasts, the first of making the offer to the Jewish authorities at the 
supper at Bethany, and the second of carrying out his compact with them, at the Paschal 
Supper at Jerusalem. This strange phenomenon is to be accounted for by the fact that 
the human heart, when it comes into contact with Divine grace, is never left unchanged. 
Mar. either j'ields to its workings or he resists them and becomes hardened. Thus Judas 
hardened himself on those two occasions to the same extraordinary extent to which Divine 
grace was at work to convict and save him. This was especially the case at the feast in 



564 MATTHEW XXVI, 14-16. 



Bethany. Here the heavenly warmth of Mary's pure love in glorifying her Master 
ought to have warmed his cold and dreary heart. Yet the effect was the very opposite. 
Her deed stung him to the quick; the general cheerfulness hightened his gloom; the 
honor shown to Jesus stirred up his envy, the princely expenditure his avarice, the mild 
rebuke of his Master a bitter sense of guilt, and the heavenly clearness with which Jesus 
saw through him finally confounded him so that he abandoned himself to the power of 
Satan." 

On the choice by the Lord of a man to the apostleship whom he knew from the begin- 
ning that he would betray him, (John vi, 64,) we have spoken in our introductory re- 
marks to § 20, and in our notes on chap, x, 4. But this is the proper place to exam- 
ine the means by which Satan succeeded in inciting Judas to the perpetration of his 
unparalleled crime. Some have deemed Judas's inordinate love of money, on which the 
Evangelists dAvell, and the paltry sum that was offered to him, insufficient to account for 
the perpetration of so monstrous a deed, and have, therefore, started the strange hypoth- 
esis that Judas did not contemplate his Master's death, but only wanted "to force on the 
hour of the triumph of the Messianic kingdom by placing his Master in a position from 
which retreat would be impossible, where he would be compelled to throw himself on the 
people, and be raised by them to the throne of his father David." But such enthusiasm, 
combined with such subtile policy, is incompatible with the facts which the Gospel records 
give us of Judas's character. So much, perhaps, may be admitted, that the traitor tried 
to soothe his conscience with considerations like these: "While I serve the highest eccle- 
siastical authority in the country, my Master will know how to secure his personal safety 
by dint of his miraculous powers." The principal motive of the traitor was, undoubt- 
edly, his love of money, and as the love of money is the root of all evil, so it led Judas 
to that fearful estrangement from his Master. Every sinful inclination which a disciple 
of Jesus consciously fostered and cherished, in spite of the powerful incentives to holiness 
which the personal intercourse of Jesus furnished, could not otherwise than terminate in 
the moral ruin of the whole man. (Chap, vi, 22, 23.) Intercourse with Jesus made a 
man either good or worse than before. Whoever perseveringly refused to enter into his 
heavenly mind became necessarily his enemy in the course of time. (Chap, xii, 30.) 
The love of the world, ambition, and avarice constituted the besetting sin of Judas. 
When he became a disciple of Jesus, this his favorite sin yielded undoubtedly to the 
powerful impressions that were made upon him; but the demon cast out temporarily 
from his soul again took possession of it, and his case became worse than before. (Chap, 
xii, 45.) He had confidently looked forward for a temporal kingdom of the Messiah ; 
but when he saw more and more clearly that Jesus had no intention of establishing such 
a kingdom, when Jesus spoke more and more distinctly of his impending suffering and 
death, then every better feeling and attachment to his Master gave way. He became 
now painfully certain that his expectations in following Jesus were doomed to disap- 
pointment. Moreover, he saw that his Master had penetrated the inmost recesses of his 
heart. While he was in this frame of mind the devil suggested to him that the safest 
course for him would be to address himself to the chief-priests, and to return to orthodox 
Judaism, for which he would be well rewarded. Possibly he may at first simply have 
intended to make an inquiry; but all at once a contract is made, and he agrees to sell 
his Master for thirty pieces of silver. 

"Verses 14—16. (Compare Mark xiv, 10, 11; Luke xxii, 3-6.) 

(14) Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief-priests, 
(15) and said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? 
And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver. (16) And from that 
time he sought opportunity to betray him. 



THE PREPARATION FOR THE PASSOVER. 



565 



Verse 14. Then one of the twelve, called Ju- 
das Iscariot, vent. That Judas made the first 
offer to the Sanhedrim to deliver Jesus into their 
hands, not in the same night in which he actually 
betrayed him, but at an earlier date, is also stated 
by 'Luke. It is, moreover, not probable in itself that 
he should have entered into negotiations with the 
chief council at so late an hour of the very night in 
which he betrayed him into their hands. When 
John speaks (xiii, 2) of "the devil having put it into 
the heart of Judas to betray him," and again says, 
(v. 27,) "After the sop Satan entered into him. 
Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do 
quickly," it is most natural to understand thereby 
the actual carrying out of an engagement which he 
had made at an earlier period, so that it appears 
also from John's account that the traitor, having en- 
tered into an agreement with the Sanhedrim before, 
waited only for a favorable moment to carry out his 
part of the engagement, and determined upon the 
time at the Paschal meal. — Unto the chief-priests. 
Luke (xxii, 4) adds, "and captains," which refers 
not to Roman military, but to Jewish ecclesiastical 
officers. It is sufficiently known from the Old Test- 
ament that the Temple had its doorkeepers and 
guards. (1 Chron. xxvii; Ps. cxxxiv, 1.) These 
guards had, of course, their superiors and officers. 
Subject to their orders were the " servants," of whom 
so frequent mention is made. (Acts v, 22-26 ; Mark 
xiv, 65; John vii, 32, 45; xviii, 3; xii, 22; xix, 6.) 
These captains of the Temple belonged, as ap- 



pears from Josephus, to the families of the high- 
priests. 

Verse 15. And said unto them, AVhat will te 
give me, and i will deliver him unto tou? this 
question shows that Judas was now lost to all sense 
of shame. — And thet covenanted with him for 
[literally, weighed out to him] thirty pieces of 
silver. The piece of silver was the Jewish shekel, 
worth about sixty cents, so that the whole amount 
paid for Jesus was about eighteen dollars — the price 
for the life of a slave that was killed by an ox. 
(Ex. xxi, 32.) The chief-priests offered, in all prob- 
ability, this low price as a mark of their contempt 
of Jesus, unconscious that by this very act they ful- 
filled the prophecy of Zech. xi, 12. This sum has 
been considered too small to account for the act of 
Judas from avarice ; but Lange disposes of this ob- 
jection by the following answer: "For such demo- 
niacal avarice and treachery no sum is too high or 
too little. To betray Jesus presupposes such an 
insanity of guilt that the most unreasonable equiv- 
alent is the most probable. Moreover, being as am- 
bitious as he was avaricious, the favor of the San- 
hedrim had some weight with him." 

Verse 16. According to Lake, (xxii, 6,) the 
absence of the multitude was to furnish this oppor- 
tunity. Their plan was to secure the person of 
Jesus clandestinely, to charge him with some crime, 
and then excite the multitude against him. From 
the meeting of the Sanhedrim, it appears that thus 
far no such opportunity had presented itself. 



§67. THE PREPARATION FOR THE PASSOVER. 

The Passover was the first of the three great annual festivals of the Israelites, cele- 
brated in the first month of the Jewish year, the month of Abib — which, after the exile, 
took the name of Nisan — from the 14th to the 21st, at the time of the full moon. As the 
Jews commenced the month with the first appearance of the new moon, the Passover fell 
sometimes in March, sometimes in April, according to our reckoning of time. It was 
instituted in commemoration of Jehovah's passing over, sparing the Hebrews, when he 
destroyed the first-born of Egypt. (Exod. xii, 1-51.) Of what it enjoined and signified 
we shall speak in our remarks on the institution of the Lord's Supper, (sec. 69.) Here 
we will only state that it was also called "the feast of unleavened bread," because as long 
as it lasted only unleavened bread was eaten, emblematical of laying aside all Egyptian 
uncleanness by the Israelites, at their going out from Egypt — for leaven was an emblem 
of uncleanness, (comp. Matt, xvi, 6 ; 1 Cor. v, 8) — for which reason the bread used in the 
Temple was also unleavened. 

Stier remarks : "As a feast of the sparing, passing over, the Paschal feast was a feast 
of joy. It exhibited to the eyes of the people of Israel the Divine mercy, through which 
they had become and still were the people of God; but as a feast of unleavened bread it 
was, at the same time, a remembrance of sorrow, not merely of the affliction in Egypt 
out of which the Lord had mercifully delivered them, but of another affliction also, which 
began on the day of their leaving Egypt, and must continue throughout the whole course 
of their wanderings in the desert. As the very significant appointment of the bitter 



566 



MATTHEW XXVI, 17-19. 



herbs was not merely intended to remind them that, according to Exod. i, 14, the Egyp- 
tians had made their lives bitter, so the very plain Thou earnest forth in haste does not 
mean to explain the bread of affliction to be the food eaten in Egypt. There the Israel- 
ites had eaten leavened bread; but when, sanctified to God, they were separated and 
purified from the Egyptian leaven, and by a hasty flight betook themselves to the way 
which led to the promised land, this unleavened bread was their confession that their full 
salvation demanded, in the way to the good land, hardship and self-denial still, with the 
continuance of affliction. Hence we may say with Meyer, that the accompanying sym- 
bols of the Paschal meal pointed to sanctification from sin, swift departure from the land 
of uncleanness and distress, and the transitoriness of earthly life itself." 

"Verses IT— 19. (Compare Mark xiv, 12-16; Luke xxr, 7-13.) 

17) Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the disciples came to 
Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the Pass- 
over? (18) And he said, Go into the city to such a man, and say unto him, The 
Master saith, My time is at hand ; I will keep the Passover at thy house with my 
disciples. (19) And the disciples did as Jesus had appointed them; and they 
made ready the Passover. 



Verse 17. Now the first day of the feast of 
unleavened bread; that is, the first day of the feast, 
during which unleavened bread is eaten. Thursday, 
the 14th of Nisan, is meant, on which the leaven 
was removed, and which was, therefore, considered 
as a part of the feast, although the real feast of the 
Passover did not commence before the close of that 
day. Mark adds, "When they killed the Passover" — 
the Paschal lamb — and Luke, "When the Passover 
must be killed." The Paschal lamb must be slain 
on the 14th, between the evenings. (Ex. xii, 6; 
Lev. xxiii, 5; Num. ix, 3.) The expression between 
the evenings was generally understood, by the Jews, 
of the period from the decline of the sun to its set- 
ting; that is, from three to six, P. M., though its pre- 
cise meaning is somewhat doubtful. — It is here that 
we meet the difficult question whether our Lord ate 
the Paschal Iamb at the time prescribed by the law, 
in common with the Jews, or a day sooner, on the 
evening of the 13th Nisan. If we had nothing to 
guide us but the first three Gospels, no doubt on this 
subject could possibly arise. But there are passages 
in John's Gospel from which, if we had not the pos- 
itive data of the other Evangelists, we could hardly 
hesitate to infer that the meal at which our Lord in- 
stituted the sacrament of the Eucharist was not the 
Paschal Supper according to the law, but that it 
took place a day earlier, on the evening of the 13th 
Nisan. It appears to be spoken of as occurring be- 
fore the feast of the Passover. (John xiii, 1, 2.) 
Some of the disciples are represented as supposing 
that Christ told Judas, while they were at supper, to 
buy what they had need of against the feast, (xiii, 
29.) In the night which follows the supper, the 
Jews will not enter the prsetorium lest they should 
be defiled, and so not be able to " eat the Passover," 



(xviii, 28.) When our Lord is before Pilate, about 
to be led out to crucifixion, we are told that it was 
"the preparation of the Passover," (xix, 14.) After 
the crucifixion the Jews are solicitous, "because it 
was the preparation, that the bodies should not re- 
main upon the cross upon the Sabbath day, for that 
Sabbath day was a high day," (xix, 31.) AVe believe 
that all of these passages admit of an interpretation 
which fairly removes the apparent contradiction be- 
tween John and the other Evangelists. To explain 
them here we deem unnecessary. In defense of the 
most obvious view, which the synoptic Gospels pre- 
sent, let us bear in mind, 1. That if our Lord had 
eaten the Paschal Supper a day earlier, the question 
of the disciples would imply a proposition to devi- 
ate from the legal time, or at least a knowledge of 
his intention to do so, neither of which could be 
accounted for, and the message would hardly have 
been intelligible to the friend at whose house the 
Lord desired to eat the Passover. 2. A real Paschal 
Supper — such it is distinctly called by our Lord, 
(Luke xxii, 15, 16) — could not have been celebrated 
by our Lord, inasmuch as the priests would not slay 
the sacrifice in the Temple, except at the legal time. 
3. It is difficult to believe that the Lord should have 
set aside the law, to which he had been obedient 
during his whole life. This supposition becomes the 
more improbable when we consider that our Lord was 
to be brought to his death in the way of obedience 
to the law. Had it not been the evening prescribed 
by the law, he would have had no cause to enter the 
city, where he knew his enemies were lying in wait 
for him. — The disciples came to Jesus. The 
statements of Matthew and Mark agree exactly. 
Luke says nothing of the question of the disciples, 
beginning his narrative with the distinct order which 



OUR LORD POINTS OUT HIS BETRAYER AT THE PASCHAL SUPPER. 



567. 



the Lord gave to Peter and John. The disciples 
took it for granted that their Master would eat the 
Passover on the day prescribed by the law, and were, 
in all probability, prevented from mentioning the 
subject sooner, because they were full of anxiety 
and fear on account of the announcement which the 
Lord had made to them, (v. 2.) It is also to be borne 
in mind that, after the first Passover in Egypt, there 
is no trace of the lamb having been selected before it 
was wanted. The Lord himself had no need of 
being in haste, because he knew very well that his 
enemies must leave him time and opportunity for 
this holy meal. Even after his final severance from 
the people and the Temple, he adheres still to the 
ancient ordinance, not merely for the sake of insti- 
tuting the sacrament of the New Testament, but be- 
cause he will be subject to the law to the very last. 

Verse 18. Go into the city. This shows that 
the Lord was out of the precincts of Jerusalem on 
the morning of the 14th of Nisan; in all probability 
at Bethany. — To such a man and say unto him. 
The Lord did not choose to name him. Mark and 
Luke record the directions by which the man in 
question was to be found. The two disciples are 
told, that immediately on entering the city they 
would meet a man bearing a pitcher of water. Him 
they were to follow into the house into which he 
would go. That he was a friend of the Lord, most 
probably one of his concealed disciples, like Nico- 
demus or Joseph, we may safely infer from the mes- 
sage the disciples bore to him. There had, however, 
no previous engagement been made by the Lord for 
the room ; else he would certainly not have given 
such directions to the two disciples as we find in 
Mark and Luke, but would have sent them directly 



to the house. The supernatural feature of the trans- 
action did not consist in this, that a stranger should 
have been willing to give his room — for the Jews, 
not resident in Jerusalem, had, at the time of the 
Passover, the right to look for gratuitous lodgment 
and hospitality from the dwellers in the city — but it 
consisted in the foretelling of the circumstances 
under which the disciples should meet the man 
whose room was prepared. It does not become us 
to inquire into the purpose of every miracle which 
our Lord chose to perform. But who can not see 
that the provision for this last Passover should have 
the stamp of Divine dignity and authority ? Besides, 
it is very probable that the Lord spoke so myste- 
riously to his disciples concerning the place where 
he should eat the Passover, in order to keep the 
knowledge of it from Judas for the time being. 
Whether it had this design or not, the result of the 
arrangement was, that Judas could not carry out his 
plan before an advanced hour of the night. Finally, 
it furnished to the disciples a lesson of faith and obe- 
dience, from which they should learn to obey the 
Lord implicitly, and to leave their future temporal 
support with him, in whose service they should lack 
nothing. (Luke xxii, 35.) These revelations of 
the hidden glory of their Lord were to be to them, 
at the same time, a counterpoise to that depth of 
humiliation into which they were soon to see him 
sink. The Master [p SiMokoXos, the teacher] saith, 
My time is at hand. This can not mean any thing 
else than my time of suffering and death; but such a 
message would have been meaningless to any but a 
disciple, who had before heard something of our 
Lord's predictions concerning his suffering and 
death. 



§68. OUR LORD EATS THE PASSOVER AND POINTS OUT HIS BETRAYER. 

"Verses SO— 35. (Compare Mark xiv, 17-21; Luke xxii, 22; John xiii, 21-30.) 

(20) Now when the even was come, he sat down with the twelve. (21) And as 
they did eat, he said, Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me. 
(22) And they Avere exceeding sorrowful, and began every one of them to say 
unto him, Lord, is it I? (23) And he answered and said, He that dippeth his hand 
with me in the dish, the same shall betray me. (24) The Son of man goeth as it 
is written of him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! 
it had been good for that man if he had not been born. (25) Then Judas, which 
betrayed him, answered and said, Master, is it I? He said unto him, Thou hast 
said. 



Verse 20. Now when the even was come. Luke 
says: "When the hour was come;" that is, the hour 
prescribed by law; and Mark: "And in the evening 
he cometh with the twelve." — He sat down with 



the twelve ; that is, he reclined at the table. From 
Exodus xii, 11, it has been inferred that the meal of 
the Passover was taken standing. But this is a mis- 
take. The Mishna says that " the meanest Israelite 



568 



MATTHEW XXVI, 20-25. 



should recline at the Passover, like a king, with the 
ease becoming a free man. He was to keep in 
mind, that when his ancestors stood at the feast in 
Egypt they took the posture of slaves." 

Verses 21, 22. And as they did eat [before the 
institution of the Holy Supper] he said, Verily I 
say unto you. John adds: "He was troubled in 
spirit, and testified;"' on which passage Stier com- 
ments as follows: "The being troubled in spirit 
shows the motive of our Lord's utterance as it 
regards himself, the testifying as it regards the dis- 
ciples ; his own grief will not suffer him to restrain 
it, while he utters a salutary testimony to them as 
well as to the future Church which they represented. 
The disciples also were exceedingly sorrowful, but 
their emotion is far from reaching the depth and 
strength of his trouble in spirit. The suffering of 
our Lord is always and essentially a sorrow of soul; 
it is a divine-human sorrow; for his spirit in the 
unity of the Eternal Spirit knoweth the abomination 
of sin as it appears in God's sight. His soul feels 
it also, in this clear and full knowledge, even as men 
feel — or, rather, as no sinful man can feel it. Thus 
had he from the beginning suffered much through 
sin; but now, the sin of men confronts him in its 
directest, severest form, and is most bitter to him, as 
exhibited in Judas. All the contradiction of frenzy 
and hatred, of hypocrisy and malice, of ingratitude 
and every other bad passion, which, distributed 
among individuals, had fallen upon, or should fall 
upon him, was condensed and consummated in this 
one sinner against him, this wretched traitor. This 
son of perdition compels him — even now when he 
would refresh his soul by naught but love and bless- 
ing, when he was about to establish the seal and 
pledge of an accomplished redemption and forgive- 
ness of sins — to retain by anticipation the sin of the 
one awful exception, condemning him eternally. In 
this utterance of the deepest feeling, there is prima- 
rily no consideration of the influence which it ought 
and must exert upon others ; it is a lamentation of 
the Troubled One, who pours out his complaint not 
merely before God, but also before man in a human 
manner, as he did afterward in Gethsemane. We 
should know for our own consolation and instruction 
that so it was with his spirit; and therefore he bears 
this witness. But then there is another element 
which is never wanting in his self-testimony; the 
wisdom and love, which regulate all his speaking, 
show themselves here, as always, as seeking our sal- 
vation. The disciples are not only to be fortified 
against the awful event, when it should take place, 
by the Lord's foreknowledge of it and submission to 
it, but — and this is of especial importance to us — 
they, as being of the same sinful nature, are to be 
humbled into deeper self-knowledge and penitence 
by seeing how profoundly the sin of one among them 
bows down their Lord. This is the just interpreta- 
tion and application of the word which the Church 
has always held fast. It views the Lord as in this 



word exhorting to contrition before he celebrates his 
sacrament; moving the disciples' hearts to humilia- 
tion before he institutes his Holy Supper. And 
there is profound truth in the remark, that St. Paul 
derived from this one among you his impressive rule, 
But let a man examine himself! Is this Judas act- 
ually isolated and alone in his sin? Is he not 
rather the type and forerunner of many who are 
found in the external fellowship of Jesus, as he was 
then? Hence his warning figure stands at the in- 
troduction of every celebration of the sacrament — 
' In the night in which the Lord was betrayed !' The 
lesson taught by Judas may well intermingle its 
wholesome bitterness with all our Passion-devotions. 
All this is not 'homiletic application,' and 'edifying 
remark,' learned readers, but actual exposition of 
the mind and feeling with which the Lord said: One 
of you will betray me." — Lord, is it I? This 
question implies a positive denial, equivalent to It is 
not J, is it? Each one — except Judas, who did not 
speak before he was unmasked by the Lord — knew 
himself innocent, and was anxious to be cleared 
from all suspicion by the Lord naming the guilty 
one. The same form of denial we find in 2 Corin- 
thians vi, 14, 15, 16. 

Verse 23. Most commentators are of the opinion 
that the answer of the Lord here given is the same 
as that which John records more fully. (Chap, xiii, 
26.) Stier, however, controverts this view, main- 
taining that the words recorded by John were spoken 
after the institution of the Supper, at which Judas 
was present, and that the Lord, unwilling to give a 
definite answer to the first and general question, 
merely repeated in general terms: u He that dippeth 
his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray 
me" meaning simply, it is one of the twelve that 
dippeth with me in the dish. But this, as Olshau- 
sen justly remarks, would have been no answer to 
the question of the disciples. Where the words 
of the institution must be inserted in John, how 
the several remarks of the Lord concerning Judas 
followed each other, why we have to adopt the view 
that Judas withdrew from the rest before the institu- 
tion of the Supper, and how, according to this view, 
the apparent discrepancies between Matthew and 
John can be reconciled — all these points the reader 
will find explained in John xiii, 23-30. For the 
present we refer the reader to our Synoptical Table, 
and to note on verse 25. 

Verse 24. On this verse Stier has a very extended 
and profound comment. Instead of following him 
in the whole train of his thoughts, we deem it more 
profitable to give the best points of his discussion in 
a different order, connecting them with the words to 
which they specially refer. — The Son of man goeth 
as it is written of him. " In these words are wrapped 
up all those thoughts of peace, and not of evil, which 
the Most High has thought toward the children of 
men, to bring the good end which was expected by 
all who, in the longing of penitence and faith, waited 



THE LORD POINTS OUT HIS BETRAYER AT THE PASCHAL SUPPER. 



569 



for it. (Jer. xxix, 11.) Hence all the main crises 
of that wonder of all wonders, of the redeeming 
passion of Christ, were written down before ; and the 
event signified by this emphatic as — the betrayal by 
one of his chosen ones — was recorded too, as it was 
ordained. (Comp. Acts ii, 23; iv, 28.) Nothing can 
break or disturb this predetermined counsel of God; 
all hell, and its power in humanity, is impotent 
against it, even as the desperate malice of Judas fails 
to disturb the repose and confidence of our Lord. 
He abides sublimely elevated above that man's evil 
will, for he submits to his permitted deed as obedient 
to the good-will of God, and goes on his plainly 
marked-out way. He knows that even this, like all 
evil, will be turned to good, and that thus will be 
effected the saving of the world. But though it is 
right before God that the carrying out of the wicked 
purpose should be permitted, it is not the less right 
before God that the wicked purpose should bear its 
guilt." — But woe. " The transition of thought can not 
be better expressed than it is in the Hirschberg Bible : 
' However patiently I suffer this, however little God will 
hinder it, however certainly it was foreseen and fore- 
announced that I should be betrayed by my own dis- 
ciple — yet, fearful is the woe which will fall upon 
him ; for it is not the foreannouncement which caused 
him to commit this damning sin; his own voluntary 
malignity, foreseen only by the all-knowing God, has 
driven him to this tremendous crime.' As the Divine 
counsel, which orders all things beforehand, is not 
disturbed by the wicked purpose which arises, so also 
God's justice, which condemns the sinner, is not in- 
vaded or neutralized by the permissive appointment. 
All that which comes to pass stands under the will 
of God. The energies of nature, without will and 
without organic power of their own, all work, down 
to the slightest, only according to the will of the 
Creator, immanent in his own creation. But in the 
personal creature, invested with free will, in human- 
ity, we must carefully distinguish between occurrence 
and act, between effect and will. Whatever comes 
to pass, as far as it is event and result, belongs to the 
Divine direction, in which the Lord turns the thoughts 
of the people to such and such results as his own 
thoughts will. Thus all must serve God; and thus 
Judas, who least of all understood the Divine pur- 
pose of redemption, is an eminent instrument in its 
accomplishment; a man, by means of whom some- 
thing takes place which was to take place, and as it 
was to take place. His purpose, nevertheless, meant 
it very differently when he became the betrayer of 
Jesus ; and this his act, as such, falls, therefore, as 
certainly under the Divine imputation as the event 
falls under the arrangements of Divine Providence. 
There is no room here for finding an excuse in pre- 
destination, based upon prescience. Ten thousand 
times does this interweaving of Divine foresight and 
the imputation of guilt, this combination of certainty 
and freedom, the one not affecting the other, occur 
in history; indeed, the providential government of 



the world is the perpetual exhibition of this deep 
mystery." — Unto that man by whom the Son of 
man is betrayed. " The Lord significantly calls 
him a man; he was born as man, sinful, indeed, but 
susceptible of truth and love, and therefore of salva- 
tion — but now he has become incapable of salvation, 
because impervious to Him who is the truth, and who 
is love. God in man had been so near and manifest 
to him in the person of this Son of man, that he can 
not be regarded as having done evil only against the 
Son of man; that which the Lord says generally con- 
cerning the Jews, in John xv, 22-25, applies to him 
as an apostle in the highest degree. He resisted the 
truth as a hypocrite, love only hardened him, from a 
chosen and trusted one he becomes a traitor, and 
delivers his Lord and Master over to the enemies, 
who sought his death — for that miserable earnest- 
money. He can hear the woe with which redeeming 
love bewails him, and yet daringly ask: Is it I? 
In the holiness of the Godman there was nothing 
which could furnish any excuse — as in the case of 
man's sinning against sinful man; his hatred of Jesus 
thereby passes over the human limit into the devilish. 
Woe to that man — he was born a man, but he has 
ceased to be one, and has become a devil." — It had 

BEEN GOOD FOR THAT MAN IF HE HAD NOT BEEN BORN. 

" This word closes eternally the door of hope; it pre- 
cludes all thought of an ultimate salvation, or if 
there were a restoration of his soul in the distant 
revolutions of ages, it would be good for him to have 
been born. Mark how even the redeeming power of 
the blood of Christ finds its limit where the Satanic 
domain begins and penetrates the human; and that 
there is an actual abyss, on the edge of which all 
sinners walk, the end of that which had its beginning 
in man's fall, and into which all those must sink who 
give no entrance to redeeming grace. — The Lord 
does not say, It would have been better if that man 
had not been born; for this would imply — better ab- 
solutely, and would border on that forbidden ques- 
tion, which invades the region of unexplained mys- 
tery, Why, then, did God permit him to be born ? 
The Lord's word, 'It would be good for that man,' 
avoids all liability to such application. It would be 
good to him, as he will feel and wish it eternally. 
This includes a direct refutation of the annihilation 
of the damned. — But is this judgment of the Lord 
upon Judas— with all the majestic calmness of the 
eternal righteousness of God in which it is spoken, 
and in his humanity, according to the love of God 
incarnate in him — a cold and rigorous judgment of 
a condemned enemy, bereft of all sympathy and feel- 
ing? Far be it! Rather is it the most affecting and 
melting lamentation of love which feels the woe as 
much as holiness requires or will admit. As the sin of 
men is Christ's grief generally, so specifically is here 
the unlimited sin of the traitor, and his consequent 
unbounded condemnation. The woe pronounced 
upon this man becomes the personal grief of his own 
high-priestly heart, as the Son of man, and 'this man 



570 



MATTHEW XXVI, 26-30. 



is a sorrow to him, back to his very birth ' — as Lange 
beautifully says. Yes, verily, this is the inmost 
meaning of the last lamentation, in which we hear 
the last cry of a love which goes in sympathy with 
the lost one to the extremest limits of mercy, where 
he must be abandoned forever." 

Verse 25. Then Judas said, Master, is it I? 
" The terrific woe had sounded into his deaf ears 
without making any impression, or producing any 
terror. He remained cold and immovable, blind, 
deaf, and feelingless in his cherished purpose; insen- 
sible to the thunders of judgment impending in the 
woe, and to the mercy which shone upon the cloud 
in the lamenting, l it had been good for that man.' 
Just as if he bad not heard the sentence of woe, he 
adds to the rest, with consummate hypocrisy, his own 
delayed, Is it II He intended it to be like theirs ; 



but there is a difference which is hardly accidental. 
The others humbly addressed Jesus, Lord, (Kvpie;) 
that word does not pass the traitor's lips, but instead 
of it he uses the cold and ceremonious Master, { Rabbi.) 
The other disciples are still absorbed in thought, 
pondering the meaning of the word of Jesus just 
spoken ; on that account they do not observe the 
question which Judas takes that opportunity of pro- 
nouncing half aloud." (Stier.) From the disciples 
not knowing the design of Judas at his going away, 
(John xiii, 28,) we must infer that the Lord, as well 
as Judas, spoke in a low tone of voice, which might 
easily have escaped the ears of the other apostles. 
— Thou hast said — a form of affirmation similar to 
that afterward used to Caiaphas; it is equivalent to, 
Thou knowest it — why dost thou ask ? What lofty 
calmness and silent majesty! 



§69. THE INSTITUTION OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

As there were two sacraments divinely ordained under the old dispensation, so Christ 
instituted also two for his Church. The sacraments of the New Testament, Christian 
baptism and the Lord's Supper, perfectly correspond with those of the Old Testament, 
circumcision and the Passover. Though differing in form, yet they are designed to express 
the same fundamental ideas. The relation between the rites of circumcision and Chris- 
tian baptism we shall set forth in our remarks on chap, xxviii, 16-20. To obtain a right 
apprehension of the significance and design of the Lord's Supper, which was instituted 
at the celebration of the Passover, we must understand rightly the significance and 
design of the latter, which has been most comprehensively set forth by Dr. Ebrard in his 
work, vv ©a3 £)ogma ttom fyeiligen Slkntunafyf." We shall here, by way of preparation, give 
only the leading points. While, by the previously-ordained rite of circumcision, the 
Israelites had received a general title to the blessings of the covenant, the Passover, 
afterward instituted in connection with their deliverance from the Egyptian bondage, 
was evidently designed to point out that upon which the blessings of that covenant de- 
pended, the expiation of sin by the shedding of blood. The Paschal lamb was, as Stier 
remarks, the first legal sacrifice in that special Divine economy which then had its com- 
mencement — the representative of all the sacrificial victims which were afterward slain. 
A lamb without blemish had to be killed as a propitiatory sacrifice ; where the destroy- 
ing angel saw the blood of the lamb, he did not require the blood of the first-born. But 
the typical signification of the Passover did not end there. The slaying of the lamb was 
not sufficient; it was to be eaten; that is, it was to be appropriated by the theocratic 
people as food ; and as the slaying of that sacrificial lamb without blemish was a type of 
the atoning death of the sinless Lamb of God on Calvary, by which alone guilty man 
can be spared, so its appropriation and assimilation by eating is a type of the personal 
and vital union between Christ, the true atoning sacrifice, and the recipient of the atone- 
ment. The eating of the bread and the drinking of the wine in the new covenant is, as 
was the eating of the Lamb in the Old Testament, a Divinely-ordained means, by which 
the propitiatory sacrifice is to be appropriated. — The first Passover was enjoined upon 
the Israelites as the condition of deliverance from destruction by the avenging angel, 
which deliverance is a type of our redemption from the curse of the law. The Israel- 
ites, at the first celebration of the Passover, virtua ly confessed, by slaying the lamb, 
their death-deserving guilt, and, at the same time, they expressed their confidence that 



THE INSTITUTION OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 571 

the destroying angel would spare them, on account of the blood of the sacrificial lamb. 
Furthermore, the Passover was to be annually repeated as a memorial of their gracious 
deliverance in Egypt. Throughout the whole Old Testament the deliverance of the chil- 
dren of Israel from the bondage of Egypt stands forth as the highest exhibition of the 
covenant-gi^ace of Jehovah. Even when God first entered into a covenant with Abra- 
ham, (Gen. xv, 13,) the promise of the deliverance of his descendants from bondage that 
should last four hundred years, was a type and earnest of the deliverance from the bond- 
age of Satan by the promised Redeemer in the new covenant. To this great deliverance 
the Lord referred when he gave the law, (Ex. xx, 2,) and subsecpiently, whenever he 
reproved his covenant-people as their King, or gave them new commands, or added new 
promises. Indeed, with the prophets, the hope of the coming Messianic salvation ap- 
pears ever under the similitude of the exodus from Egypt. (Amos ix, 14; Hos. ix, 10; 
xi, 1-11; Micah vi, 3, 4; vii, 15; Isa. xi, 11, 15.) Before eating of the Paschal lamb, the 
significant words were to be said: "This is the. Passover — sparing — of the Lord." What 
else could this mean than, " This is the pledge and condition of the Lord's sparing us." 
"Whoever eats of this lamb will be spared. Thus the Paschal lamb was for every Israelite 
not only a memorial of the deliverance of his people from the Egyptian bondage, but 
also a confession of his own personal need of the grace of the covenant and of his faith 
in the same, and for this very reason a pledge and seal of his share in the propitiating, 
sparing, and sin-pardoning grace of the covenant. This was the meaning and force of 
the Passover, through all centuries up to the time of Christ. Throughout this whole 
period the eating and assimilating of this propitiatory sacrifice was the type of the per- 
sonal appropriation of the real propitiation to be made by Jesus Christ, till at length 
the real Paschal Lamb appeared, and instituted the Supper of the New Testament in his 
blood, in place of the Old Testament Passover. 

A full exposition of the significance of the Lord's Supper the reader will find in the 
exegetical notes. Here we will only premise some general remarks of Van Oosterzee, by 
way of introduction. "What adorable wisdom," he says, "does the institution of the 
Eucharist display! Hy it the disciples, who, in spite of the repeated, plain declarations 
of their Master, could not realize the possibility of his death, should now learn to look 
upon this very death, so offensive to them, in the consoling light of being necessary for 
the remission of sin; yea, he enjoins upon them a constant memorial of it, by which 
they are to be most intimately united not only with their Lord, but also among them- 
selves, and with all believers of all times to come. Anticipating with unerring certainty 
his approaching suffering, he speaks with equal assurance of its saving effects. In his 
self- forgetting love to his disciples, his wisdom devises a means to strengthen their 
faith, love, and hope, and to found an institution that has for its object the preservation, 
union, and development of his Church for all coming times. But that the Lord's Supper, 
designed as it is to unite all true believers in the bonds of the tenderest affection, should 
have been made the occasion of the most violent contentions, is certainly one of the sad- 
dest phenomena in the history of the Christian Church. How painful is it to see the 
apple of discord thrown upon the table of love ! The only consoling reflection is the truth 
that the blessings intended by the Supper are not conditioned by the interpretation of the 
words of its institution. O, that all Christians would agree in this, that, in partaking of 
this sacrament, they have not only a symbolical representation of Christ's death, but a 
real communication of Christ himself to them in all the fullness of his redeeming love !" 

The chronological^order of the incidents connected with the Paschal Supper presents 
considerable, but not insurmountable, difficulties which have their origin mainly in this, 
that John omits the institution of the Lord's Supper, and that Luke, who gives the Pas- 
sion history not with the same chronological exactness as the other Evangelists, puts the 
strife of the disciples, as well as what the Lord said about the traitor, inducing him 
thereby to withdraw, after the institution of the Supper, in order, as it would seem, to 



572 



MATTHEW XXVI, 26-30. 



make the contrast between the words of the Lord and the mood of the disciples the more 
prominent. The particulars the reader will find in Luke and in our Synoptical Table. 
Here it may suffice to remark that we believe, 1. That the Paschal Supper was preceded 
by the feet-washing recorded by John alone, and this again by the dispute of the disci- 
ples for preeminence, recorded by Luke alone; (in our notes on John xiii, 2, 4, we shall 
show that this passage, if correctly translated, is not against this view;) 2. That the 
going away of Judas, recorded by John, (xiii, 30,) took place before the institution of the 
Eucharist ; and, 3. That the discourses of our Lord, recorded by John alone, were spoken 
in Judas's absence, partly in the hall, partly on the way to Gethsemane. 

Verses 26-30. (Compare Mark xiv, 22-26; Luke xxii, 19, 20; 1 Cor. xi, 23-26.) 

(26) And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, 
and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat ; this is my body. (27) And he 
took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; 
(28) for this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the re- 
mission of sins. (29) But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit 
of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom. 
(30) And when they had sung a hymn, they went out into the Mount of Olives. 



Verse 26. And as they were eating. Most 
commentators give from rabbinical commentaries 
detailed descriptions of the complicated ceremonies 
which the Jews observed at the paschal meal, ex- 
planatory of this section. But these rabbinical writ- 
ings do not agree in all details, and we do not know 
what portions of them were prescribed and observed 
at the times of our Savior. Besides we have no 
reason to suppose that the Lord observed those man- 
ifold traditions of the elders, which lacked the Divine 
sanction, and were mostly very trivial. We shall 
state, therefore, only the principal portions of the 
order observed on the occasion in question to which 
the Evangelists themselves refer in their statements. 
]. As an introduction to the meal, the head of the 
family took a cup of wine — generally red wine, 
mixed with some water, was used — gave thanks in 
the words, "Blessed be thou, Lord, who hast cre- 
ated the fruit of the vine," drank of it first, and 
then gave it to all that reclined at the meal. Of this 
first cup Luke (xxii, 17) evidently speaks. 2. Then 
followed the eating of the bitter herbs, dipped in 
vinegar or salt water, in remembrance of the hard- 
ships which their fathers suffered in Egypt; then 
the festive viands were served, among which was a 
highly-spiced sauce, called charoset, into which the 
bread was dipped. To this we have to refer what 
Matthew states in verses 21-25, and during this part 
of the meal the history of the first Passover (Ex. 
xii, 26, 27) was related and explained. The 113th 
and 114th Psalms were read, and the second cup 
was passed round. 3. Now the meal proper com- 
menced. The head of the family took two of the 
unleavened, thin, flat cakes, broke one of them, laid 
it on the unbroken, and gave thanks — "Blessed be 
thou, Lord, who bringest forth bread out of the 



earth!" After this the paschal lamb and the other 
viands were eaten. Then the third cup, called the 
cup of blessing, was passed, and Psalms cxv-cxviii 
were sung. Afterward they drank of a fourth cup, 
which closed the feast, if there was no time left to say 
the second Hallel, Psalms exxix-cxxxvii, when the 
fifth and last cup was drank. The question now 
arises, whether the Lord observed the whole order up 
to the third cup inclusive, and broke the bread again 
after the third cup, in order to institute the New 
Testament sacrament; or whether he instituted it 
at the customary breaking of the bread — instead of 
using the words: "This is the bread of misery, which 
our fathers ate in Egypt," (words not ordered by 
God to be spoken) — speaking the words, "This is 
my body," with reference to the express command, 
(Ex. xii, 26,) "It is the sacrifice of the Lord's 
Passover" — for which the strong expression was 
also used: "This is the body of the Lord's Pass- 
over?" If we assign this position to the words of the 
institution, their significance appears in the clearest 
light. By saying in this connection, " This is my 
body," the Savior declares plainly that they should 
hereafter no more eat the body of the Passover in 
remembrance of Israel's deliverance from Egypt, 
but that he substituted for it this bread, emblemat- 
ical of his body, typified by the paschal lamb, which 
is now to be given to purchase a spiritual deliverance 
and eternal salvation for his people. "To us it 
seems a discordant thought," says Stier, "that the 
Lord should first complete the shadowy and typical 
ceremony — the interpretation of which must have 
been pressed throughout upon his spirit — and then, 
quite independently of the preceding solemnity, once 
more break the bread. We confidently believe that 
here, where the Old and New Testament institutions 



THE INSTITUTION OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



573 



met in one, they must have passed into each other; 
consequently, that the Lord uttered his 'This is' in- 
stead of that customary one which would otherwise 
have been spoken. And in this supposition we are 
confirmed by the record of St. Luke and St. Paul, 
according to which the cup was taken after supper. 
Consequently, as we understand it, the word which 
now elevated the bread into the body of the sacri- 
ficial meal, belonged still to the paschal eating — not 
so, however, what followed. With this it is in accord- 
ance that the cup, which Jesus now gives them, was 
in the stead of the customary third cup, the cup of 
blessing; for this did not follow till the lamb was 
wholly consumed, and no man might eat any thing 
after it. After the word concerning 'the blood 
shed' no man drank even any thing more; that 
which usually took place after the third cup was not 
observed, and the sublime discourses of our Lord 
took the place of the usual continuance of their 
companionship into the night." — Jesus took the 
bread. Why our Lord did not make the flesh or 
the body of the paschal lamb, which had typified his 
propitiatory sacrifice, but bread and wine the sym- 
bols of his broken body and of his shed blood, may 
easily be conceived. We are taught thereby, 1. That 
in the new covenant all typical sacrifices of animals 
were to cease. This the Rabbins seem to have antici- 
pated, since they said: "When the Messiah comes, 
after the order of Melchisedek. all animal sacrifices 
will cease, and only the offering of bread and wine 
will remain." 2. That the Holy Supper or Eucharist 
is neither a repetition of the propitiatory sacrifice of 
Christ once made, nor a carnal eating of his body 
once offered for us — as the Church of Rome teaches — 
but an appropriation of the merit of his death, con- 
sequently a spiritual union with the living Christ. 
3. Bread and wine constituted already a part of the 
Paschal Supper, and answered fully the purpose of 
the covenant feast of the New Testament. While 
the red juice of the grape represents most vividly 
the blood of Christ shed for the remission of our 
sins, bread — this universal and indispensable food 
for man — is the fittest emblem of the flesh, of which 
the Lord had said (John vi) that he should give it 
for the life of the world. For as the natural bread 
satisfies the wants of the mortal body, and imparts 
strength to it, so the vicarious sacrifice is the bread 
which alone can impart life to, and satisfy the long- 
ings of the immortal soul after salvation. See more 
on this subject in the explanation of the words of 
the institution. — And blessed it. The word used 
by Matthew and Mark (evhoyeiv) may also be trans- 
lated by "giving thanks," as Luther has rendered it. 
Luke and Paul use a word {ebxapLaretv) which means 
only to give thanks. But the two meanings fully 
coincide. Thanksgiving for the bread effects a 
blessing of the bread. "That our Lord did not ad- 
here simply and fully to the customary ritual-prayer, 
although connecting his word and act with it," says 
Stier, "is plain from the new significance of this 



bread, the consecration of which required a new 
and free expression. The old form of prayer and 
thanksgiving referred merely to the bread of the 
earth, but the Lord contemplates and consecrates by 
his prayer himself in this bread, the gift of heaven 
for the life of the world, as Grotius says: 'At this 
time and place he poured out his thanksgiving, not 
for the old creation and its gifts alone, but also for 
the new creation for the sake of which he came into 
the world — -for the redemption of the world now con- 
templated as accomplished. He can give thanks by 
anticipation, for he beholds his body already broken 
like this bread; he gives himself thus to his disciples 
for their life. All this lays the foundation for the 
profound sense in which the whole sacrament has 
from the beginning been called the Euchai-ist.' " 
— And brake it. The breaking of the bread was 
a symbolical act to represent his violent death, the 
breaking, that is, the killing of his body. If the 
breaking of the bread had been nothing else than 
the mere means of distributing it among the disci- 
ples, it is very singular that the three Evangelists 
and Paul relate this act so minutely. There was no 
need of stating that the bread had to be broken be- 
fore it was handed around. But Paul's language 
puts this question at rest; he says, " This is my 
body, which is broken for you," in place of Luke's 
"This is my body, which is given for you," and de- 
scribes the sacrament as consisting of "the cup of 
blessing" and "the bread, which we break." More- 
over, in Acts ii, 42, the Lord's Supper is called a 
"breaking of bread." The objection that this "could 
not have been a fit emblem of his death, since, ac- 
cording to John xix, 36, no bone of his was broken," 
is not valid; for in Hebrew, "breaking" meant not 
only the destruction of this or that member of 
the body, but it was synonymous with "killing." 
Equally unfounded is the objection: "If the break- 
ing of the bread had a symbolical meaning, an an- 
alogous outpouring of the wine would have been 
necessary," since this objection loses sight of the 
fact, that the mere use of the wine along with the 
bread was a symbol of the blood shed by violence. — 
And gave it to the disciples and said. The 
words of the institution are recorded by three Evan- 
gelists, and the apostle Paul. When we collate 
them, they read as follows: Take, eat, (Matthew, 
Mark, Paul;) this is my body, (Matthew, Mark, 
Luke, and Paul,) which is given for you, (Luke,) 
which is broken for you, (Paul;) this do in remem- 
brance of me, (Luke and Paul;) drink ye all of it, 
(Matthew; Mark says: He gave it [the cup] to 
them, and they all drank of it;) this is my blood of 
the new testament, (Matthew, Mark;) this cup is 
the new testament in my blood, (Luke and Paul;) 
which is shed for many for the remission of sins, 
(Matthew; Mark omits, For the remission of sins; 
Luke has, Which is shed for you ; Paul omits this 
clause.) This do ye, as often as ye drink it, in re- 
membrance of me, (Paul.)" How are we to explain 



574 



MATTHEW XXVI, 26-30. 



this verbal discrepancy? It seems to us one of the 
strongest proofs against the theory of verbal dictation 
by the Holy Spirit. For, if ever the inspired penmen 
recorded the exact words, as spoken at the time and 
verbally dictated to them by the Holy Spirit, this 
would be the case with the solemn words with which 
the Lord instituted the sacrament of the new cov- 
enant. The advocates of the verbal-inspiration 
theory suppose that the Lord repeated the words of 
the institution several times, and now turning to the 
side of John, now to that of Peter, changed the 
words by way of explanation. But this supposition 
seems to us forced and unnecessary. As omissions 
of events and abbreviations of discourses by one or 
the other writer, do by no means conflict with the 
idea of inspiration, it is much more natural to 
suppose that the Holy Ghost did not dictate to the 
sacred penmen the exact words, but only recalled to 
their remembrance their true meaning. The sacred 
writers do not contradict each other in the manner 
of quoting the words of Christ. Their differences 
serve only to bring out their full meaning, which 
they received through the Holy Spirit. — Take, eat. 
As the bread is the symbol of the body of Christ, in 
so far as it is given for our redemption, so is also 
the eating of this bread the symbol of the personal 
appropriation of this redemption. By saying to his 
disciples, and through them to all his followers of all 
times to come, "take" he designates the act of re- 
ceiving and eating as a spiritual act, dependent on 
the- individual's free self-determination and faith. 
Overlooking this, some have taken this "take" for a 
compulsory imperative, and have deduced from it 
the doctrine, " That whoever eats with his mouth the 
bread, and drinks the cup, receives the true body of 
Christ and eats it; if unworthily and unbelievingly, 
to his own damnation." — This is. The word u is," 
the copula between the subject "this" (tovto) and the 
predicate " my body," has, strangely enough, given 
rise to the most violent and protracted theological 
controversy. Without laying much weight on the fact 
that in the Hebrew, which' our Lord most probably 
used in the institution of his Supper, there is no 
copula, and that in Greek, and, in fact, in nearly all 
languages, the copula "is" often denotes mere com- 
parison, (see Ex. xi, 12; John xv, 1; Gal. iv, 24; 
Heb. x, 20,) let us examine the various meanings 
which the copula a is" can possibly have, according 
to the fixed laws of language: I. Both the Church 
of Rome and the Lutheran Church ascribe to the 
copula u is" the meaning of real substantiality; 
although with regard to the mode of this substan- 
tiality Luther differs from the Church of Rome as 
much as those who take the copula in a figurative 
sense. The Church of Rome teaches: "Christ says 
plainly and distinctly of that which he hands to his 
apostles, that it is his body, and this involves the 
proposition that it is no longer bread." But this 
proposition is in diametrical opposition to 1 Corin- 
thians x, 16: xi, 26, 27, 28, where "the bread that 



we break" is still called bread; and it is quite incon- 
ceivable that the Lord should have understood by 
the elements of the bread and wine which he gave 
to his disciples the material parts of his own living 
body. A misapprehension of this kind was not only 
impossible on the part of the disciples, at the insti- 
tution of this sacrament, but the Lord has also pre- 
cluded it with reference to any subsequent celebra- 
tion, by adding, "Which is given or broken for 
you," and "that is shed for you." Upon this lit- 
eral, self-contradictory interpretation of the copula, 
the Church of Rome has built the monstrous dog- 
mas: 1. That her priests have the power to change, 
by. the words of consecration, the substance of the 
bread and wine into the substance of the body and 
blood of Christ, although the accidents, such as 
shape, color, taste, etc., remain unchanged; 2. That 
the body and blood of Christ, under the species of 
bread and wine, must be constantly offered up again 
for the remission of sins; 3. That the body of the 
Lord is indissolubly joined to the once-consecrated 
wafer, and is, therefore, to be worshiped, even inde- 
pendently of the sacramental act. Against the 
Popish dogma of the transubstantiation, or change 
of the elements into the real body of Christ, Luther 
strongly protested, contending, however, at the same 
time, that the copula "is" must be understood to 
express real substantiality, and laying down the fol- 
lowing proposition: Christ predicates of the subject 
of the sentence, the bread, that it is his body; what 
he handed to his disciples was, therefore, at the same 
time, bread and his body, or, in other words, the 
body and blood of Christ — in their glorified state, of 
which more will be said hereafter — are substantially 
present in the sacrament, and are orally partaken 
of by all communicants in, icith, and under the 
bread and wine. This is called consubstantiation. 
But this interpretation, viewed from a purely-philo- 
logical stand-point, is untenable, because it involves 
a direct self-contradiction to predicate of a certain 
concrete thing, (bread,) that it is another concrete 
thing, (the body,) unless we mentally supply the 
words, u at the same time" — the bread is at the same 
time bread and the body of Christ — which, however, 
is not said in the text, and by which the strictly-lit- 
eral sense is relinquished. Let the reader bear in 
mind, that the question here is not whether the prop- 
osition that Christ is locally in the bread and wine, 
is reconcilable with reason, but simply whether we 
are at liberty, accordiny to the laws of language, to 
attribute this sense to the words of Christ. It is a 
settled law of language and thinking, that the cop- 
ula never and no where declares two different, exist- 
ing things to be identical; and this law is recognized 
by those, also, who maintain that what is given in 
the Lord's Supper is, at the same time, bread and 
wine and the flesh and blood of Christ, inasmuch as 
they assume only the coexistence of the body of 
Christ and of bread, not the identity of both. It is, 
therefore, entirely illogical to assert that, because 



THE INSTITUTION OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



575 



the language is not figurative, the copula must be 
presumed to identify the subject and the predicate. 
The antecedent of this inference is not only not 
proved, but refuted by a settled law of language and 
thinking. We see, therefore, that, apart from all 
other reasons, the copula "is," in its grammatical 
and logical relation, can not be understood in its 
strictly-literal sense of real substantiality; hence, 
the question arises: II. Which other sense can the 
copula have? It may have two other meanings. 1. 
This (bread) signifies my body, is an emblem of my 
body, given into death, that is, of my vicarious death. 
This is the Zuinglian view. 2. This (bread) is the 
pledge of my body, given into death for the remission 
of sins; that is, he who receives the bread receives 
with it the blessings flowing from my atoning death. 
These two views lead to the question : What have 
we to understand by the predicate, My body ? That 
our Savior could not understand by it his natural 
body, as the Church of Rome teaches, has been 
shown already. The Lutheran dogma is, that the 
Lord speaks here of his body with reference to its 
glorified state. But this interpretation is inconsist- 
ent with the addition, "which is given for you"- — ac- 
cording to Luke; or, "that is broken for you"- — ac- 
cording to Paul. For, 1. The forgiveness of sins rests 
upon the vicarious death, not upon the eating of the 
glorified body of Christ. 2. Christ could not possi- 
bly intend to speak of his body as glorified, because 
his body was as yet not glorified, and his disciples 
could not have understood him. The idea of a two- 
fold material body of Christ — the one sitting before 
them while they ate the other— must have been as- 
tounding to them; and if the words of their Master 
had suggested this idea to their minds, they would 
certainly have expressed their astonishment, and re- 
quested an explanation, as they were wont to do. 3. 
If the Lord spoke of his glorified body, how are, 
then, the words to be understood : " This is my blood 
of the New Testament, which is shed for many for 
the remission of sins?" What are we to understand 
by the glorified blood? The glorified blood would 
be included in the glorified body. Thus we see again 
that the expression, "this is my body," can not mean 
the literal body of Christ, whether glorified or natu- 
ral, and we are forced to take the words in a symbol- 
ical sense. — In order to understand the words of the 
institution of the New Testament sacrament cor- 
rectly, we have to take up once more the considera- 
tion of the Old Testament sacrament. As the pas- 
chal lamb was simply a type of the future and only 
sacrifice for the sins of the world, and the passing 
by of the destructive angel simply a type of the New 
Testament redemption from spiritual and eternal 
death, so Christ, contrasting himself with the paschal 
lamb, declares, in the first place, that his death is 
the real atonement, not a merely-typical atonement, 
like the Passover. That he would give his life as a 
ransom for the sins of the world, that he would be 
violently put to death, and that his death would be a 



sacrificial death, our Lord had often intimated to his 
disciples, but they could not comprehend it; and it 
can not be denied that, during his public ministry, he 
did not make the doctrine of his propitiatory death 
as prominent as his disciples did after his death and 
ascension. But the time had now come, clearly, 
fully, and solemnly, to disclose to them the funda- 
mental doctrine of the atonement by his death, and 
to impress it indelibly, not only upon his apostles, 
but also upon all that, through their word, should be- 
lieve in him for all future times. He did so at the 
last Passover, whose significance the disciples well 
understood, by declaring his death to be the fulfill- 
ment of what was typified by the paschal lamb. He 
speaks of his body as to be given into death. He 
makes his body the central point of the New Testa- 
ment Passover, the fountain of atonement. It is, 
therefore, the atonement by the death of Christ in 
which we have to seek the nature and design of the 
Lord's Supper. When the Lord said, "This is my 
body, which is given for you," it is as much as if he 
had said, This bread signifies my body, prefigured 
by the paschal lamb. The bread is an emblem of 
Christ, the heavenly manna, the broken bread a sym- 
bol of the crucified body of Christ, the wine an em- 
blem of the shed blood of Christ. The act of eating 
and drinking is a symbolical act, expressive of the 
truth that the participation in an atonement can be 
obtained only through an essential union with the 
atoning sacrifice. This idea was prefigured in the 
Passover; for the death of the lamb did not suffice; 
the slain lamb had to be eaten. The individual 
Israelite had his life spared at the first Passover in 
Egypt, and shared at subsequent Passovers all the 
covenanted mercies of his people only by eating and 
assimilating to himself the lamb whose blood had 
been spilt for his atonement. Now, as the death of 
the paschal lamb was only a type of the death of 
Christ, so was the eating of the lamb a type of the 
real life-communion which we must sustain to Christ 
who has died for us. The typical lamb entered, as 
material food, into a merely-bodily union with the 
Israelite ; Christ, the true propitiatory sacrifice, 
enters into a personal, spiritual, union with the 
believer. That the Lord did not understand, by the 
eating of the bread and the drinking of the wine, a 
partaking of either his natural or glorified body, but 
of the atonement made by his death, he had plainly 
declared before in his discourse at Capernaum. 
(John vi.) But as the Passover was not only an 
emblem and type of the future redemption through 
Jesus Christ, but also a pledge and seal of the bless- 
ings of the old covenant, so bread and wine are not 
only an emblem of the death of Christ, but a pledge 
and seal of the New Testament redemption, which 
consists in a personal life-union with Christ, who is 
the sacrifice for our sins and the food for our souls. 
Just as in the words, "This [lamb] is the Fassover of 
the Lord," (Ex. xii, 11.) the typical redemption 
is figuratively predicated of the lamb so Christ 



576 



MATTHEW XXVI, 26-30. 



predicates of his body, figuratively represented by 
bread and wine, the actual deliverance from sin 
through his death. The lamb was not the act of the 
Lord's passing over, [sparing,] but it was the pledge 
and seal for the Israelite of being spared. So bread 
and wine are not the real body and blood of Christ, 
but a pledge and seal of redemption by his death. 
This interpretation is confirmed by inspired author- 
ity, Paul and Luke interpreting the words, "This is 
my blood of the new testament," by the words, 
"This is the new testament in my blood;" that is, 
the new covenant, made in or by my blood, not by the 
blood of the Old Testament sacrifices. According 
to this, the Lord, by saying, " This is my body, which 
is broken for you," doubtless intended to say, " This 
is the new covenant, made in or by my broken body, 
not by the body of the Old Testament sacrifices." 
When we consider the Lord's Supper and the Pass- 
over as covenant acts, we must not overlook that 
both ordinances were intended for those only that 
were already in a covenant relation with God, and 
desired a continual renewal of this covenant. As he 
only could partake of the paschal lamb who, by the 
rite of circumcision, had been received into the old 
covenant, so in the new covenant the communicant 
ought to have become a member of Christ's body, 
the Church, not only by the rite of baptism, but also 
by faith. Even the words, "for you," imply that the 
proper recipients of this sacrament are such as trust 
in the vicarious death of Christ as the only ground 
of their reconciliation with God. The Lord's Supper 
can be a pledge and seal of the new covenant only 
to those who are actually in covenant relation with 
God. As regards those who were never convicted 
of their sins, and do not feel their need of salvation, 
or those who once knew Christ as their Redeemer, 
but are now apostatized, and yet presume to partake 
of the Lord's Supper with an impenitent and unbe- 
lieving heart, these receive nothing but bread and 
wine, and the apostle declares (1 Cor. xi, 27-29) 
that he who does not discern the Lord's body from 
common food is guilty of the body and blood of the 
Lord; that is, as long as he continues in this state 
he is adding to all his sins, that can be forgiven only 
through the death of Christ, the guilt of rejecting 
the only atoning sacrifice, and thus "eats and drinks 
damnation unto himself," just as he that rejects the 
Gospel converts that which is in itself a savor of life 
unto life into a savor of death unto death. — Thus 
we have seen that the Lord's Supper is not only a 
symbolic rite commemorative of the vicarious death 
of Christ, but also a covenant act by which we are 
to appropriate to ourselves all the benefits of the 
atonement, and perpetuate our personal, vital union 
with Christ, which union is symbolically represented 
by partaking of the elements. We are in the Lord's 
Supper not merely to call Christ to our remem- 
brance, as if he were absent; for then it would only 
be a means of strengthening the Christian's faith in 
the vicarious death of Christ, and of inciting him to 



greater love of the Savior, and there would be no 
essential difference between it and the preaching of 
the Gospel, or any other means of grace. Accord- 
ing to this view it is not Christ that comes to meet 
the believer, imparting himself to him, but it is 
the believer, ascending, as it were, to heaven, and 
bringing Christ down; but thus the ordinance loses 
the nature and design of a sacrament. This is the 
defective side of the Zuinglian view, to which Luther 
objected. But he went to the other more erroneous ex- 
treme, by affirming that the sacramental union with 
Christ takes place independently of the cooperation 
of the communicant solely by means of the consecrat- 
ing words first uttered by Christ and repeated in the 
consecration of the elements by the officiating min- 
ister. This view ascribes to the consecrated ele- 
ments the power of imparting to the communicant 
Christ's body and blood, the moment he receives the 
bread and wine, whether he be a believer or not, 
while the saving or damning effect of the reception 
of Christ's body and blood is said to depend upon 
the character of the communicant. There is, how- 
ever, a truth both on the side of Zwingle and on 
that of Luther. Exegetically Zwingle was in the 
right against Luther in this, that the elements un- 
dergo no change in their nature by the words of 
consecration, but remain in themselves, afterward 
as before, bread and wine ; but Luther was right 
against Zwingle in insisting upon it that the Lord's 
Supper is more than a mere memorial. The Lord 
imparts himself in the sacrament to the communi- 
cant, not, indeed, as Luther maintained, by mysteri- 
ously uniting his glorified body with the bread and 
wine, but so that the whole God-man reveals and 
communicates himself to the believer in all his life- 
giving and saving power. It is true that this self- 
communication of Christ is not confined to the 
Lord's Supper, but commences as soon as we enter 
into a personal, vital union with Christ through re- 
generation, and is continued as long as we do not 
drive Christ out of the heart by willful apostasy. 
But the specific difference between other manifesta- 
tions of Christ's presence in the heart, and that 
which takes place through the sacrament, is this, that 
in the latter the Lord guarantees to the believing 
communicant a new communication of his full sal- 
vation so positively that no room is left for any 
doubt. As the Israelite received a new assurance 
of his share in the blessings of the covenant as often 
as he, by eating the paschal lamb, appropriated to 
himself the typical sacrifice, so the personal, vital 
union into which true believers have entered with 
Christ by appropriating to themselves the benefits 
of his propitiatory death, is renewed, sealed and 
strengthened as often as they partake of the emblems 
of his broken body and shed blood. This very idea the 
apostle expresses when he says: "The cup of bless- 
ing, which we bless, is it not the communion of the 
blood of Christ? The bread, which we break, is it 
not the communion of the bodv of Christ?" (1 Cor. 



THE INSTITUTION OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



577 



x, 16.) As there can be no other appropriation of 
the merits of Christ's death than through a personal, 
vital union with Christ, so there can be no other vi- 
tal union with the living Christ, than that which is 
founded upon the appropriation of his atonement 
made through his death. The having a part in the 
death of Christ and the personal, vital union with 
Christ condition each other. This cardinal truth 
is the central idea of the doctrine on the Lord's Sup- 
per. In the solemn moments of the last meal which 
he partook with his disciples, and which he intro- 
duced by some remarks concerning his impending 
bodily separation from them, the Lord designed to 
seal sacramentally, that is, by a visible sign, the per- 
sonal, vital union with him, into which the believer 
enters through faith in his atoning death. This sig- 
nificance and design of the sacrament has not been 
sufficiently appreciated, and this remark applies, in- 
deed, to all those passages of the New Testament 
which speak of the real, though spiritual, self-com- 
munication of Christ to the believer. Christ calls 
himself the vine and his followers the branches; he 
says that he will come with the Father to those that 
love him, and dwell with them, that he will be in 
them as the Father is in him; again he says, he 
that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth 
in me and I in him. The apostle speaks of the same 
personal, vital union of the believer with the Son of 
God when he says, (Eph. v, 30-32,) "We are of his 
flesh, and of his bones," and when he applies the 
Scriptural declaration, that husband and wife shall 
be one flesh, to the relation existing between Christ 
aud his Church; when he says, (1 Cor. vi, 15, 17,) 
"Your bodies are the members of Christ," and, "He 
that is joined to the Lord, is one spirit;" or when 
he says of himself, that he no longer lives, but that 
Christ lives in him, and again, that Christ changes 
his followers into his own image from glory to glory, 
and that the believer's life is hid with Christ in God. 
This inmost, real, and personal union between Christ 
and the believer is sealed, renewed, and strengthened 
whenever he partakes worthily of the Lord's Supper. 
This is beautifully expressed by the Catechism of the 
Palatinate in the following words: "What is it to eat 
the broken body of Christ, and to drink his shed blood ? 
It is not only to appropriate to ourselves, with believ- 
ing hearts, the suffering and death of Christ, and 
obtain thereby forgiveness of sin and eternal life, 
but also to give thanks through the Holy Ghost, that 
dwelleth both in Christ and in us, and by him to 
become more and more united with his blessed body ; 
so that, although he is in heaven and we upon earth, 
we are nevertheless flesh of his flesh and bone of his 
bones, receiving life from, and being governed by, 
one spirit, as the members of one body are by the 
soul" — This do in remembrance op me. These 
words, recorded only by Paul and Luke, contain 
the command to celebrate henceforth the Lord's 
Supper in the place of the Passover, and they indi- 
cate plainly that whatever objective influence may 



37 



be ascribed to the sacrament — that is, whatever Christ 
does in the sacrament for the believer — it is never- 
theless conditioned by the subjective act of the com- 
municant. Those who speak so harshly and con- 
temptuously of the view that the Supper is only a 
commemorative rite of Christ's death, ought to bear 
in mind that, according to the inspired testimony of 
Paul and Luke, Christ himself expressly and prom- 
inently makes the commemoration of his death a 
design of the sacrament; hence their severe censures 
fall back upon its founder. On the other hand, it 
must not be overlooked that even in the Old Testa- 
ment it has a deep meaning of reality, when God 
speaks of recording his name in a place, when 
he says of that place, (Ex. xx, 24:) "I will come 
unto thee and bless thee." Thus, if we remember 
him truly, he will surely remember us by coming to 
us to bless us. The same idea is expressed by the 
declaration of the apostle Paul: "Ye do shew the 
Lord's death" — or imperatively taken, "shew the 
Lord's death" since KarayytX7.tTe can be both indic- 
ative and imperative. The communicants at the 
Lord's table testify to each other and to the world, 
that they have part in the atonement, and, therefore, 
in the life of Christ; and through them the testimony 
and confession of the Church are continued "until 
he come." 

Verse 27. And he took the cut. Although the 
definite article is wanting before "cup" in Matthew,' 
according to some good manuscripts, yet its use by 
Paul and Luke, in loco, is beyond any doubt; and the 
cup spoken of is undoubtedly the third cup, which 
was also called "the cup of blessing or thanksgiv- 
ing." (1 Cor. x, 16.) Paul says: "After the same 
manner also (he took) the cup;" that is, he took the 
cup, gave thanks, and gave it, as he had done with 
the bread, which signifies the indivisibility of the 
sacrament, which is one under its two kinds. — 
Drink ye all of it. It is significant that it is not 
said, Eat ye all. But after they had eaten, the Lord 
says, Drink ye all. The Lord spoke this prophet- 
ically, with reference to the daring withholding of 
the cup from the laity by the Roman Catholic 
Church, teaching us most positively that we must 
not separate the two parts of the Supper, as if the 
bread should suffice without the cup. 

Verse 28. This is my blood. As "my body" 
constitutes the antitype and fulfillment of the body 
of the typical Paschal lamb, so the emphatic "my 
blood" takes the place of all atonement by bloody 
sacrifices which the old covenant exhibited. Several 
German commentators, however, do not deem this 
sufficient to account for our Lord's extending the 
New Testament sacrament of our redemption be- 
yond the limits of the Old Testament type. Stier 
finds the contrast between the body and blood in 
this: "Where blood is, there is also the life or the 
soul; and what will this circumstance — that we now 
drink the blood of an offering — say but that we par- 
take not now of a dead sacrifice, such as the Israel- 



578 



MATTHEW XXVI, 26-30. 



ite ate, but of a living, the life and immortal com- 
munication of which was not attained to in the old 
covenant? As if it had been said, Behold, I die for 
you — and live nevertheless — I thus give, bequeath 
myself to you ; in this ye have me, so that you may 
live in me, because I live in you." Ebrard thinks 
that by the elements of the Supper, the bread and 
the wine, the two fundamental ideas of the covenant 
are expressed, namely, the believer's life-union with 
Christ and the atonement by Christ: "When Christ 
speaks of his body, the idea of the life-union between 
the believer and himself is more prominent — the 
Christian, by having a part in the covenant made by 
the broken body of Christ, becomes one body with 
Christ, as the apostle teaches, (1 Cor. x, 17.) When 
Christ speaks of his shed blood, the idea of the 
atonement made by his death, and to be appropriated 
by the believer through faith, is more prominent — 
the Christian shares in the atonement, when he has 
been received into a life-union with the God-man." 
But all these comments appear to us too mystical 
and far-fetched.^ The reason why the Lord instituted 
the sacrament under a twofold form seems to be this: 
As hunger and thirst embrace all the necessities and 
all the desires of the body, so the Lord, in corre- 
spondence with the twofold bodily need of man, 
food and drink, provides in the sacrament a twofold 
nourishment and refreshment of the inner man, 
making bread and wine the representatives of the 
fullness of the spiritual blessings to be conveyed to 
the communicantj — Op the new testament. The 
word 6ia-&?'/K?j ought to have been translated covenant, 
not testament, for in the LXX the Hebrew berith, 
which means covenant, is uniformly translated by 
(hafr/'/K?/, and in the New Testament writings it has 
the same meaning, with the exception of a single 
passage, (Heb. ix, 15,) where 6ia-&rjK>i is used in its 
original and classical sense of testament, meaning 
that particular disposition or arrangement which is 
called a man's will and testament. In the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, God's covenant with his people is 
viewed in the light of a legacy left by the testator, 
and coming into the possession of an heir by the 
testator's death. The relation of the covenant of 
grace to such a testament, and why SmW/ki], not ovv- 
■df/nT], the classical Greek term for compact or cov- 
enant, was chosen by the sacred writers as the fittest 
term for expressing the Hebrew berith, Dr. Fairbairn 
has set forth in very clear light, in Part II, Sec. 7, 
of his Hermeneutical Manual, closing his disserta- 
tion with the following remarks: "When salvation 
is exhibited in connection with a covenant, it is 
always (with the exception just noticed in Hebrews 
ix, 15-17) covenant in the ordinary sense, involving 
the idea of mutual engagements — individual parts 
to be fulfilled, and corresponding relations to be 
maintained — -though the place occupied by God is 
preeminently that of a bountiful and gracious bene- 
factor. And to keep attention alive to the strictly- 
covenant aspect of redemption, it had, doubtless, 



been better to have retained in the authorized ver- 
sion the rendering of covenant for Sca-d-f/Kr/ in all but 
the one passage of Hebrews, and to have designated 
the Bible, the Scriptures of the Old and New Cove- 
nants, rather than of the Old and New Testaments. 
In particular, it had been better, in the words con- 
nected with the celebration of the Lord's Supper, to 
have retained the common rendering, and read, 
'This is the new covenant in my blood;' since all 
should thus have readily perceived that the Lord 
pointed to the Divine covenant, in its new and bet- 
ter form, as contradistinguished from that which 
had been brought in by Moses, and which had now 
reached the end of its appointment. Yet the cove- 
nant, as established in his blood, bears the epithet 
new merely from respect to the order of exhibition, 
while, if viewed with respect to the mind and pur- 
pose of God, it is the first as well as the last — the 
covenant which was planned in the counsels of eter- 
nity to retrieve the ruin of the fall, and out of the 
depths of perdition to raise up a spiritual and 
blessed offspring for God." — Which is shed fob 
many for the remission of sins. By many must 
be understood (as in Romans v, 15, 18, 19) all the 
descendants of Adam; the many to be redeemed 
forming a contrast to the one Redeemer. That the 
blood of Christ has been shed for the remission of 
the sins of all, is the uniform doctrine of Scripture. 
— Luke says, in the place of "many," "for you," 
the apostles being the first among the recipients. 
Moreover, it implies the truth, that the blood shed 
for all is efficacious only in the believers, represented 
by the apostles. The present tense, "is shed," has the 
force here of the future, " will forthwith be shed," as 
is the case in so many other passages. By the words, 
"for the remission of sins," the principal blessing is 
expressed, which has been purchased by the blood of 
Christ. Where there is forgiveness of sins there is 
life and salvation. The Old Testament saints also 
had free access to the Throne of Grace, and faith in 
the promised Messiah justified them. But a perfect 
certainty of this justification was not possible till all 
the prophecies of the Old Testament, especially those 
on the death and resurrection of the Messiah, were 
fulfilled. The cause of the remission of sins, the 
price paid for it, is the blood of Christ shed on the 
cross. It is, therefore, entirely erroneous to make 
the remission of sins depend on the partaking of 
the Lord's Supper. For it is not said that we shall 
drink of the cup for the remission of our sins, but 
that Christ has shed his blood for the remission of 
sins. The Lord's Supper is only to assure- us the 
more fully of the forgiveness of our sins, which we 
have obtained by faith. According to Paul the Lord 
added a second: "This do in remembrance of me," 
emphasized by "as often as ye drink it," (1 Cor. ii, 
25,) that is, as often as ye drink of this cup. The " as 
often " implies that the Christian shall often come to 
the Lord's table, considering it not as a srrievous bur- 
den, but as the highest privilege that can be extended to 



THE INSTITUTION OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



579 



mortals. The wording, however, is in perfect keep- 
ing with evangelical liberty; we are not told how 
often or at what times we are to commune. We 
can not bring our remarks on the Lord's Supper to 
a close without making the following extract from 
R. Watson's Exposition: "Christ calls his blood the 
blood of the new covenant, in allusion to that solemn 
transaction in which Moses, having taken the book 
of the covenant 'and read in the presence of the 
people,' 'took also the blood, and sprinkled it upon 
the people, and said, Behold the blood of the cove- 
nant, which the Lord has made with you.' (Ex. 
xxiv, 7, 8.) This 'book' contained the covenant 
made between God and the Church and nation of 
the Israelites. It was the record of the promises 
made on the part of God, and the engagements of 
obedience to his revealed will on the part of the 
people of Israel; thus it was a covenant or solemn 
engagement between both; and as covenants were 
anciently ratified by sacrifices, so here the blood of 
the victims was sprinkled upon the book to denote 
at once that its covenanted blessings were procured 
by that blood of the true sacrifice, of which the an- 
cient sacrifices were the type, and as confirming the 
continued performance of the whole to the people 
upon their continued observance of the conditions. 
We see, then, the import of our Lord's words in this 
allusion. He calls the dispensation of his religion 
the new covenant, in opposition to this old covenant, 
which was in its nature introductory and temporary; 
and in reference also to the prediction in Jeremiah 
xxxi, 31: 'Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, 
that I will make a new covenant with the house of 
Israel, and with the house of Judah.' This dispen- 
sation has the nature of a covenant, because it con- 
tains the great and precious promises on the part of 
God, the forgiveness of sins, the renewal of the heart 
in holiness, and the all-comprehensive engagement, 
'And I will be their God, and they shall be my peo- 
ple,' an engagement which includes not only all 
blessings which 'pertain to life and godliness,' but, 
as we learn from our Lord's discourse with the Sad- 
ducees, (comp. xxii, 32,) the resurrection of the 
body, and the felicity of an endless future life. All 
this is promised by God; and on the part of man are 
required 'repentance toward God, and faith in our 
Lord Jesus Christ,' by the merit of whose death alone 
we can claim these blessings, and in sole respect to 
which, as a satisfaction to Divine justice, God places 
himself in the bond of this covenant to bestow them. 
This covenant the blood of Christ, that is, the pour- 
ing forth of his blood as a sacrificial victim, at once 
procured and ratified; so that it stands firm to all 
truly-penitent and contrite spirits who believe in 
him; and of this great truth the Lord's Supper was 
the instituted sign and seal; and he who in faith 
drinks of the cup, having reference to its significa- 
tion, that blood of Christ which confirms to true 
believers the whole covenant of grace, is assured 
thereby of its faithfulness and permanency, and de- 



rives to himself the fullness of its blessings. Such, 
then, is the nature and import of this great institu- 
tion. It is Commemorative; 'this do,' is added by 
St. Luke and by St. Paul, 'in remembrance of me,' 
and as a commemorative institution, observed from 
the time of its appointment by all Christians, it is 
an irrefragable demonstration of the grand historical 
fact of our Lord's death and passion. It is Emblem- 
atical, setting forth the sacrificial nature of the 
death of Christ; the benefits which accrue from it; 
and the means by which those benefits are received. 
It is Federal. In its first institution the perfected 
covenant of grace with true believers was proposed, 
accepted, and ratified; and in every succeeding cele- 
bration, as there is a renewed assurance of God's 
love to us in Christ, so there is a renewed acceptance 
of the covenant on the part of all spiritual recipients, 
with its blessings on the one hand, and its obliga- 
tions to love and obedience on the other. And 
finally, it is a public Confession of our faith in 
Christ, in all those views and relations in which 
he is represented to us in his own doctrine; and of 
our Communion with him and with his universal 
Church. As to the names by which it is distin- 
guished, they have all their significance. Though 
not properly a supper, because separate and distinct 
from the Paschal Supper, which was a sacred meal 
or feast, and because it was instituted after the 'sup- 
per was ended,' it is called the Lord's Supper, be- 
cause it was manifestly appointed by our Lord to 
supersede the supper of the Passover, and enjoined 
as a commemoration of a greater redemption than 
that of the Israelites from Egypt, upon Christians to 
the end of time: 'For as often as ye eat of this 
bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's 
death till he come,' (1 Cor. xi, 26.) — It is called the 
Eucharist, because of the joyful thanksgivings to 
God with which its celebration by the followers of 
Christ has always been accompanied. By the Greek 
fathers it is often called a Mystery, from its emblem- 
atical character, and the truths which lay hidden 
under its visible elements. In the Western Church 
it is more usually described as the Sacrament of the 
Lord's Supper, from sacramentum, which signifies a 
sacred ceremony, and particularly the Roman mili- 
tary oath, which was considered a very solemn, 
religious act; this term being adopted to indicate 
that pledging of ourselves to fidelity to Christ which 
enters into the due celebration of this ordinance. 
Occasionally it is called the Communion, from that 
fellowship of the saints with each other which 
this participation of mystic food, at the same com- 
mon table of the Lord, so beautifully exhibits." — 

I WILL NOT DRINK HENCEFORTH OF THIS FRUIT OF THE 

vine. The various interpretations of these words 
may be divided into two classes, one of which we 
can call the English, the other the German, which, 
however, does not imply that all English interpreters 
are on the same side, as Alford, e. g., adopts what 
we call the German view. The English view is best 



580 



MATTHEW XXVI, 26-30. 



set forth by R. Watson, who says: "St. Luke gives 
these as words of Christ, spoken during the Paschal 
Supper, after he had taken one of the cups of wine, 
probably the first or second cup which was used 
during that ceremony, and previously, therefore, to 
his instituting the Eucharist; and there are two 
reasons which make it probable that St. Luke has, 
in this instance, more closely followed the order of 
time than St. Matthew. The first is, that the wine 
of which our Lord had been partaking must have 
been that of the Paschal Supper, and not of the 
Eucharist, because of the latter he could not be a 
participant. This was to be done in remembrance 
of him, and therefore done by others, not by him- 
self; or, if considered as a federal rite, he was 
not & party to the covenant, but the Mediator com- 
ing in between the parties, and could not perform 
every act which was proper either to the stipulating 
or to the assenting party. These considerations 
appear conclusive against our Lord either eat- 
ing of the bread or drinking of the wine of the 
Eucharist. The second reason in favor of St. Luke's 
order is, that that Evangelist has stated this part of 
the conversation of our Lord with greater particu- 
larity than St. Matthew; and as his attention was 
more fully directed to it, it is the more probable that 
he has assigned it its proper place in the narrative. 
His words are: 'And when the hour was come, he 
sat down, and the twelve apostles with him. And 
he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat 
this passover with yon before I suffer: for I say unto 
you, I will not any more eat thereof, until it be ful- 
filled in the kingdom of God. And he took the cup, 
and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and divide it 
among yourselves: for I say unto you, I will not 
drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of 
God shall come.' These words appear to be the 
same as those recorded by St. Matthew, though with 
the addition, until that day when I shall drink it 
new with you, and with the variation of, 'in my 
Father's kingdom,' for, 'until the kingdom of God 
shall come;' the sense of which is the same, and 
not otherwise varied than as translations into Greek 
by two different persons from the language in which 
our Savior spoke, which was the common language 
of the country. But if a similar observation was not 
made twice during the transactions of the evening, 
then the words in question are clearly, by St. Luke, 
referred to the celebration of the Passover itself, and 
not to the Eucharist. In this case, the meaning of 
our Lord's words is sufficiently obvious. The Pass- 
over commemorates the redemption from Egypt; 
but that was a type of the Christian redemption, the 
completion of which is in the heavenly state. Our 
Lord therefore declared that he would no more eat of 
the Passover, 'until it was fulfilled,' accomplished, 
'in the kingdom of God;' that is, the type should no 
more be celebrated; but he and his disciples would 
meet in a state of future felicity, and they with him 
would celebrate the full and perfected redemption of 



the Church glorified. In like manner we are to un- 
derstand his remark as to the wine: he would not 
drink of the fruit of the vine until 'the kingdom of 
God should come;' or, as it is expressed by St. Mat- 
thew, until he drank it new with them in the king- 
dom of his Father. This is a mode of expression 
not uncommon among the Jews, who spoke figura- 
tively of 'the wine of the world to come,' as also of 
'sitting down at a feast with Abraham, Isaac, and 
Jacob,' making use of the festivals of the earth to 
represent the felicities of heaven. It is thus that 
our Lord makes use of earthly things to prefigure 
heavenly, and raises the thoughts of his disciples to 
the joy of meeting him in the world to come. In this 
view the words of St. Matthew have also an easy in- 
terpretation : Until I drink it new with you in my 
Father's kingdom, where new wine is to be taken in 
the same sense as 'new heavens,' 'new earth,' 'new 
man,' etc., to denote wine of a different nature, 
spiritual refreshment, and spiritual joy, in which 
both the Savior, who will then ' see of the travail of 
his soul, and be satisfied,' and the disciples were to 
participate forever." Totally different from the 
above exposition is that of most of the German ex- 
positors, who refer the words of our Lord to what 
shall take place on the new earth in the glorified 
state of the saints. This view is thus set forth by 
Stier: "No satire will shake our conviction that this 
word of our Lord, which the first two Evangelists not 
merely record at the close of the Supper, but connect 
immediately with the words of the institution, was 
really spoken twice by him. To us it is not imagin- 
able that both the Evangelists — led by the 'mention 
of the cup,' as is irreverently said— should introduce 
afterward and insert what had been really said 
before. As they have not mentioned the paschal 
cup, so they can not be supposed to intend that this 
supplemental word should be understood as having 
accompanied another and a former cup. But it is 
not hard to suppose that our Lord, as at the opening 
of the meal, so also now at its solemn close, spoke 
of the final and full realization of it in the kingdom 
of God. For till then even the Sacrament remains 
but a type, and it was quite appropriate that this 
should be once more certified after its institution; 
this testimony may, indeed, be said to have been a 
necessary supplement, and to have been as signifi- 
cant now as it was before in connection with the 
prophetically longing desire to eat the Passover. 
The drinking here promised will take place when 
Luke xxii, 29, 30— which must be connected with 
verse 18 of that chapter — is fulfilled. That eating 
and drinking are not incompatible with the condi- 
tion of the risen body, is evidenced by the eating of 
the risen Lord; and he himself here testifies that 
the partaking of the fruits of the earth — not for pres- 
ervation of life, but as a cultus of joy to the honor 
of God, to which all nature will then be ministrant 
in his saints — is not inconceivable in relation to the 
blessed in the Father's kingdom upon the earth, 



CHRIST PREDICTS THE WEAKNESS OF HIS DISCIPLES. 



581 



where all things will be heavenly and new. He who 
will not separate between this authentic, profound, 
and sublime word of Christ, and the chiliast dreams 
and expectations of earlier and later times, must 
bear the consequences of his own willfulness, which 
seals his understanding against this truth. We en- 
tirely agree with the following beautiful remarks of 
Thiersch : ' The holy Supper points not only back to 
the past but also to the future. It has not only a 
memorial, but also a prophetic significance. We 
not only show forth the death of our Lord in it, 
until he come; but we have also to think of the time 
when he icill come, to celebrate anew and in another 
manner his sacred meal with his own, in the king- 
dom of glory. Every celebration of the Sacrament 
is a type and prophetic anticipation of the great 
marriage supper which is prepared for the Church at 
the reappearing of Christ. This signification of the 
Sacrament is set forth in the Lord's words — I will 
not drink henceforth, etc. These words should 
never be omitted in the sacramental liturgy.' Yes, 
truly, for this '■until that day'' includes (as 1 Cor. 
xi, 26) that terminus in which the interval of sepoy 



ration will cease, and the eating and drinking ap- 
pointed for the present time will be done away, or 
pass over into another. It is as if the Lord had 
said, Do this in the mean time until I am again with 
you ! The Sacrament is, looking back, a commem- 
orative feast; in the present it is a receiving and 
partaking of the Lord, the true possession of him- 
self; nevertheless, in prospect of the end it is itself 
something preliminary and transitory, an essential 
type and effectual pledge of that feast which, in the 
great and permanent morning of the renewed world, 
in that day which is ever the one great day, Christ 
will provide for his own. When we become as he is, 
then will he be again as we are; he will eat and 
drink with us the new fruits of the new world in the 
fellowship of an eternal enjoyment of the renovated 
creation of the Father." 

Verse 30. And when they had sung a hymn [the 
second part of Hallel (Ps. cxv-cxviii)] they went 
out into the Mount of Ohves. There was a 
Jewish tradition, that this night must be spent in 
the environs of Jerusalem, and it is worthy of 
note, that our Lord did not go to Bethany as before. 



§70. CHRIST FORETELLS THE DISPERSION OF THE DISCIPLES AND THE 

FALL OF PETER. 

Verses 31—33. (Compare Mark; xiv, 27-31; Luxe xxti, 31-38; John xin, 36-38.) 

(31) Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this 
night : for it is written, I will smite the Shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall 
be scattered abroad. (32) But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Gali- 
lee. (33) Peter answered and said unto him, Though all men shall be oifended 
because of thee, yet will I never be offended. (34) Jesus said unto him, Verily I 
say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. 
(35) Peter said unto him, Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny 
thee. Likewise also said all the disciples. 



Verse 31. Then; that is, when they were going 
out or were about to go out. According to Luke 
(xxii, 31-34) the Lord tells Peter, before the close of 
the meal, that he would deny him. Stier and others 
suppose, therefore, that the Lcrd foretold this denial 
of Peter twice, once before the close of the meal, 
(recorded by Luke and John,) and the other time on 
their way to Gethsemane, (recorded by Matthew and 
Mark.) The consideration of this point belongs to 
the passage in Luke. — All ye shall be offended 
because of me this night. By all ye, are to be un- 
derstood the eleven, after Judas had left. The Lord 
was betrayed by one, denied by one, forsaken by all 
of h 8 disciples. The denial and forsaking are in 
principle so nearly allied to each other, that the 
Lord includes the former in the latter. The taking 



offense is the antithesis of an unwavering faith, the 
denial that of the avowal of this faith. — For it is 
written, I will smite the Shepherd. With his pre- 
diction the Lord connects a word of prophecy; he 
no where quotes passages of the Scriptures, as ful- 
filled, so often as in his sufferings, to teach his dis- 
ciples that the Jewish notions of a non-suffering 
Messiah were formed in contradiction to the sacred 
writings of the Old Testament. "The notion," says 
Stier, "that our Lord occasionally derived a figure, 
or a proverb, or a striking saying from the Scrip- 
tures, without reference to the real connection in 
which it originally stood, is altogether unworthy 
every-where, but especially inappropriate to the holy 
solemnity of the season of the Passion." The pas- 
sage is quoted from Zechariah, (xiii, 7,) where it 



582 



MATTHEW XXVI, 31-35. 



reads: "Awake, sword, against my Shepherd, and 
against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of 
Hosts; smite the Shepherd and the sheep will be 
scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little 
ones." The citation is verbatim after the Alexan- 
drine MS. of the LXX, except that the imperative 
strike, is changed into the future tense, I will strike ; 
instead of God commanding to strike, he is repre- 
sented as striking himself. The whole prophecy is 
profoundly expounded by Stier. In the seventh 
verse the prophet speaks, 1. Of the wonderful decree 
of God concerning the death of his Shepherd, whom 
he calls "the man that is my fellow;" he is a man 
preeminently — how else could he suffer the death 
which is here recorded? My fellow can not mean 
any thing else than my equal. The equality of the 
Messiah with God is testified in many other passages 
of the Old Testament. Isaiah speaks of a child 
born which bears the high names of God; Micah of 
him who was to be born in Bethlehem, but whose 
goings forth were from everlasting; Jeremiah gives 
the name of Jehovah to the Messiah; Ezekiel says, 
that the Lord himself will come as the promised 
Shepherd, (xxxiv, 11-16, 23, 30;) and in Zechariah 
xii, 10, Jehovah says, "Me whom they have pierced." 
Christ designedly left out in his citation the high 
title given to the Shepherd by the prophet, because 
here he desired to speak only of his humiliation unto 
death and its effects upon the sheep. Instead of the 
protecting legions which the Lord of Hosts might 
have provided for his fellow, he calls for the sword 
against him, that is, a judicial infliction of death 
upon him. 2. The immediate result of striking the 
Shepherd is the scattering of the flock, which mis- 
takes and forsakes him. The ignominy of the death 
to which the Shepherd is condemned, is a stumbling- 
block to the whole flock, it turns away from its 
Shepherd, not being able to discern him in such a 
condition. But who are meant by this flock? Not 
merely Israel, but mankind, (Ezek. xxxiv, 31.) The 
offense is a general one; not only do the unbeliev- 
ing turn away from the smitten One, (Isa. liii, 1-3; 
1 Cor. i, 23,) but even the disciples take at first 
offense and flee, and the flock would be utterly lost 
without the return of the Shepherd. Therefore, 3. 
It is added: "And I will turn mine hands upon the 
little ones." Let it be observed, first, that they do 
not return of their own accord, but the hand and 
power of God in the risen Shepherd turns upon them 
and gathers them. This is what Christ says in the 
sequel of his remarks without quoting literally. 
Again, not all the dispersed flock is gathered; the 
difference in the offense, which existed from the be- 
ginning, is now made manifest. The whole of Israel 
is at first fully scattered, and in their flight from 
the Cross they are perpetually followed by the un- 
believing part of the other nations of the earth. But 
the little ones, plainly distinguished from the whole 
flock, the humble and poor in spirit, shall be brought, 
back. This bringing back is represented by the 



prophet in verses 8, 9, as a prograssive one. The 
prophecy does not speak merely of "this night" and 
of "these disciples," but the specific fulfillment in 
this one historical event is here, as it is often, itself 
an embodied prophecy, a type of the universal ful- 
fillment, as Bengel says: "The disciples were like 
unto the whole flock to be afterward collected by 
them." 

Verse 32. But after I am risen again, etc. 
After his resurrection the Lord enters upon his 
pastoral office again, (John xxi,) as appears from 
the words: "I will go before you." He tells his 
disciples, as it were: "Although ye will forsake me, 
yet I shall not forsake you; I shall gather you 
around me again." The object of this prophecy was, 
consequently, more to comfort than to censure. By 
making Galilee the place of meeting with his disci- 
ples, the Lord does not say that he would not ap- 
pear unto them in Jerusalem first; it rather con- 
firms it: Before ye return from the feast to Galilee, 
I shall have risen and shall lead you in the way 
thither. (Matt, xxviii, 7, 10, 16; John xxi, 1; 1 
Cor. xv, 6.) 

Verse 33. Though all men should be offended. 
Peter pretends to be stronger than all his fellow- 
disciples, having no idea that a mere question of 
a servant-maid would completely disconcert him. 
Having trusted in his own strength, so much as even 
to exalt himself above his fellow-disciples, he is left 
to himself, and falls. 

Verse 34. Before the cock crow. Mark says. 
"Before the cock crow twice." He includes the 
crowing that generally takes place at midnight, and 
is heard by only a few. For the cock crows once 
at midnight, then again and regularly at dawn. 
"It is as if he had said, The watcher in the wight 
will finally awaken thee, yet (as in the case of most 
who sleep and hear not) not till the second crowing 
in this night; the first cry will be in vain, and the 
second find thee already a triple sinner! All Chris- 
tians should learn to be sober and watchful while 
God is making his cock crow in our ears. But the 
question has been asked, Were there cocks in Jeru- 
salem? The Mishna records that the inhabitants 
of Jerusalem were forbidden to possess them, be- 
cause they scraped up unclean worms. Suppose 
this was the case, why should not a cock (we do not 
find the definite article, as might have been ex- 
pected, in any of the four Gospels) crow in the 
Roman precincts, and we might say, with Bengel, be- 
cause cocks were unusual among the Jews — though 
the Romans could not of course be prevented from 
having them — so much the more vjonderful was the 
prediction of our Lord. But we prefer to seek the 
wonderful or the more wonderful not so much in 
these externalities, as in the natural significance of 
cock-crowing, connected here with the precise ap- 
pointment, which showed that in the Divine counsel 
all was arranged for the awakening of Peter at the 
hour." (Stier.) 



CHRIST'S AGONY IN GETHSEMANE. 583 



§71. CHRIST'S AGONY IN GETHSEMANE. 

Christ's agony in G-ethsemane, recorded by the first three Evangelists, forms the holy 
•of holies in his suffering, and is as mysterious as his temptation in the wilderness. The 
divine elevation and clearness of spirit, the heavenly calmness and confidence which we 
behold in the institution of the Eucharist and in the valedictory discourses recorded by 
John, especially in the intercessory prayer, wherein his spirit soars victoriously above all 
dread of what was in store for him — all this is unexpectedly followed by an ineffable an- 
guish of soul, which depresses his body so much that he, though the Lord of angels, 
needs to be strengthened by a heavenly servant. The contrast is so great that we can 
follow him only at a great distance. Who can ascend with him on those hights, or de- 
scend into the lowest depths of death? He had, indeed, on several previous occasions, 
expressed his dread of the impending baptism of death, (Luke xii, 50; John xii, 27;) but 
now death in its full reality rushes upon him. As our high-priest he had in spirit, long 
before, laid himself on the altar of sacrifice; but now he is to realize in his soul, in his 
psychical life, that he is himself the victim; and the victim recoils from the horrors of 
death. 

Dr. Yan Osterzee remarks: ' : The suffering awaiting the Lord was, on the one hand, 
the most revolting revelation of the power of sin — on the other, the only means of expi- 
ating sin. Jews and Gentiles, friends and enemies, Judas and Peter, the whole power of 
the world, with its prince, all unite against him. At the same time he must feel the 
whole curse of sin; as the representative of sinful humanity he must appear before the 
tribunal of God; he that knew no sin is to be made the sin-offering. Must not this pros- 
pect fill the holy soul of Jesus with unutterable dread and horror? He was the Word that 
was with God, and was God, but this Word had been made flesh, like unto his brethren in 
all things, sin alone excepted, and for this very reason we can have no adequate concep- 
tion of what such a suffering and such a death must have been for the God-man. For 
man, though he is conscious of being born to die, the thought of death is horrible; but for 
him who had life in himself death was altogether unnatural. For us death is the end of 
a life that can justly be said to be a daily dying; but, in the case of the sinless and spot- 
less Savior, the destruction of his bodily organism was inconsistent with his very being. 
His keenly-sensitive humanity shudders at death; his holy humanity at the power of 
darkness; his loving humanity at the hatred that is now to be developed to its fullest 
extent. Luther says well in his sermon on the cup of Christ's suffering: 'We men, con- 
ceived and born in sin, have impure, hard flesh, that is almost destitute of feeling. The 
healthier a man is, the more keenly he feels pain. ISTow, as Christ's body was pure 
and sinless, but ours is impure, we scarcely feel in two degrees the horrors of death 
which Christ felt in ten, since he, as the greatest martyr, had to realize all the horrors of 
death in the highest degree.' Add to this, that the Lord's full prescience of what was to 
befall him (John xviii, 4) could not but increase his suffering, and that the kingdom of 
darkness was putting forth its utmost efforts. (John xiv, 30.) As in the wilderness, so 
the Lord is here tempted from without — of course, also without sin. [The shuddering 
of Christ's humanity at his impending death was not a lack of obedience, his prayer, 
that the cup might pass, no lack of faith; but, as Luther well remarks, 'Christ loved his 
Father with all his powers; but his agonies, going beyond his powers, so oppressed his 
guiltless, infirm human nature, that it was constrained to sigh, to shudder, and to cry; 
just as, when a beam is tested beyond its strength, it gives way, not through any defect 
of its own, but because the weight is too heavy.'] If it had been a stain of sin to pray 
as Jesus did in Gethsemane, it would have stained the Son of God to become very man; 
for, as very man, and as a sinless man, he could not otherwise than shudder at the pros- 
pect of suffering death. The importance of Christ's agony in Gethsemane can not be 



584 MATTHEW XXVI, 36-46. 



sufficiently estimated, shedding, as it does, the clearest light hoth on the person and the 
work of the Redeemer. As regards himself, he stands before us as a real and deeply- 
feeling man, who was to learn obedience through suffering, and thus to be made perfect, 
(Heb. ii, 10; v, 7-9,) which in no way conflicts with his spotless holiness and undisturbed 
unity with the Father. Of the weight of his sufferings we can no where form a more ade- 
quate idea than here; in Gethsemane we learn to understand Golgotha; inasmuch as we 
learn there that the divine dignity of his person, instead of lessening the weight of his 
suffering, only hightened it most fearfully. The indispensable necessity of his suffering 
becomes manifest, if we bear in mind that, even after such a prayer, the Father does not 
remove the cup from his beloved Son. The sufficiency and perfection of the redemj)tion 
wrought out by him may be measured by the hight to which his obedience and love rose. 
And the crown which the Captain bf our salvation won there is the more precious to us, 
because by this suffering he has become the merciful High-Priest that can be touched 
with the feeling of our infirmities. (Heb. ii, 16-18; iv, 15.)" So much by way of intro- 
duction to the comments upon the text, for the greater part of which the reader is 
indebted to Stier's profound exposition — -sometimes, even, where we could not quote him, 
finding it necessary to condense or modify his remarks. 

The silence of John concerning this agony of the Savior at Gethsemane is easily ac- 
counted for by the scope of his Gospel. Instead of impairing the trustworthiness of the 
other Evangelists in recording the mysterious conflict in Gethsemane, we are furnished 
with another evidence that the Gospel narratives can not possibly have resulted, as the 
mythical theory assumes, from a desire to throw a halo of glory around Jesus. Moreover, 
to show that there is no contradiction between the first three Evangelists and St. John, 
"it only requires," as Stier remarks, "to be observed that the latter gives, in chapter xii, 
27, the oft-repeated beginning and prelude of the agony; and, in chapters xiv, 30, and 
xvi, 21, he records the plain prediction of what was impending; while the Synoptists 
sufficiently indicate the glory which should follow the passion. Suffice that there is so 
much deep reason for the historical truth of the soul-conflict in Gethsemane — at least to 
every believer — that we may leave all discussion about it to the unbelievers. Whoever 
understands any thing of the life of Jesus, as recorded by the Evangelists up to this mo- 
ment, is prepared to expect that, when the hour of suffering comes, an internal conflict, 
manifesting the perfect obedience of the spirit in the flesh, would precede the assault 
from without." 

The words which Christ uttered in prayer were given to the primitive Church by the 
ear-witnesses, as far as they heard them, before they were overcome by sleep. The slight 
variations of expression only show that the Holy Spirit enabled the Evangelists to give a 
graphic and truthful description of the mysterious event. How Matthew and Mark com- 
plete each other, we shall see as we proceed; Luke gives us the Lord's words more sum- 
marily, irrespectively of time and order, preserving, however, the three essential points: 
the prayer, which passed from a supplication to be spared into an act of entire resigna- 
tion; the exhortation, addressed to his disciples, to pray, and the final, "Rise, let us be 
going." He, moreover, adds some important items; namely, that the Lord withdrew 
about a stone's cast, that an angel from heaven strengthened him, that his sweat was, as 
it were, great drops of blood. "John, in describing the locality," says Stier, "gives sig- 
nificant prominence to the brook Cedron, which they passed over — the dark brook in the 
deep valley, over which David went in deep humiliation on account of his sin, and where, 
in old time, the abominations of idolatry had been thrown, (1 Kings xv, 13; 2 Kings 
xxiii, 4, 6, 12,) as in later times, according to Jewish accounts, it had carried away the 
blood of the sacrifices and the refuse of the Temple. From Gethsemane to Siloam 
stretched the Valley of Jehoshaphat, the place of graves and of judgment. Surrounded 
by such memorials and typical allusions, the Lord descends into the dust of humiliation 
and anguish." 



CHRIST'S AGONY IN GETHSEMANE. 



585 



"Verses 36—46. (Compare Mark xiv, 32-42; Luke xxii, 40-46; John xviii, 1.) 

(36) Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, J and saith 
unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. (37) And he took 
with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very 
heavy. (38) Then saith he nnto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto 
death : tarry ye here, and watch with me. (39) And he went a little further, and 
fell on his face, and prayed, saying, my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass 
from me : nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt. (40) And he cometh unto 
the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not 
watch with me one hour ? (41) Watch and pray, that ye enter not into tempta- 
tion: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. (42) He went away again 
the second time, and prayed, saying, my Father, if this cup may not pass away 
from me, except I drink it, thy will be done. (43) And he came and found them 
asleep again: for their eyes were heavy. (44) And he left them, and went away 
again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words. (45) Then cometh he to 
his disciples, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the 
hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. (46) 
Pise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that doth betray me. 



Verse 36. Then cometh Jesus with them unto 
a place. He came there not by chance. He knew 
that there his sufferings were to commence. The 
spot was already consecrated by previous visits, as 
Luke intimates by saying, "Jesus went as lie was 
wont." — Sit ye here. They are eight in number; 
as the three familiar disciples, who accompanied 
their Master, besides Judas, are to be deducted from 
the twelve. — While I go and pray yonder. The 
Lord calls prayer what he is now to pass through. 
Every struggle of a holy soul is a prayer, a contin- 
ued wrestling with God. Like Abraham, who said, 
when his faith was so sorely tried, (Gen. xxii, 5,) 
"I and the lad will go yonder and worship," the 
Lord calls his agony a prayer; he is not tied, as 
Isaac was, but lays himself of his own free will and 
accord as the victim upon the altar, thus uniting in 
himself both the faith of Abraham and the resigna- 
tion of Isaac. "As Jesus had prepared himself by 



secret prayer in the wilderness for the opening of 
his public ministry, in like manner he prepares him- 
self now for its conclusion. As he there passed in 
spirit through the conflict with the powers of dark- 
ness before he appeared on the public arena, so also 
here. As he had then achieved the victory in spirit 
before he opened his victorious career in the world, 
so this, his last triumph in suffering, was also pre- 
ceded by a previous inward victory." (Neander.) 

Verse 37. And he took with him Peter and 
the two sons of Zebedee. Peter, who can not be 
brought to believe in the possibility of his fall in the 
hour of temptation, and the two favored brothers, to 
whom he had offered a share in the cup of his suf- 
ferings instead of the posts of honor for which they 
had asked; with these three favored disciples, who 
had been witnesses of his transfiguration, he ad- 
vances further into the Garden presentient of his 
agony. He took these witnesses with him not only 



1 Gethseruane is a Hebrew word, meaning an oil-press, 
or a place of oil-presses. There was, evidently, a gar- 
den or orchard attached to it. Of its locality we know 
nothing with certainty, except that it lay across the 
brook Cedron, at the foot of Mount Olivet. Tradition 
points out a modern garden, in which are eight very 
venerable olive-trees and a grotto. Dr. Thomson says, 
concerning it: "The position is too near the city, and 
so close to what must have always been the great thor- 
oughfare eastward, that our Lord would scarcely have 
selected it for retirement on that dangerous and dismal 
night. I am inclined to place the Garden in the se- 
cluded vale, several hundred yards to the north-east of 



the present Gethsemane, and hidden, as I hope, forever 
from the idolatrous intrusion of all sects and denomina- 
tions." Much less reason is there to believe that those 
old olive-trees were the identical ones under whose 
shades the Son of God walked, even on the supposition 
of the reproduction which is ascribed to the olive-tree. 
Josephus informs us that Titus, during the siege of Je- 
rusalem, had all trees cut down within a circle of one 
hundred stadii around Jerusalem. Besides, the 10th 
Legion, arriving from Jericho, were posted about the 
Mount of Olives, and in the course of the siege a wall 
was carried along the valley of the Cedron to the Fount- 
ain of Siloam. 



586 



MATTHEW XXVI, 36-46. 



in order that they might be ear-witnesses of the holy 
transaction before the Church of the New Testa- 
ment, but also, as Stier says, because he did not 
wish to be left alone in the hour of distress, as we 
may infer from his words, Watch with me — could ye 
not watch with me? It belonged to his humiliation 
in our likeness that he should take with him sympa- 
thizing companions. — And began. This expression 
indicates a sudden, clearly-discernible change in his 
frame of mind. — To be sorrowful and very heavy. 
Mark says, "to be sore amazed and very heavy.'' 
The sorrowfulness manifested itself in an amaze- 
ment, as if in the presence of something unex- 
pected, a shuddering and recoil. This was, no 
doubt, an entirely new phenomenon to his disciples, 
of which only three, and they the most familiar 
ones, were to be witnesses. The Greek word for "to 
be sorrowful" is ?<.vTrei(x-&ai, the passive of Xvitfiv, 
which means to grieve, to distress, thus indicating 
that the cause of Christ's sorrow came from without. 
Lange calls it "the experience of a positive oppos- 
ing influence, which restrains and oppresses the soul 
in its living energies, as if it would take away the 
spiritual breath. The first result of this is grief; 
the last, anguish — fearful, amazing, vehement wrest- 
ling of the soul with evil." The Greek for "to be 
very heavy" is aSijfiovslv, derived by some from <%/of, 
people, and the alpha privativum; hence, to feel 
lonesome, solitary. Stier, however, derives it from 
adeiv, to have no want, to loathe. 

Verse 38. My soul is exceeding sorrowful. 
"The Lord had been accessible to sorrow for sin 
and death from the beginning; that which Mark 
(iii, 5) records of his grief over the hardness of 
their hearts, and John (xi, 33-35) of his anguish 
over the power of death, are only isolated examples 
which give us a glimpse into the inmost recesses of 
his soul. Nevertheless, all this was but the slight 
preparation for the fullness and strength of that suf- 
fering of which he now testifies. Only in John xii, 
27, and here, does the Lord say concerning himself, 
my soul. He thereby avows himself to be a true 
human person in the likeness of ourselves, just as 
he afterward speaks of his spirit and of his flesh, 
according to the Scriptural trichotomy of human 
nature. We, therefore, are justified in speaking of 
a soul-conflict, and of soul-sufferings at Gethsemane. 
Assuredly, in a certain sense, every suffering is soul- 
suffering, inasmuch as bodily pain affects the soul, 
and is experienced only through the soul; and, fur- 
ther, the most spiritual anguish passes over to the, 
as it were, bodily feeling of the soul, which mediates 
between spirit and body, and constitutes the personal 
consciousness. Nevertheless, we rightly distinguish, 
as to its preeminent, seat and origin, the sufferings 
of the soul both from bodily pain and anxiety of 
spirit; and all that follows shows that such a distinc- 
tion must here be maintained." (Stier.) — Even 
unto death. These words are, in the mouth of 
Jesus, no proverbial expression of utter despond- 



ency, but they are literally true ; for he really tasted 
the bitterness of death to such a degree, as no other 
man could taste it: 1. The very thought of death 
was a perfect contradiction of his life, as has been 
stated in the introductory remarks to this chapter. 
"Having laid aside in the incarnation his eternal 
mode of existence with the Father, and having en- 
tered into the finite form of existence," says Baum- 
garten, (©cfcfiidjte Sefu,) "every moment of his 
earthly existence is to the incarnate Son of God the 
only medium of his communion with God. To die 
is, therefore, for him as the Son of man, to have his 
communion with God dissolved, to be separated 
from God. Separation from God is, according to 
the Scriptures, the very nature and substance of 
death; and there is, consequently, no death that 
makes not more or less the impression of being sep- 
arated from God; but death can be fully realized 
only there, where life is nothing else than a self-con- 
scious communion with God, and because such a life 
was no where else than in Jesus, no one ever felt 
and realized death in its full reality as Jesus did." 
Add to this, 2. That Jesus tasted death as the penalty 
of the sin of the xohole world. This must not be un- 
derstood as if the holy and beloved Son had tasted for 
us at Gethsemane the measure of the wrath of God 
that the damned in hell must feel. The sin of the 
world did not lay upon the Lamb of God in this 
sense, but in another and much more real sense, in 
the only possible sense. In his purity he felt more 
keenly, than any damned soul in hell can feel, the 
righteous wrath of God, not against himself, but 
against the sin of the world. His horror in the 
presence of death, as the wages of sin, was the pur- 
est, deepest awe and reverence before God', the right- 
eous Judge and Father. As the Holy One, he felt 
the righteous judgment of God upon the sin of the 
world more deeply and painfully than sinful man 
can feel it. As a holy being, he shudders at death, 
the penalty of sin, falling upon him, the Sinless 
One; but because he has become the Son of man to 
save us, he is obedient to his Father unto death, 
even the death of the cross. (Phil, ii, 8; Heb. ii, 
17, 18; iv, 15; v, 7-10.) — Tarry ye [near me, but 
follow me no further] and watch with me. He 
does not say, "Pray with me," for there could be no 
real fellowship and equality between him and sinful 
men in relation to his prayer generally., and espe- 
cially in regard to his prayer in Gethsemane; no 
one could share with him in his mediatorial wrest- 
ling; yet he desired to enjoy the presence of his 
disciples as the first-fruits of his redemption, though 
their apathy did not sweeten his bitter cup. 

Verse 39. And he went a little further. 
Luke's description is more graphic; he says: "and 
he was withdrawn from them," and defines also the 
distance, "about a stone's cast," that is, as far as a 
stone can be thrown with the hand, certainly near 
enough to enable the disciples to hear the words of 
their praying Master. " As no one was allowed to 



CHRIST'S AGONY IN GETHSEMANE. 



587 



be in the tabernacle, when the high-priest went into 
the holy place, (Lev. xvi, 17,) so the true High- 
Priest withdrew on this occasion from all men,, at 
first from the eight disciples and then also from the 
three chosen ones, indicating thereby that all men 
were now impure in the Divine judgment, and that 
none was able and worthy to come unto God, or to be 
present at this most sacred transaction, much less to 
contribute something toward it." (Rieger.) — And 
fell on his face [Mark says : "on the ground"] 
and prayed. "This was, indeed, a different prayer 
from the one which he had uttered before, and which 
John has recorded. Yet it breathed the same spirit, 
was uttered by the same Son of God and Redeemer 
of mankind. The incarnate Son, who had already 
prayed himself up to the Father and into heaven, 
must now feel it more fully than ever before, that he 
is still in the world, that its prince is coming against 
him, and that the righteous Father has appointed 
his Son to offer and sanctify himself for the propiti- 
ation of the sin of the world. With what other in- 
cense could this sacrifice have been offered so ac- 
ceptably as with such a prayer? If it had not been 
recorded, a proper understanding of the Redeemer's 
person and work would lead us to assume such an 
internal conflict in the sanctuary of his soul. But it 
is revealed to us, and we have only to read and 
mark it, that we may follow our Forerunner." — 0, 
my Father! "There is here no fear of a punitive 
justice as in our stead, nothing of his Father's wrath 
against the person of his beloved Son. He had, in- 
deed, a full feeling of what sin is in all its conse- 
quences before God, but this feeling was not incon- 
sistent with his consciousness — I am and remain thy 
Son. Awful, therefore, as his anguish of soul was 
in Gethsemane, he did not suffer there in our stead 
the pain of the damned in hell." (Stier. ) — If it be 

POSSIBLE, LET THIS CUP PASS FROM ME. The first 

question here is, what have we to understand by this 
cup? "Would our Lord, at this crisis," says Stier, 
" be delivered, if it were possible, from suffering and 
dying for the world? Or does he pray only for the 
taking away of the present overpowering burden of 
his soul's anguish? Thus must the question stand 
at first, till its right answer corrects the question 
itself, and makes it intelligible." To the first sup- 
position it is objected, that the Lord, who had re- 
peatedly spoken of his death as indispensably neces- 
sary for the salvation of the world, and as foretold 
by the prophets, could not possibly expect his death 
to be dispensed with now; it is therefore maintained 
that he only supplicated for an alleviation and short- 
ening of his internal anguish in the present hour, of 
that terror and fear which he then felt. Hess goes 
even so far as to say, that the Lord prays for the 
removal of this anguish in order that he might be 
able to suffer. But this view labors under even 
greater difficulties, than to understand by the cup 
the suffering of death itself, of which he has now 
a foretaste. We are no where told in the Scriptures, 



that the Lord felt himself in Gethsemane forsaken 
of his Heavenly Father as on the cross ; and that in 
addition to the suffering of death, he had to go there 
through another and greater suffering, in order to 
accomplish the salvation of mankind. Moreover, 
Christ calls (John xviii, 11) his death expressly the 
cup, given unto him by his Father to drink, (comp. 
also Matthew xx, 22.) But, it is further objected, if 
the Lord prayed in Gethsemane to be saved from 
death, how can the apostle (Heb. v, 1) say that he 
was heard? This question is answered by Stier 
satisfactorily, and in such a way that the distinction 
between the suffering of death itself and the present 
hour falls away. In the present anguish of his com- 
mencing passion and death the entire cup is, as it 
were, presented to the Lord. The cup must, indeed, 
be drank, but it is first to be internally tasted and to 
be voluntarily accepted. This takes place now. 
Tasting it, he cries out, as it were, Is this the suffer- 
ing that must come upon me 1 And in his humanity 
he appeals to Him that is able to save from death, 
as the apostle expresses it, but at the same time 
he unconditionally subjects his human will to the 
Divine, and his prayer is assuredly heard and an- 
swered, inasmuch as the Father — accepting and ful- 
filling his cry of resignation, As thou wilt — strength- 
ens him and takes away this anguish. Thus we see 
that the two apparently-diverging views as to the 
nature of the cup coalesce, and we are now prepared 
to apprehend correctly the meaning of the words, 
''if it be pos.i-i.ble." According to Mark, the Lord 
makes use of a still stronger expression: " Father, 
all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup 
from me." But that the Lord speaks only of a pos- 
sibility, consistent with the Divine counsel or will, is 
evident from the addition: " nevertheless, not as I 
will, but as thou wilt." Luke, therefore, states the 
prayer at once thus : " Father, if thou be willing, 
remove this crip from me." Thus we learn from 
Luke, that the Lord speaks of no other possibility 
than one consistent with the will and decree of God, 
and that the following word of entire resignation 
was already included in the first utterance of the 
petition. If it be possible in thy will, let this cup 
pass away, for my will is not other than thine, even 
though I would fain be delivered from what now be- 
falls ine. The Lord's thought, in these words of 
shrinking, does not border on the idea that humanity 
was not to be redeemed ; this great decree, this will 
of the Father and of the Son alike, is rather presup- 
posed in if it be possible, if thou wilt. The peti- 
tion asks only with urgency — Is the accomplishment 
of thy counsel, Father, is the redemption of man- 
kind not otherwise possible than by thus suffering, 
by my drinking this cup ? Such a question and such 
a petition are, indeed, inseparable from our Lord's 
true humanity, and from the reality of his suffering. 
It would have been an unnatural apathy, unworthy 
of the Son of man, if he had entered the dark valley 
of death without his holy soul shuddering at it; 



588 



MATTHEW XXVI, 36-46. 



(Gerlach suggests, that Jesus' prayer to be saved 
from death may also have proceeded from the wish 
to prevent the greatest crime that was ever com- 
mitted by the human race.) The shudder of life at 
death is in itself something natural and innocent, 
and was necessary in Jesus, because he would other- 
wise not have died as a real man. His true hu- 
manity required, likewise, that God's counsel should 
not be so clear to his soul during his trial, as it 
would otherwise not have been a trial, and the 
apostle could not have said of him, "though he were 
a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which 
he suffered." But only the more clearly bursts forth 
from his inmost spirit his imperturbable unity with 
the Father. God's incarnate Son desired nothing 
else than that which his Father desired. He was 
obedient. It was not possible to save mankind in 
any other way than by the suffering of the incarnate 
Son of God: this is testified by Gethsemane. Nor 
has the Son in his unity with the Father desired any 
other method of its salvation, for even here his 
human will varies from the Divine will only for the 
purpose of submitting to it again: this we learn 
from the second clause of the prayer. In full ac- 
cordance with Stier's view, which we have given in a 
free and condensed manner, Olshausen says: "No 
compulsory will of the Father forced death upon the 
Son, the will of the Son being always identical with 
that of the Father: but the voluntary entering on 
the part of Jesus into the Divine necessity, which 
was impossible without a severe reaction of human 
sensibility, we find to have taken place in this most 
solemn, decisive moment. With the victory in Geth- 
semane every thing was in reality accomplished, the 
Father's will was fully entered into by the human 
soul of Jesus; and as in a human struggle the mind 
becomes perfectly calm, as soon as an unutterable 
resolution is taken, so we find also the Savior per- 
fectly serene again after the hour of this severe 
struggle had passed." 

Verse 40. And he cometh to his disciples and 
findeth them asleep. The fervent John, the firm 
James, and the impetuous Peter — they sleep, al- 
though they had seen their Master withdraw in the 
sorest distress. The disciples, who had worked dur- 
ing many a night at their nets, are overcome by 
sleep in the night of the Lord's agony. It was, how- 
ever, no sound sleep, since they heard and understood 
the thrice-repeated prayer of Christ, which he offered 
up with strong crying. (Heb. v, 7.) — And saith 
unto Peter. He addresses him, who but a short 
time before had exhibited so much self-reliance, but 
his words are intended for all 

Verse 41. Watch and pray. " These words 
were, in the first place, addressed to the disciples to 
put them on their guard against the near tempta- 
tion; but it is, of course, at the same time an ex- 
hortation to all believers to the end of time. Prayer 
without watchfulness — what is it but self-deception 
and a vain thing, improperly so called? An imag- 



inary watchfulness without prayer — what is it but a 
delusion and a dream ? Thus we may say — prayer 
to God is itself the true and perfect wakefulness of 
man in the spirit. (Ps. Ixiii, 2; Isa. xxvi, 9.) The 
two are in their reciprocation one; for the prevenient 
watchfulness sees the danger, and remembers the 
weakness, and the prayer which follows brings the 
grace and strength necessary for full and constant 
watchfulness." (Stier.) — That ye enter not into 
temptation. The meaning is not: that ye be spared 
temptation, that ye be not tempted at all, but that 
ye do not so fall into it, as not to come out of it. 
(Comp. note on chapter vi, 13.) Temptation that 
comes from without — from Satan and the world — or 
from our own flesh and blood can then only make 
us fall when our freewill enters into and sustains it; 
in order to prevent this we must be mindful of our 
weakness and pray to God for strength. (2 Cor. xii, 
9, 10.) — The spirit, indeed, is willing, but the 
flesh is weak. Of all interpreters Stier alone seems 
to us to have correctly apprehended the true mean- 
ing of these often-misunderstood and much-abused 
words; his exposition, which we give in a condensed 
form, is as follows. By "flesh," the natural, corrupt 
state of man is generally understood here, as in 
other passages. But how could it be said of man in 
his natural, carnal state, that his spirit is willing? 
The being willing of which the apostle speaks (Rom. 
vii, 18) is not the willing spirit, but something en- 
tirely impotent for good. If we understand by the 
flesh the carnal mind, the flesh is not weak, but 
mighty in its opposition to the spirit, so that Jude 
speaks of carnal men as having not the spirit at all. 
For these reasons Stier maintains that the terra flesh 
here is to be taken in its original sense as a co'nstitio- 
ent part of human nature, which in itself is not 
sinful, but has a weakness or a weakening influence 
which the soul, standing between the spirit and the 
flesh, must overcome by deriving strength from the 
spirit through watching and praying. In this sense 
the words of the Savior express his own experience 
with regard to the sharp conflict he was passing 
through. He presents himself in his humanity to 
the disciples, as the pattern which they are to imi- 
tate in overcoming temptation, but which they can 
imitate only in so far as they become partakers of 
His spirit that does not, as is the case with us, yield 
to the weakness of the flesh, but is always and per- 
fectly willing to do the will of God. (Ps. xl, 9.) 
Accordingly the passage may be paraphrased thus: 
"Watch and pray as ye see me do. Even I have 
just experienced the weakness of the flesh, though 
my willing spirit remained unaffected by it. The 
spirit which ye shall receive from me is willing; 
but the flesh which I also have assumed is weak, 
and if your spirit is not willing your flesh will cause 
you to fall." This interpretation is based on the un- 
questionable truth that while in Christ's humanity, 
of which Gethsemane especially testifies, the willing- 
ness of the spirit was not in the least impaired by 



CHRIST'S AGONY IN GETHSEMANB. 



589 



the weakness of the flesh, (comp. 2 Cor. xiii, 4) — 
with us the spirit, itself the basis of personality, is 
carnal, and in our flesh there is, therefore, no mere 
weakness, but a positive proneness to sin. The 
practical importance of Stier's interpretation of this 
passage will clearly appear from his closing re- 
marks : " If we through the grace of regeneration 
are so far awakened from the sleep of sin that to the 
willing spirit in us — this was the case with Christ — 
the temptation to sin is no other than a suffering 
and a burden, then we may take the consolations 
of Christ's word, that the weakness which feels the 
suffering, and which is exposed to the temptation, is 
no sin, any more than it was in him. No more is, 
then, demanded of us than to watch and pray, but 
both with the utmost earnestness — to watch against 
the enemy, on account of the weak flesh exposed to 
his assault; to pray with a willing spirit for the 
strength of God which maintains and strengthens 
that willingness. But nothing is more lamentable 
and more perilous than the perversion of this equally- 
rousing and comfortable passage, which, in common 
with many similar passages, Satan skillfully tempts 
men to misuse. He rends the latter clause from the 
former, separates it from the watch and pray, and 
makes that which was designed as an encourage- 
ment to watchfulness and prayer — a pillow for self- 
deception. He persuades the sinner to regard it 
as enough that his poor, imaginary willingness of 
spirit — his 'good heart] ' right intention] etc. — is 
enough of itself; and to excuse his entering into 
temptation and committing sin by the weakness of 
the flesh! Just as in Phil, ii, the thirteenth verse 
is wrenched from the twelfth, and in Rom. iii, the 
twenty-third verse from the twenty-first. We trust 
that all such perversion has been thoroughly guarded 
against throughout this exposition." 

Verse 42. He went away again the second 
time, etc. The Berlenburg Bible remarks on these 
words: "Among other things we may here learn 
that in times of sore conflict we should not continue 
in one uninterrupted strain of prayer, lest our de- 
votion become feeble; we should rather pause and 
let the spirit, as it were, take breath, in order that 
our petition may be urged with all the more earn- 
estness." — my Father, if this cup may not pass 
away, etc. In this second prayer the spirit of per- 
fect submission is prominent. Christ knew that the 
Father heard him always, (John xi, 42;) for this 
reason he takes the continuance of his anguish as 
the answer to his last words: as thou wilt! — as the 
confirmation of the Divine will, that he should drink 
the cup. 

Verse 43. And he came and found them asleep 
again. "Their eyes were heavy, that is, weighed 



down with sleep. According to Luke, he found 
them sleeping for sorrow. Although their drowsi- 
ness may be humanly explained by their exhaustion 
in the deep night after such a day, by the reaction 
following so much excitement, and most decisively 
by the stunning power of a sorrow which was too 
great for them; yet was there something more than 
all this — as the Lord himself had intimated — the 
temptation of the power of darkness, the satanic 
sifting, without which their sympathy with the suffer- 
ings of Jesus would have held their eyes waking." 
(Stier.) 

Verse 44. And he left them. Knowing their 
impotence, he beheld them with compassion and 
continued to watch and pray, till, having victoriously 
passed through the darkness of this hour, he was 
ready with perfect serenity to deliver himself up to 
the betrayer and the hands of sinners. — And went 

AWAY AGAIN, AND PRAYED THE THIRD TIME. It is 

worthy of note, that as we see Jesus here wrestle 
three times in prayer, he had also to repel three 
attacks from the tempter in the wilderness. Luke 
has omitted to record, that this struggle was thrice 
repeated ; yet hints at it by his description of its in- 
creasing violence, recording the bloody sweat and 
the strengthening angel. Lange remarks on the 
third repetition of the prayer: "He prayed again, 
as the preceding time, he sacrificed his will, he 
yielded himself up to his Father, yea, he drank the 
cup. For at this stage described by Luke, the 
struggle reached its acme. These fearful assaults 
he met with prayer so agonizing that his sweat 
became like drops of blood falling to the ground; 
and his soul gained for the third time the wonted 
serenity and tranquillity. The work was accom- 
plished." — Saying the same words. The repeti- 
tion of the same words, if they are brief and simple, 
often indicates the deepest earnestness. (Comp. 2 
Cor. xii, 8. See note on chaps, vi, vii.) 

Verse 45. Sleep on now and take your rest. 
The meaning is: you may now rest and sleep, as 
far as I am concerned, I need your watching no 
longer and shall not exhort you to it any more; but 
your sleep will soon be disturbed by other means, 
for behold, etc. The first " behold" must not be 
understood literally of Judas and his band; it merely 
announces the approach of the hour of which the 
Lord had so often spoken. 

Verse 46. Rise, let us be going. Jesus is now 
perfectly calm, composed, and ready to meet suffer- 
ing and death; he that had wrestled with death 
could soon make the soldiers feel its terrors. A 
pious writer says: "The creative word of Jehovah, 
'let us make man,' has not cost as much as this 
'let us be going,' of the Son of God." 



590 



MATTHEW XXVI, 47-56. 



§72. JESUS ARRESTED IN GETHSEMANE. 

Verses 47- 56. (Compare Mark xit, 43-52; Luke xxii, 47-53; John xviti, 2-12.) 

(47) And Avhile he yet spake, lo, Judas, one of the twelve, came, and with him 
a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief-priests and elders of the 
people. (48) Now he that betrayed him, gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever I 
shall kiss, that same is he; hold him fast. (49) And forthwith he came to Jesus, 
and said, Hail, Master; and kissed him. (50) And Jesus said unto him, Friend, 
wherefore art thou come? Then came they and laid hands on Jesus, and took 
him. (51) And behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his 
hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high-priest, and smote off 
his ear. (52) Then paid Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place : 
for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. (53) Thinkest thou 
that I can not now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than 
twelve legions of angels? (54) But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, 
that thus it must be? (55) In that same hour said Jesus to the multitudes, Are 
ye come out as against a thief with swords and staves for to take me ? I sat daily 
with you teaching in the Temple, and ye laid no hold "on me. (56) But all this 
was done, that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled. Then all the dis- 
ciples forsook him, and fled. 



Verse 47. And while he yet spake. Some 
place the kiss of Judas after what is recorded by 
John. But to us it appears more probable that it 
took place before. (See note on verse 49.) — "The 
increasing divergence of the Evangelists," says Stier, 
"as they go deeper into the history of the Passion, 
is quite natural on the human ground of their ob- 
servation and remembrance, and makes the perfect 
unity of their testimony all the more wonderful. 
That which, in the confusion and excitement attend- 
ant upon its occurrence, was viewed from various 
stand-points, was not by any means left as the ma- 
terial which human tradition might variously weave; 
but the Holy Spirit, without effacing the stamp of 
human credibility which is impressed upon their art- 
less differences, has defended them from all incor- 
rectness, and set upon the whole the seal of his own 
sure testimony." John, omitting what had been 
recorded by the other Evangelists, is mainly con- 
cerned to point out how Christ was glorified in his 
Passion. Mark and Luke relate the Lord's appre- 
hension very briefly, while Matthew and John com- 
plete each other's account of it. — Lo, Judas came. 
The traitor knew the place as a spot to which Jesus 
used to resort with his disciples. (Luke xxii, 39 ; 
John xviii, 2.) While Jesus finished the meal with 
his disciples, delivered his farewell discourses, and 
agonized in Gethsemane, Judas arranged the dark 
work of treason under the cover of the night. He 
had hastened to the members of the Sanhedrim to 



inform them that the desired moment had now come, 
and to induce them, at the same time, to change their 
purpose "not to apprehend him on the feast-day." 
Forthwith the guard of the Temple was assembled, 
and the Roman Governor's permission obtained to 
make the contemplated arrest, with a sufficient mili- 
tary escort. Judas's calculation was, that by the time 
this was done Jesus must be in Gethsemane. Ac- 
cording to John, Judas was attended by the Roman 
cohort — (Jirelpa — consisting of five hundred men, 
though in all probability only a detachment of it is 
meant. It was, however, in the interest of the San- 
hedrim to make upon Pilate the impression that a 
very dangerous person was to be arrested, and, 
therefore, to ask for a large military force. Luke 
(xxii, 52) tells us that the Jewish guard of the Tem- 
ple and fanatical priests and elders were also in the 
crowd. According to Mark, Judas was very particu- 
lar in urging upon the arresting officers to secure 
Jesus well, lest he might get away from them. Ac- 
cording to John, the band had lantern and torches, 
though it was a bright, full-moon night, as if, for- 
sooth, he might hide himself in one of the caves 
with which the rocky valley of Cedron is said to 
have abounded! 

Verse 49. And forthwith he came to Jesus. 
That Judas wanted to give to the band by his kiss 
the preconcerted sign, is by no means inconsistent 
with the statement of John (John xviii, 4-8) that 
Jesus himself went forth and told the band that it 



JESUS ARRESTED IN GETHSEMANE. 



591 



was he whom they sought. The two statements are 
easily reconciled, if we suppose that Judas went a 
few steps in advance of his attendants, and gave 
them the sign; while he did so Jesus answers him, 
and hastens forward to remove the impression, as if 
it needed Judas's diabolical farce to apprehend him, 
and, at the same time, to prevent the arrest of his 
disciples. Stier, however, maintains, with the older 
commentators, that the kiss was given after the band 
had fallen to the ground, and represents the scene as 
follows: "Judas stood undecided and hesitating to 
give the kiss — Jesus, perceiving this, hastens to pre- 
vent the execution of the meanest of acts, as well as 
all unnecessary measures, by stepping forward and 
announcing himself as him whom they sought. Ac- 
cording to the clear words of John, (xviii, 5, 6,) Judas 
fell to the ground with the rest, but quite in keeping 
with his diabolical character he was also one of the 
first, if not the first, that rose again. The precon- 
certed sign was, indeed, now superfluous; neverthe- 
less, Judas, with unparalleled insolence, gives it, in 
order to keep his word as a real devil and to shake 
off as soon as possible his chagrin on account of 
their falling to the ground. The eyes of the whole 
band are fixed upon him, their guide, and he must 
accordingly revive their failing courage by showing 
them that Jesus can be approached with impunity. 
— And kissed him. What a kiss ! The history of 
the world has nothing so detestable and vile. It is 
inconceivable that this incident, if it had no histor- 
ical reality, would ever have found its way into 
mythical tradition. It was a masterpiece of the 
devil, who in derision of Jesus, as it were, said to 
him in this kiss : Behold my work, this I have accom- 
plished in one who stands so near thy person that he 
may kiss thee! — "There is a sinless wrath of holy 
indignation which our Lord at other times felt and 
expressed; and if this pure, human feeling in the 
Holy One was ever excited, it might have been sup- 
posed that it would be now. But the Lord turns not 
away his face; he suffers, he receives the kiss — this 
is transcendently more than he requires of his disci- 
ples in Matthew v, 39." (Stier.) 

Verse 50. Friend, [though the word friend has 
here, of course, not its common signification, yet it 
implies, on the part of Jesus, a recognition of their 
former relation to each other,] wherefore art thod 
come? The interrogative form is not required by 
the original; it is better to take the expression as an 
ellipsis and to supply olfia, so that the meaning is: I 
know very well wherefore thou art come. Accord- 
ing to Luke, the Lord said: "Judas, betrayest thou 
the Son of man with a kiss ?" The meaning of the 
two expressions is the same, yet there is no reason 
to doubt that the Lord made use of both. 

Verse 51. And behold, one of them, etc. From 
John we learn that it was Simon Peter. According 
to Luke, this rash act of Peter was preceded by the 
question : Lord, shall we smite with the sword ? 
Without waiting for an answer, Peter used the 



sword. In the garden, during his Master's agony, 
he neglected to wield the weapon of the Spirit 
against himself by watching and praying, and now 
his spirit breaks out in false and blind zeal. He un- 
sheathes the sword to smite at random and deal 
murderous blows. This rash act of Peter forms a 
grievous contrast to the sacred dignity of the Lord's 
patience, but he repairs immediately the unhappy 
deed of his disciple, by healing the injured man, as 
we learn from Luke. Thus he shows his Divine 
power even now when he renounces for himself all 
help and defense. The miraculous cure of the serv- 
ant of the high-priest, which we would expect of 
Jesus, is passed over by the three other Evangelists, 
because the word to Peter has in them a prominence. 
Rambach remarks on this passage: "Peter says in 
his first Epistle, (iv, 15,) 'let none of you suffer as a 
murderer.' He probably thought, while penning 
these words, of this act of his. If the blow he had 
aimed had proved fatal, he would have been ar- 
raigned for murder." An old German comment- 
ator applies the incident thus: "Young, violent 
preachers are very apt to use the sword of Peter, to 
smite at random and blindly whomsoever they may 
hit, before they have learned to handle the sword of 
the Spirit. But such smiting in carnal zeal is, as it 
were, cutting off the ear that is to hear the Word of 
God." 

Verse 52. Put up again thy sword into his [its] 
place. John says, "into the sheath." From this it 
appears that Peter was still standing there with his 
sword unsheathed and ready to strike again. The 
sword has, indeed, its place also, where it is to be 
used, for which reason Jesus did not absolutely for- 
bid his disciples to carry swords, (Luke xxii, 36.) It 
is in its place, when used by the magistrate for the 
punishment of evil-doers, (Gen. ix, 6,) and in per- 
sonal as well as national self-defense; but it is out 
of its place in all matters, appertaining to the spir- 
itual kingdom of Christ, which is founded upon his 
sufferings and spread through his truth, (John xviii, 
36, and Zech. iv, 6.) — For all they that take the 
sword shall perish with the sword. These words 
contain a general principle, which Peter, however, 
was reminded to apply to himself. The sword un- 
lawfully taken is met by the avenging sword of the 
magistrate, the sword abused in the service of re- 
ligion — by the sword equally abused against religion. 
In both points of view Peter was wrong. If they 
had killed him, while he was about to kill, his death 
would not have been that of a martyr, but a merited 
punishment; of this the Savior reminds him, while 
he graciously averts it by healing the inflicted 
wound. But he had not only exposed himself to 
unjustifiable danger, but thrown also suspicion on the 
holy cause of his Master. For this reason Jesus dis- 
claims the act so solemnly. R. Watson remarks on 
these words of our Lord: "Our Lord manifestly de- 
signed to teach that injuries for the sake of religion 
are not to be repelled by retaliative violence, but 



592 



MATTHEW XXVI, 47-56. 



submitted to with patience; and that his cause was 
not to be maintained or promoted by the strifes of an 
earthly warfare, or by civil coercion : ' if my king- 
dom were of this world, then would my servants 
fight;' words which show that such as is the nature 
of the kingdom, are the means by which it is appro- 
priately upheld and maintained. In both these views 
the lesson was most important: 1. To the disciples 
so long as Christianity should be under persecution. 
In no instance were they to resist or return evil for 
evil, but contrariwise, blessing; after the example of 
him who healed the wound of Malchus, although one 
of those who had 'come out against him.' By the 
opposite conduct they would take their cause out of 
the hand of God, and yet would not escape danger; 
there was a sword still to which they would be ex- 
posed ; after the sword of man, certainly the sword 
of God. ' He that saveth his life ' by such or any 
other unlawful means, ' shall lose it.' 2. The lesson 
was equally important to the Church, and no doubt 
looked onward to the time when Christianity should 
become powerful and triumphant. He who foresaw 
all things knew that the time would come when his 
servants would fight for his kingdom as though it 
were a civil, not a spiritual institution, and when 
persecution and compulsion would be the instru- 
ments to which they would resort under pretense 
of repelling Christ's enemies, or increasing the num- 
ber of his adherents. The doom of persecuting 
Churches and persecutors is here, therefore, fore- 
written by Him who, from the first, disclaimed such 
officious disciples, even when so far sincere as to be- 
lieve they were ' doing God sei - vice.' ' They that 
take the sword shall perish by the sword;' by the 
awakened vengeance, often of injured communities 
debarred of the rights of conscience, or the slower 
but still certain vengeance of Him who especially 
abhors all zeal which is not animated by the mild 
flame of charity." 

Verse 53. Thickest thou that I can not, etc. 
"According to John, the Lord, after he had reproved 
Peter, adds : ' The cup which my Father has given 
me shall I not drink it?' This refers evidently to 
the Gethsemane prayer, which John had not re- 
corded but presupposes, and may be paraphrased 
thus : Didst thou not hear and understand my thrice- 
uttered prayer, or hast thou so soon forgotten it? 
Wilt thou with thy sword strike out of my hands the 
cup which I have accepted at my Father's hand in 
order to drink it ? He then continues to lay bare 
the folly of Peter's thought that he was in need of 
human protection and strength. ' Canst thou sup- 
pose that, in this my suffering, I can suffer other- 
wise than with a voluntary renunciation of all thai 
power of God which otherwise is always at my com- 
mand?' Great and sublime word of perfect con- 
sciousness of what he continues to be even in his 
self-renouncing sacrifice ! Throughout his passion 
there is no proper I can not, so far as respects 
power simply in itself; his not being able is a sacred 



not being willing, as with the Almighty Father; fw 
the Father's almightiness, with all its hosts, is ever 
at the service of the Son. He speaks of the angels, 
as the host and army of Divine Omnipotence, and of 
legions, because the Roman soldiers are before him, 
with whom the conflict would be; he mentions 
twelve, including the eleven disciples with himself. 
He says, more than twelve legions, reminding us of 
their countless number. Yet, in harmony with his 
humanity, which has its claims upon the Father's 
omnipotence only through prayer, he does not say 
that he could at once command their presence, but 
that he could ask the Father who would place them 
at his disposal. Finally, we must bear in mind, that 
this reference to the angel-power sprang solely out 
of the contrast with Peter's sword, as a humbling 
condescension to his thought that foreign help was 
needed. For the Lord might have said, Hast thou 
not seen that I need only speak to and look at my 
enemies, and they fall ! Moreover, as Lange ob- 
serves, ' for the bringing forth this conflict into 
victory, the pure angels in heaven availed him noth- 
ing, for this his sacred cross alone was sufficient.' 
It is not by hosts or by power, even that of angels, 
but by my spirit, my spirit willing for the suffering 
victory over the flesh. The angels must look on in 
adoring reverence, instead of drawing their flaming 
swords." (Stier.) 

Verse 54. Bdt how then shall the Scriptures 
be fulfilled? that is, the Scriptures, according 
to which Christ must suffer these things and thus 
enter into his glory. (Ps. xxii; Isa. liii; Dan. ix, 
26; Zech. xiii, 7; Luke xxiv, 26, 46.) In this must 
the incarnate Son rests, without restraint, with the 
assent of his full will. 

Verse 55. In that same hour. The following 
words were undoubtedly spoken after his hands had 
been tied. If they had been spoken earlier, it might 
have appeared as though he intended to resist 
his apprehension. Stier says beautifully: "As his 
hand had done good to the last, so his mouth con- 
tinues to 'speak, even after his hands were bound. 
Maintaining his majesty and tranquillity, his love 
induces him to speak yet one word more. They 
had listened in involuntary amazement to his words 
concerning the sword on earth and the angels in 
heaven, concerning his Father and the Scriptures. 
But since he had again renounced all defense they 
finally proceed to bind and lead him away. What 
he says now to the multitudes he is constrained to 
say: for the Father's honor that he may be honored 
in the Son, even when men are pouring contempt 
upon the Son; as a testimony to the truth that they 
might not think that they took him with their 
swords, any more than Peter should have supposed 
that with his sword he could have defended him; 
finally, in the love with which he, perseveringly 
teaching them, shows them their sin." — Said Jesus 
to the multitudes. That these words were ad- 
dressed to Jews is clear; Luke says that they were 



JESUS BEFORE THE HIGH-PRIEST. 



593 



addressed " to the chief-priests, and captains of the 
Temple, and the elders, which were come to him." 
They probably had followed the band in the rear, 
and were now emerging from the crowd. At first 
he exposes their malice and cowardice, evidencing 
their wicked cause and guilty conscience; then he 
establishes clearly and irrefutably his own innocence. 
He had met them in daylight in the Temple as the 
prophet of God; they meet him under the cover of 
night, in a solitary place, as the agents of the prince 
of darkness. In majestic submission he declares: 
I am no malefactor, yet I suffer myself to be treated 
as such. — I sat daily with you, etc. This is a 
vivid reference to his frequent presence on all occa- 
sions at the feasts since his first coming to the Tem- 
ple; but especially during the past week. (Luke xix, 
47.) — Teaching. He speaks now only of his teach- 
ing; not of his miracles, the last of which he had 
performed but a short time before. — In the Tem- 
ple. In the most public place, where the ecclesias- 
tical police should long ago h5.ve done their duty, if 
there had been any thing dangerous in him. — And 
ye laid no hold on me. They had, indeed, often 
desired to secure his person, but had not dared to 
have him arrested, so that this night attack appears 
the more plainly as the work of their guilty con- 
science and malice. 

Verse 56. But all this was done, etc. — literally, 
has come to pass. These words are no addition by 
the Evangelist, but the Lord's own words continued. 
Instead of this reference to the Scripture Luke adds 
another word of the same meaning : "But this is 
your hour and the power of darkness." The full 
meaning of "your hour" and of "the power of dark- 
ness" will be pointed out in the comment on this 
passage in Luke. Here we have to consider only 
its relation to the words recorded by Matthew, on 
which Lange remarks: "This is their hour; they 
have now power over him, and it is the hour of dark- 



ness; Satan has power over them, but he has it only 
because it is given unto him of God, who, according 
to the Scriptures, had foreordained that Christ 
should be numbered with the transgressors. This 
power of God it is to which he submits of his own 
free will and accord, while their power lasts but an 
hour." — Then all the disciples foksook him and 
fled. "The last words of Jesus [recorded by 
Luke] convinced the disciples that their Master was 
resolved to offer no resistance whatever, and with 
this certainty the last ray of their expectation of a 
temporal Messianic kingdom disappeared. They 
felt deeply how this, their last hope, forsook them, 
and the power of darkness, of which Jesus had just 
spoken, showed itself at once in their conduct. Al- 
though the word of Jesus, recorded by John, (xviii, 
8,) had provided for their safety, they were overcome 
by a panic, as if they were to be arrested themselves. 
They dispersed — they fled. Yet it appears from the 
conduct of Peter and John, (John xviii, 15,) that 
they fled only partially, following the Lord still from 
a distance. It is worthy of note that in this hour 
of peril, when the apostles dispersed and forsook 
their Master, other disciples took a bolder and more 
decided stand; believing women and some members 
of the council — Nicodemus and Joseph of Arima- 
thea. We have here an illustration of the indestruct- 
ibility of Christ's Church in the fact that new disci- 
ples are constantly appearing on the stage, even 
when the older ones disappear or seem to disappear. 
The first prelude of this fact is given by that youth, 
of whom Mark says, that he followed Jesus, having 
a linen cloth cast about his naked body, in which the 
Orientals used to sleep. It seems to us highly prob- 
able that he was a disciple of Jesus, slept near by 
the spot where Jesus was apprehended, was awak- 
ened by the noise, and made up his mind, as soon 
as he learned that Jesus was led away a prisoner, to 
follow him into the city." (Lange.) 



§73. JESUS BEFORE THE HIGH-PRIEST. 

From John (xviii, 13) we learn that Jesus was not at once taken before the high- 
priest of the year, Caiaphas, but to his father-in-law, Annas, who had been high-priest, 
but was deposed under Tiberius. This sending to Annas is passed over by the Syn- 
optists, as it had no important bearing on the trial itself, which was held immediately 
afterward before Caiaphas, as John also expressly stated in verse 24, where, according to 
the Greek, it should read sent, not had sent. We may suppose that Annas and Caiaphas 
lived in one palace, or transacted their official business in one and the same place. Vari- 
ous reasons have been assigned why Jesus was first brought to Annas; it may have been 
to find a place of temporary security till the council could be brought together, or from 
respect to Annas, whom the Jews still considered their lawful high-priest, and who stood 
in so near relation to Caiaphas, or to extract from him beforehand some expressions 
which might be used in the formal trial. The last-mentioned design appears from that 

which is recorded in John xviii. 14-23. 

38 



594 



MATTHEW XXVI, 57- 



Stier introduces this section in the following graphic and sublime manner: "As the 
history of the Passion proceeds, its amazing contrasts become more intensely affecting. 
Christ is now judged before the most sacred judicature then existing, but condemned by 
the most fearful perversion of justice and abuse of its forms. The Deliverer of mankind 
is in bonds; the Judge of all is attainted; the Prince of Glory is treated with the foulest 
scorn; the Holy One is condemned as a delinquent, the Son of God as a blasphemer, and 
He who is the resurrection and the life is doomed to die ! The type here rises in rebell- 
ion against its antitype, the shadow against its substance, and the eternal High-Priest is 
condemned by the so-called high-priest of this year. The law is perverted and turned 
against the grace for which it should only prepare the way; and it becomes the triumph 
of grace thus to deliver from the curse of the law. Lying bears witness against truth, 
and long-suffering truth thus wins its empire and rights. The subject rises against his 
Lord as a lord, the creature in the name of God against its God — and what do we hear? 
One sole testimony; I am He! One sole sentence: He is wo-rthy of death! This verily 
holds good in the counsels of God; but not in the sense of our earthly jurists, who, like 
Caiaphas, would offer up one literally instead of all." 

"Verses 57—68. (Compare Make xiv, 53-65; Luke xxii, 54, 63.-65; John xviii, 13, 24.) 

(57) And they that had laid hold on Jesus led him away to Caiaphas the high- 
priest, where the scribes and the elders were assembled. (58) But Peter followed 
him afar off unto the high-priest's palace, 1 and went in, and sat with the servants, 
to see the end. (59) Now the chief-priests, and elders, and all the council, sought 
false witness against Jesus, to put him to death; (60) but found none: yea, though 
many false witnesses came, yet found they none. At the last came two false wit- 
nesses, (61) and said, This fellow said, I am able to destroy the temple of God, and 
to build it in three days. (62) And the high-priest arose, and said unto him, An- 
Bwerest thou nothing? what is it which these witness against thee? (63) But Jesus 
held his peace. And the high-priest answered and said unto him, I adjure thee 
by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God. 
(64) Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter 
shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the 
clouds of heaven. (65) Then the high-priest rent 2 his clothes, saying, He hath 
spoken blasphemy ; what further need have we of witnesses ? behold, now ye have 
heard his blasphemy. (66) What think ye? They answered and said, He is 
guilty of death. (67) Then did they spit in his face, and buffeted him ; and others 
smote him with the palms of their hands, (68) saying, Prophesy unto us, thou 
Christ, Who is he that smote thee? 



1 The Greek word, av\rj, translated palace, means the 
courtyard inclosed by the building. An Oriental house 
is usually built around a quadrangular, interior court, 
into which there is a passage — sometimes arched — 
through the front part of the house, closed next the 
street by a heavy folding-gate; with a smaller wicket 
for single persons, kept by a porter. It is this interior 
court, open to the sky, where the attendants made a 
fire. The place where Jesus stood before the high- 
priest was an audience-room, open to the court — as we 
must infer from verse 69, where Peter is spoken of as 
litting "without in the palace" — and a little elevated 
above the court, though on the ground-floor; on which 



account Mark (xiv, 66) speaks of Peter as "beneath in 
the palace," that is, in the court below. Such audience- 
rooms on the ground-floor had, generally, facing the 
court, a railing and some pillars. The passage from the 
street is the npoavhiov, or ttuAwi/, both translated porch. 

2 According to Leviticus xxi, 10, the high-priest was 
forbidden to rend his clothes; but this ordinance had, 
in all probability, only reference to his official robe 
when worn in the Temple, or to mourning for the dead. 
(Lev. x, 6.) It was customary for the Jews to rend 
their clothes when they heard a blasphemy. (2 Kings 
xviii, 37.) Instances of that kind are mentioned. (1 
Mac. ii, 14; Josephus, Bell. Jud., II, xv, 4.) 



JESUS BEFORE THE HIGH-PRIEST. 



595 



Verses 59-61. Now the chief-priests, and elders, 
and all the council. The word " elders " is want- 
ing in some manuscripts. By "all the council" we 
have to understand all those members that were the 
enemies of Jesus. Those few that were his friends — 
Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea — -had, no doubt, 
for some time ceased to assemble with them. When 
Nicodemus, at a much earlier time, (John vii, 50, 
etc.,) spoke a few words in favor of Jesus, he was 
threatened with excommunication. According to 
John ix, 22, " the Jews had already agreed, that if 
any man did confess that he was Christ, he should 
be put out of the synagogue." Joseph of Arimathea 
had probably also entered his protest on a former 
occasion. (Luke xxiii, 51.) Other members may 
likewise have been kept away through fear of being 
excommunicated. — Sought false witness against 
Jesus, to put him to death; but found none. 
There is every-where testimonyybr him without seek- 
ing — but against him ? They found none. Though 
many false witnesses came forward to their order, 
their testimonies would not accord or would not an- 
swer the purpose. Many might offer to bear witness 
to his desecration of the Sabbath — but this will not 
pass, for they can not touch the miracle by which he 
had desecrated it. To charge him with having de- 
nounced them, the leaders of the people, as hypo- 
crites, fools, and blind, was still more questionable: 
who knew what he might have to say to them, even 
now ! Or his breaking of the traditions and ordi- 
nances of the Pharisees — -but this might have secured 
protection from the Sadducees, and divided the coun- 
cil. Absolute lies would not gain their end with the 
people ; there must be some truth mingled with 
them." (Stier.) — At the last came two false 
witnesses. " Only just as many as were absolutely 
necessary, and they bring up a word heard two years 
before ! It is now falsified and perverted into blas- 
phemy against the Temple of God, although Jesus 
at the time — and recently again — had shown his 
zeal for the honor of the Temple." (Stier.) 

Verse 6*. But Jesus held his peace. The 
charge — being of such a nature that the judges 
themselves had to give it up as futile (Mark xiv, 58, 
59) — was not worthy of an answer from our Lord. 
To explain to them what he had said about the 
Temple being destroyed, and his being able to raise 
it up again, was evidently uncalled for. Moreover, 
the slightest word of reply would have given the 
whole matter another turn, not in harmony either 
with his dignity or with his Divinely-appointed 
course. — And the high-priest answered; that is, 
replied to his silence — wrathful that he can not 
fasten upon Jesus any single circumstance — anxious 
lest the power of his dignified silence might move 
some hearts, even in the council ; but more than 
this, he feels himself something overawing in the 
silence of him who is thus accused, and he becomes 
conscious that the only point to be tested is the 
Messiahship of Jesus. — I adjure thee by the liv- 



ing God. This was the usual formula of adjuration 
among the Jews, and the answer returned to it had 
the validity of an oath. "And if this man, Jesus of 
Nazareth, is the Christ, the Son of God — what then ? 
Will the high-priest cast himself at his feet, and sup- 
plicate with adoring penitence the forgiveness of all 
past opposition ? no, then and for that very 
reason he is to be rejected, condemned, and put to 
death ! Caiaphas would, only say — tell us whether 
thou claimest thyself to be such; but the living God, 
in whose name he dares to put the question, lays a 
spell upon his tongue, so that he must speak more 
truly than he meant to speak; he is constrained 
while preparing for the last and consummate denial 
of the truth, to confess it." (Stier.) — That thou 
tell us, whether thou be the Christ, the Son of 
God. Although the Jews did not connect with their 
idea of the Messiah that of Divinity proper, it is 
evident that Caiaphas and the Sanhedrim ascribed 
to the term Son of God its true sense, which was so 
j offensive to them, (Johnv, 18; x, 33.) Caiaphas does, 
indeed, in the question, not deny the identity of the 
two terms, Christ and the Son of God. The em- 
phasis lies on the word thou— such a one as thou. 

Verse 64. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast 
said, or, I am, as Mark (xiv, 62) has it. Thou hast 
thyself confessed and testified it, thou knowest it 
well without my telling thee so. This also shows 
that Caiaphas used the words, "Christ" and "Son 
of God," in their Scriptural sense, since Christ's 
affirmative answer took the words evidently in the 
same sense in which the questioner had used them. 
" That which he had formerly forbidden his disciples 
to proclaim, in order to obviate misunderstanding 
and offense, he now himself testifies with the utmost 
plainness, now when the consequence will be his 
death I He looks through the meaning of the ques- 
tioner, contemplates all the consequences of his 
affirmation; but on that very account he keeps silence 
no longer. As an obedient Israelite, he must respond 
to the adjuration of the ruling power — under the law 
to the last, even when it is perverted against him. 
But he knew the counsel of his Father, also, as to 
this hour which had now come; and, therefore, he 
gives himself up the more readily by his — J am he / 
This " I am he " is self-sacrificing as it was before in 
the garden. But in this same word the sum, as well 
as the goal and end, of his prophetic office is in- 
volved. Accepting this judicial adjuration, Jesus 
testifies not only that he is the Messiah of Israel- 
itish prophecy, but that therewith and therein he is 
the true Son of God, in the same ' metaphysical ' 
sense as he had elsewhere asserted it, in conformity 
with Scripture. As he there stands bound before 
the Sanhedrim, as he afterward hangs upon the 
cross, the declaration, This Jesus is the Christ, this 
Son of mom the Son of God I is folly to the carnal 
reason, a contradiction to all the Jewish expectation 
concerning the Messiah, the stumbling-block to all 
deistical notions of Gentile wisdom and natural 



596 



MATTHEW XXVI, 57-68. 



knowledge of God. But it is not contrary to the 
prophetic word, nor is it contrary to man's inmost 
convictions in reason and conscience, which do not 
find 'the living God' again but through Jesus Christ. 
History, finally, since his crucifixion, is the progress- 
ive demonstration of the power and glory of him 
who was thus humbled." (Stier. ) Lange remarks : 
"For this word — 'I am the Messiah,' the Jews had 
been waiting for centuries as the watchword of their 
redemption. This word they had tried throughout 
his ministry to extort from him, at first undoubtedly 
with a view to do homage unto him, provided he 
would be a Messiah after their own notions. And 
now, when he utters it, it becomes for them a savor 
of death unto death. They construe it into a crime 
worthy of death. Jesus sees that his judges have 
waited for this his declaration in their hardened un- 
belief. He feels it, how little they are prepared to 
recognize his glory and dignity in his present abject 
position. For this reason he announces to them, 
that he would establish his claims by the judicial 
manifestation of his glory." — Nevertheless, [ac- 
cording to the Greek, moreover,'] I say unto you. 
''In that which he says we have the authentic inter- 
pretation of the name, Son of man, which he had 
given to himself from the beginning; he points to 
Daniel vii, 13, 14, and Psalm ex, in their combina- 
tion, taking his words for these scribes out of the 
Scriptures. In connection with the oath put to him 
he refers to the oath of God in that Psalm. 'Ye 
shall see me sitting, as I now stand before you while 
ye sit in judgment upon me, at the right hand of 
power,' that is, of Almighty Power. What a con- 
trast with his present weakness ! He sits, as it were, 
already in judgment upon the throne of the glory of 
God. But he who sitteth will also come. By this 
coming we have ' to understand not only his future 
personal coming again, but also his spiritual, histor- 
ical, self-manifestation in the government of the 
world,' as Neander remarks. In the same sense St. 
John speaks (Rev. i, 7) of the kingdom, power, and 
dominion given unto him, as ever increasing in the 
course of the world's history. -Even those to whom 
this ye shall see was first spoken, did see it, as all 
that reject him do down to this day: it began with 
the signs on Golgotha, it has continued from Pente- 
cost downward, in an already-visible coming of the 
Son of man in his kingdom. His prophecy has been 
and is still in the progress of fulfillment. But we 
must not overlook that all this preliminary coming 
of Him who is sitting at the right hand of power, is 
but the typical prophecy and the preparatory pledge 
of his last visible coming. The two mutually illus- 
trate and confirm each other: only by the faith which 
waits for the promise of the final return can we un- 
derstand the coming of the Lord in history; only by 
the acknowledgment of this his coming in history — 
manifest as it is to the eyes of even his enemies — 
can we maintain our expectation and waiting for the 
Son of God from heaven." (Stier.) 



Verse 65. Then the high-priest rent his 
clothes, etc. What should now take place if he 
were truly judged according to the law ? The ques- 
tion that should have followed his confession was: 
How provest thou this ? But he had proved it to 
them to such an extent that they dare not ask 
another sign of him. Nor did this judicial assembly 
appoint for the accused, as the law required, a coun- 
sel or advocate. By a sudden dramatic stroke the 
high-priest urges the assembly to their vote, without 
investigation or examination of evidence, and thus 
he drowns at the same time the clamor of his own 
conscience. 

Verse 66. They answered and said, He is 
guilty of death, according to the law, (Lev. xxiv, 
16; comp. Deut. xviii, 20,) as they imagined. The 
verdict was given ; nevertheless there were yet some 
formalities to be complied with, which could not be 
done before another session convened in the morn- 
ing (chap, xxvii, 1.) 1. It was against the Jewish 
law for the Sanhedrim to sit by night in judgment 
on capital crimes; nor was a judgment that was 
pronounced before daylight valid, according to the 
Roman law. 2. As the Roman governor had to ap- 
prove the sentence of death, before it could be ex- 
acted, (Jos. Ant, XX, ix, 1,) the Sanhedrim had to 
put their sentence in the shape of an accusation, 
that was likely to take with Pilate. 

Verses 67, 68. Then did they spit in his face, 
etc. This was done in all probability immediately 
after his condemnation. To spit in one's face wa3 
the expression of the highest contempt, (Deut. xxv, 
9; Num. xii, 14.) Of this unheard-of maltreatment 
even members of the Sanhedrim seem to have been 
guilty, since they that did so are distinguished by 
Mark from the servants, who struck him with the 
palms of their hands. With regard to the indigni- 
ties heaped upon the Savior, Matthew and Mark 
agree with Luke in placing them before the morning 
session of the Sanhedrim. But it is very difficult to 
harmonize the account of Luke (xxii, 66-71) with 
the account given by Matthew and Mark of the trial 
before Caiaphas, preceding those indignities. The 
similarity of the things said is so great, that their 
repetition appears to most commentators improb- 
able ; but if we assume Luke's report of the trial 
to be identical with that of Matthew and Mark, it 
follows, that he is chronologically incorrect in say- 
ing, the trial took place "as soon as it was day." 
It is true, that the assumption of such a chronolog- 
ical inaccuracy would not impair the inspired char- 
acter of Luke's Gospel, and much less its historic 
credibility, as we have shown in our General Intro- 
duction. But before we assume an inaccuracy in 
this case, we must also consider that it is difficult to 
weave that which Luke reports of the trial into the 
account of the trial before Caiaphas, given by Mat- 
thew and Mark. We shall present the various solu- 
tions that have been offered, in the comments upon 
that passage in Luke. 



PETER'S DENIAL AND REPENTANCE. 



597 



§74. PETER'S DENIAL AND REPENTANCE. 

The denial of the Lord by the first of his disciples, as delineated by the four Evan- 
gelists, has an abiding importance for the Church. They state the humiliating fact, with 
all its aggravating circumstances, without allowing themselves any reflection whatever 
on the strange phenomenon that this resolute and energetic disciple, who,' moreover, had 
been so distinctly and minutely forewarned, denied his Master three times, when an open 
and unhesitating confession would have involved him in little or no danger. Where do 
we find so truthful historians as the Evangelists? 

The fall of Peter was in perfect keeping with his character. It was not a premedi- 
tated act; on the contrary, he was so sure of his ardent and constant love of his Master, 
that he would not heed his warnings. He did not know himself, and '■'■the power of dark- 
ness.'" Thinking himself stronger than all the other disciples, he rushed into the tempt- 
ation, instead of praying not to be led into it, and preparing himself by watching and 
praying, as the Lord had exhorted him and set him the example in Gethsemane. His 
restoration teaches us that time repentance, after the most grievous offense, fails not of 
pardon and grace. 

Verses C9— 75. (Compare Mark xiv, 66-72; Luke xxii, 56-62; John xviii, 15-18, 25-27.) 

(69) Now Peter sat without in the palace : and a damsel came unto him, saying, 
Thon also wast with Jesns of Galilee. (70) But he denied before them all, saying, 
I know not what thou say est. (71) And when he was gone out into the porch, 
another maid saw him, and said unto them that were there, This fellow was also 
with Jesus of ISTazareth. (72) And again he denied with an oath, I do not know 
the man. (73) And after a while came unto him they that stood by, and said to 
Peter, Surely thou also art one of them ; for thy speech bewray eth thee. (74) Then 
began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man. And immediately 
the cock crew. (75) And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, which said unto 
him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out, and 
wept bitterly. 



Verse 69. The denial of Peter took place during 
our Lord's trial before the high-priest, and is inter- 
woven with it by the other Evangelists, but Matthew 
relates it by itself. — Now Peter sat without in 
the palace; that is, in the open court. (See foot- 
note to verse 58.) In verse 58 it is said: He went 
in — to the high-priest's palace— because he came 
from the street. Here it is called "without" with 
reference to the open room in which Jesus was ex- 
amined. From the other Evangelists we learn that 
Peter was warming himself at a fire which had been 
kindled. "How soon after he had entered he was 
addressed by the damsel who kept the door, does not 
appear. It is probable that, as her attention had 
been specially drawn to him when he was admitted, 
she watched him as he stood by the fire, and that 
something in his appearance or conduct may have 
excited her suspicions." (Andrews.) 

Verses 71, 72. And when he was gone out 
Into the porch, etc. After his first denial Peter 



feels uneasy, and retreats from the open court to 
the porch or entrance-way in order to secure his 
flight. There, however, he is questioned again by the 
same maid according to Mark, by another maid ac- 
cording to Matthew, by another man according to 
Luke, while John uses the indefinite form, they said. 
"The matter may very naturally be thus arranged: 
the damsel who first accused him, silenced for the 
time, but not satisfied with his denial, speaks to an- 
other maidservant, and points out Peter to her as 
one whom she believed to be a disciple. Seeing him 
soon after in the porch, she renews the charge, and 
the other maid repeats it. Others, hearing the girls, 
also join with them, perhaps dimly remembering his 
person, or now noting something peculiar in his 
manner. During the confusion of this questioning, 
Peter returns again to the fire, where most were 
standing, and there repeats his denial with an oath." 
(Andrews.) 

Verse 73. And after a while came unto him 



598 



MATTHEW XXVII, 1-10. 



they that stood bt. The third denial, according 
to Luke, took place "about the space of one hour 
after." Here Matthew and Mark speak of several 
interrogators, Luke has still "another," and John 
specifies " one of the servants of the high-priest, a 
kinsman of him, whose ear Peter had cut off." It 
seems that Peter, in order to allay suspicion, had 
joined in conversation with those by whom he was 
surrounded, and was recognized as a Galilean by his 
manner of speech; for the provincial dialect of the 
Galileans was broad and unpolished. 

Verse '74. Then began he to curse and to 
swear. He had sworn before, but now he com- 
mences to invoke curses upon himself if what he 
said was not true. — And immediately the cock 
crew. The first crowing, which Mark mentions, 
Peter seems not to have heard. The cock often 
crows irregularly about midnight or not long after, 
but again and regularly at three o'clock, A. M. This 
last crowing is meant here. Luke adds : "And the 
Lord turned and looked vpon Peter." It is supposed 
that this took place when Jesus was led from Annas 
to Caiaphas, or from the apartment in which he had 
been tried to another where he was kept till the 
morning session. But Mr. Andrews says: "It is not 
necessary to suppose any change of place on the 
part of the Lord. If the Sanhedrim assembled in a 
room open to the court in front all that was said in 
the one could, with more or less distinctness, be 
heard in the other. There is, then, no difficulty in 
believing that Jesus had heard all the denials of 
Peter, and that now, as he denied him for the third 



time, and the cock crew, he turned himself to the 
court and looked upon the conscience-stricken 
apostle." 

Verse 75. And Peter remembered the word of 
Jesus, etc. "Peter went out. He felt that a mere 
retraction could not better his case. He knew of 
only one satisfaction, which could turn the curse of 
his guilt, and this had been offered to him in the 
look that Jesus had cast at him. He knew of only 
one way to obtain pardon; namely, the way of the 
deepest humiliation before God, which involved that 
he willingly bore the shame of being called a denier 
by men, while he penitently confessed his guilt be- 
fore the court of heaven. He went out into the 
darkness of the night, but not the night of despair 
as Judas did. Weeping bitterly, he went to meet 
the breaking day. The angel of grace attended 
him on his hard way into the judgment of the spirit 
that was to inflict death upon his old life, especially 
his old pride. And thus he was enabled to die with 
Christ in a manner not anticipated by him. His 
contrition of heart must first be complete, he must 
first hear from the lips of his Master, that he is par- 
doned and reinstated, before he can make satisfac- 
tion unto men for his great guilt by an open con- 
fession. While Judas pursued the opposite course, 
seeking first to make satisfaction to the enemies of 
Christ, who had sinned with him, for his unnatural 
crime without seeking forgiveness of God, and thus 
despaired; Peter, by his course, not only obtained 
pardon, but has also become the first shining type 
of the true order of salvation." (Lange.) 



OHAPTEE XXVII. 
§75. JESUS IS LED AWAY TO PILATE.— REMORSE AND SUICIDE OF JUDAS. 

Having, in their night meeting in the palace of the high-priest, passed sentence of 
death, the Sanhedrim held at the break of day a regular meeting in the Temple, in order 
formally to sanction it, but especially to devise the best means for obtaining the confirm- 
ation of their verdict by the Eoman Governor. Inasmuch as the power to inflict capital 
punishment had been taken away from the supreme judicatory of the Jews, the Sanhe- 
drim had to frame a charge against Jesus that would justify the sentence of death, not 
only from a Jewish, but also from a Eoman point of view. A charge of heresy, of blas- 
phemy, of being a false prophet, etc., was not sufficient to secure his condemnation by the 
Eoman Governor. They resolved, therefore, to charge him with sedition or rebellion 
against the Emperor, (v. 11; Mark xv, 2; especially Luke xxiii, 2; John xviii, 29, etc.; 
John gives the most detailed statement of what transpired before Pilate,) and thus to 
secure his condemnation to death. Their plan, however, was overruled, inasmuch as it 
became manifest before Pilate, that they sought his death only because he had claimed to 
be the Son of God. (John xix, 7-11.) 

The despair and tragical end of Judas is not mentioned by the other Evangelists, but 
confirmed in the Acts. When Jesus was led away to Pilate, Judas, it would seem, looked 
upon his death as certain, and now remorse seized upon him. It was of the utmost 



JESUS IS LED AWAY TO PILATE— REMORSE AND SUICIDE OF JUDAS. 599 



importance that the spotless innocence of Jesus — made so prominent by the apostles in 
their preaching, (Acts ii, 22, 23; iii, 13-15; vii, 52; xiii, 26-28)— should be placed 
beyond all doubt. This was done, on the one hand, by Pilate, his judge, (v. 24;) on 
the other, by Judas. 



"Verses 1— lO. 



(1) When the morning was come, all the chief-priests and elders of the people 
took counsel against Jesus to put him to death : (2) And when they had bound 
him, they led him away, and delivered him to Pontius Pilate the governor. J (3) 
Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, 
repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief-priests 
and elders, (4) saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. 



1 Pontius Pilate is called by Matthew, and also by 
Josephus, (Ant., XVIII, 3, $ 1,) governor, (riye/xiov.) His 
proper title was procurator, as Tacitus calls him, when 
he says, (Ann., XV, 44:) "Christ was crucified by the 
procurator Pontius Pilate, under the reign of Tiberius." 
A procurator was generally a Roman knight, appointed 
to act under the governor of a province as collector of 
the revenue, and judge in causes connected with it. But 
sometimes, in a small territory, especially in one con- 
tiguous to a larger province, and dependent upon it, the 
procurator was head of the administration, and had full 
military and judicial authority, although he was re- 
sponsible to the governor of the neighboring province. 
Thus Judea was attached to Syria upon the deposition 
of Arehelaus — A. D. 6 — and a procurator appointed to 
govern it, with Cesarea for its capital. Already, during 
the temporary absence of Arehelaus, it had been in 
charge of the procurator Sabinus ; then, after the eth- 
narch's banishment, came Coponius ; the third procura- 
tor was M. Ambivius ; the fourth Annius Rufus ; the 
fifth Valerius Gratus ; and the sixth Pontius Pilate, 
(Jos., Antiq., XVIII, 2, \ 2,) who was appointed A. D. 
25-6, in the twelfth year of Tiberius. One of his first 
acts was to remove the head-quarters of the army from 
Cesarea to Jerusalem. The soldiers of course took 
with them their standards, bearing the image of the 
emperor, into the Holy City. No previous governor 
had ventured on such an outrage. Pilate had been ob- 
liged to send them in by night, and there were no 
bounds to the rage of the people on discovering what 
had thus been done. They poured down in crowds to 
Cesarea, where the procurator was then residing, and 
besought him to remove the images. After five days of 
discussion, he gave the signal to some concealed sol- 
diers to surround the petitioners, and put them to death 
unless they ceased to trouble him ; but this only strength- 
ened their determination, and they declared themselves 
ready rather to submit to death than forego their resist- 
ance to an idolatrous innovation. Pilate then yielded, 
and the standards were by his orders brought down to 
Cesarea, (Jos., Ant., XVIII, 3, § 1, 2; Bell. Jud., II, 
9, £ 2-4.) On two other occasions he nearly drove the 
Jews to insurrection ; the first when, in spite of this 
warning about the images, he hung up in his palace at 
Jerusalem some gilt shields inscribed with the names of 
deities, which were only removed by an order from Tibe- 
rius, (Philo, ad Caium, J 38, ii, 589;) the second when 
he appropriated the revenue arising from the redemp- 



tion of vows, (Corban ; eomp. Mark vii, 11,) to the con- 
struction of an aqueduct. This order led to a riot, 
which he suppressed by sending among the crowd sol- 
diers with concealed daggers, who massacred a great 
number, not only of rioters, but of casual spectators. 
(Jos., Bell. Jud., II, 9, $4.) To these specimens of his 
administration, which rest on the testimony of profane 
authors, we must add the slaughter of certain Galileans. 
(Luke xiii, 1.) It must have occurred at some feast at 
Jerusalem, in the outer court of the Temple, since the 
blood of the worshipers was mingled with their sacrifice* ; 
but the silence of Josephus about it seems to show that 
riots and massacres on such occasions were so frequent 
that it was needless to recount them all. — It was the 
custom for the procurators to reside at Jerusalem during 
the great feasts, to preserve order, and accordingly, at 
the time of our Lord's last Passover, Pilate was occupy- 
ing his official residence in Herod's palace. — We learn 
from Josephus, (Ant., XVIII, 4, § 1,) that his anxiety 
to avoid giving offense to Caesar did not save him from 
political disaster. The Samaritans were unquiet and 
rebellious. A leader of their own race had promised to 
disclose to them the sacred treasures which Moses was 
reported to have concealed in Mount Gerizim. Pilate 
led his troops against them, and defeated them easily 
enough. The Samaritans complained to Vitellius, now 
president of Syria, and he sent Pilate to Rome to an- 
swer their accusations before the emperor. (Ibid., \ 2.) 
When he reached it, he found Tiberius dead and Calig- 
ula on the throne, A. D. 36. Eusebius adds, (H. E., ii, 
7,) that soon afterward, "wearied with misfortunes," he 
killed himself. As to the scene of his death there are 
various traditions. One is, that he was banished to 
Vienna Allobrogum, (Vienne on the Rhone,) where a 
singular monument, a pyramid on a quadrangular base, 
fifty-two feet high, is called Pontius Pilate's Tomb. 
Another is, that he sought to hide his sorrows on the 
mountain by the Lake of Lucerne, now called Mount 
Pilatus ; and there, after spending years in its recesses, 
in remorse and despair rather than penitence, plunged 
into the dismal lake which occupies its summit. — We 
learn from Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Eusebius, and 
others, that Pilate made an official report to Tiberius of 
our Lord's trial and condemnation. That he made such 
a report is highly probable ; but the Acta Pilati now 
extant in Greek, and two Latin epistles from him to 
the emperor, are certainly spurious. (Condensed from 
Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.) 



600 



MATTHEW XXVII, 1-10. 



And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. (5) And he cast down the 
pieces of silver in the Temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. (6) 
And the chief-priests took the silver pieces, and saidj It is not lawful for to put 
them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. (7) And they took coun- 
sel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in. (8) Wherefore 
that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day. (9) Then was fulfilled that 
which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces 
of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel 
did value; (10) and gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord appointed me. 



Verse 1. When the morning was come. The 
night in which he had been betrayed to, and tried by, 
the hierarchy, was passed; the day on which he was 
to be delivered unto the Gentiles had come. — To 
put him to death. They had already condemned 
him to death; their object, now, was to devise the 
best means for obtaining a verdict from Pilate; at 
what conclusions they arrived is not reported, but 
from the sequel we learn that they proceeded in the 
following manner: 1. They demanded of Pilate to 
sanction their sentence at once, without examining 
into the charges, (John xviii, 30.) 2. Pilate refus- 
ing to accede to this demand, they charged Jesus 
with sedition, that is, with claiming to be the King 
of the Jews, or the Messiah in a political sense. 3. 
But when Jesus convinced Pilate that his kingdom 
was not of this world, they were compelled to prefer 
the charge that he was guilty of blasphemy, having 
pretended to be the Son of God ; 4. Failing to suc- 
ceed with this accusation, they fell back upon the 
political charge, threatening Pilate to accuse him of 
high treason if he should acquit Jesus. This had 
the desired effect; the governor was intimidated, 
and the death-warrant signed. 

Verse 2. And when they had bound him, etc. 
It appears from this, that the bonds with which he 
was tied at his apprehension, (chap, xxvi, 50; com p. 
John xviii, 12,) and which he wore when he was 
taken from Annas to Caiaphas, (John xviii, 24,) had 
been in part, or altogether removed during his ex- 
amination. " They set out now in mass in order to 
hand the condemned prisoner over to the Roman 
governor, (Luke xxiii, 1.) They calculated, not 
without good reason, that a call of the whole august 
assembly on the governor, especially at so early an 
hour on the first morning of the feast, would create 
the impression that an enormous crime had been 
committed. The bonds which Jesus wore were to 
deepen this impression. Moreover, this early and 
pompous procession was intended to overawe the 
people and prevent popular commotions in favor of 
Jesus." (Lange.) 

Verse 3. Then Judas repented himself, etc. 
The repentance of Judas was like that of Cain, Saul, 
and a thousand others, merely remorse, produced by 
the consequences of his deed, fear of the punitive 



justice of God, the sorrow of the world, which 
worketh death. True, evangelical repentance, re- 
pentance to salvation not to be repented of, is ex- 
pressed in Greek by fierdvoia — change of heart; 
while the word used for the repentance of Judas is 
^.trajxiXsLo-dai — to feel sorrow or remorse on account 
of the consequences of the evil deed, not on account 
of the deed itself. (See note on chap, iii, 3.) 
Lange, in his fiefaeit Sefu, delineates the repentance 
of Judas thus: "Some have attempted to account 
for the repentance of Judas in connection with the 
notion, that he designed to compel Jesus by his 
betrayal to establish his temporal kingdom; but if 
his sorrow had sprung from seeing himself disap- 
pointed in such an expectation, he would, most 
probably, have expressed it, and his end would 
scarcely have been so tragical. Moreover, if he had 
betrayed Jesus for this purpose, it is not likely that 
he would have given up all hope at this stage of the 
proceedings against Jesus. If he ever indulged a 
superstitious, expectation that Jesus would manifest 
his miraculous power for the establishment of his 
kingdom, he might have cherished that expectation 
up to the very moment of his expiring on the cross. 
That, however, his repentance sprang from a feeling 
of bitter disappointment, is more than probable. 
He, no doubt, had expected to receive more than 
thirty pieces of silver as the reward for his infamous 
deed. He must have looked confidently for high 
personal distinctions from the Sanhedrim; and 
when he is made to feel that the rulers care nothing 
for him, he is stung to the quick and wakes up to a 
full consciousness of what he has done. The whole 
life of Jesus looms up again before his soul, his last 
words resound in his ears; and now, as he is handed 
over to the Romans by the high-priests, he realizes 
that the curse and the infamy of this atrocious crime 
of Israel will fall principally upon his own guilty 
head. And as a compensation for all this he has 
but thirty pieces of silver in his hands. The love of 
money, be it ever so great, must give way before 
the chagrin of so bitterly-disappointed ambition and 
before the tormenting pangs of conscience. Thus sets 
in that horrible state of despair, that makes life too 
intolerable a burden." For the character of Judas, 
his choice as an apostle, and the motives of his be- 



JESUS IS LED AWAY TO PILATE.— REMORSE AND SUICIDE OF JUDAS. 601 



trayal, see notes on chapters x, 4; xxvi, 14-16. — 
And brought again the thirty pieces of silver. 
Dr. Robinson is of the opinion that this incident 
is mentioned by the Evangelist here, in order to 
proceed with the Passion history without further in- 
terruption, and that it did not take place before 
Pilate had given the death-warrant, and the priests 
had returned to the Temple. But we may as well 
suppose that he first sought the priests, while Jesus 
was taken before Pilate, and when they turned away 
from him with contempt, he went to the Temple 
alone, where some of the priests were always to be 
found. 

Verse 4. I have sinned, etc. " Blood " signifies 
a violent death, and "to betray innocent blood" 
means to cause the violent death of an innocent 
person. This confession is a strong testimony for 
the innocence of Jesus in the mouth of man, who 
would fain have calmed his roused conscience by 
any charge, however gratuitous, against Jesus, if he 
could have found one, but it is no proof of genuine 
repentance. His confession was extorted by re- 
morse alone. There was not connected with it any 
humiliation before God, any prayer for pardon or 
desire to return to Christ. A leading feature of false 
repentance, in distinction from genuine penitence, is 
the effort to make satisfaction for the wrong done 
without first imploring Divine forgiveness. — And 
they said, What is that to rrs ? Without the least 
emotion these hypocrites turn their backs upon the 
wretch, suffering him to sink under the load of his 
crime. Whosoever makes the world his partner in 
committing a crime, must not expect any help or 
comfort when the consciousness of his guilt com- 
mences to torment him. 

Verse 5. And he cast down the pieces of sil- 
ver in the Temple. By the Temple we have to un- 
derstand the inner court, which the priests alone 
were permitted to enter. He either, as Lange 
thinks, paid, in his despair, no respect to any Temple 
regulations, or he threw the money inside over the 
railing, which separated the court of the priests from 
that of Israel. — And departed and went. We are 
not told how long a time intervened between his de- 
parture from the Temple and his suicide. He may 
have, at first, expected some relief from giving up 
that blood-money, but finding none, he went proba- 
bly, as Lange thinks, into the dreary, rocky valley of 
Binnom. — And hanged himself. Of Judas' s trag- 
ical end and the acquisition of the potter's field 
Peter says, (Acts i, 18:) "Now this man purchased 
a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling head- 
long, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his 
bowels gushed out." There is no irreconcilable 
difference between the two statements. There is 
nothing improbable in supposing that the bursting 
asunder of Judas happened after he had hung him- 
self, by the breaking of a bough, on which he was 
suspended, and his falling on rocks. Hacket found 
in the valley of Hinnom precipices from twenty-five 



to forty feet in hight, with olive-trees growing near 
the edges, and a rocky pavement at the bottom, so 
that if Judas hanged himself in that locality, and 
fell down, "he may have burst asunder." While 
Matthew records what Judas did himself, Peter 
states in what state the wretched man was found. 
As to the purchased field, Peter may be understood 
to speak of the field as bought by Judas, because it was 
bought with his money, and the potter's field which 
the priests had purchased seems to have been the 
same as that in which the traitor met his terrible 
death. That the actual purchase of the field was 
made afterward is self-evident. They had, just then, 
to attend to more important matters. 

Verses 7, 8. The potter's field; that is, the 
well-known potter's field, so called either because it 
had belonged to a potter, or because potter's clay 
was found there. — To bury strangers in, either 
foreign Jews who cama to Jerusalem at the great 
feasts, or proselytes. — Wherefore that field was 
called the field of blood, Aceldama, (Acts i, 19.) 
Thus they fulfilled the words of Jeremiah without 
knowing or intending it. — Unto this day; that is, 
the time when Matthew wrote. While they strove 
to cover their crime they established an abiding me- 
morial of it among the people by the purchase of 
this field. 

Verses 9, 10. Then was fulfilled that which 
was spoken. The words, as quoted here, are not 
found in Jeremiah. English commentators are, 
therefore, of the opinion that "Jeremiah" came into 
the text through a mistake of the transcribers, and 
that the Evangelist refers to Zech. xi, 13, 14. In the 
Syriac and Persian versions, and some Minuscles, 
the word "Jeremiah" is wanting, and Codex 22 and 
others have Zechariah in place of it. Most of the 
modern German commentators, however, contend 
that as the reading in the received text — Jeremiah — 
was known to Origen, Eusebius, Jerome, and Augus- 
tine, it must be looked upon as genuine. Gerlach 
comments on the passage in question, as follows: 
"Matthew quotes here the principal portion of a 
prophecy of Zechariah (chap, xi, 12, 13) which re- 
fers in turn to a prophecy of Jeremiah. Jeremiah by 
breaking an earthen bottle in the valley of Ben-Hin- 
nom, had threatened the destruction of Jerusalem, be- 
cause the people had forsaken Jehovah, (xix, 1, etc.) 
The name of the gate leading to Ben-Hinnom— -potter's 
gate, though rendered in the English version east 
gate — indicates that clay or potter's earth was found, 
and possibly also worked into ware in this valley. 
Zechariah carries it out further, and states this Di- 
vine judgment thus: The Lord takes upon himself 
once more the office of the shepherd of the flock in 
order to make the last trial with it; but on account 
of the opposition of the people he finds himself com- 
pelled to lay down his office and demands accord- 
ingly his wages; thirty pieces of silver, the annual 
wages of a common servant, are offered to him as a 
mark of the utmost contempt; but the Lord throws 



602 



MATTHEW XXVII, 11-30. 



this amount in the Temple to be taken to the potter, 
that is, to the unclean valley of Ben-Hinnom. The 
last efforts of the Lord, as a faithful shepherd, hav- 
ing been frustrated by the obstinate refusal of the 
Jewish people, their vile ingratitude showed itself in 
the betrayal of Judas, and in the contemptuous sum 
offered to him by the priests. This small amount, 
as it were the wages of the Lord for his love, Judas, 
by a special providence, casts in the Temple before 
the priests, so that the people become acquainted in 
the very sanctuary with the abominable transaction 
of the priests. But Jehovah does not accept the 



small sum; it is not laid into the treasury: by a mys- 
terious providence he causes the priests, who are 
anxious to convey the unclean money to an unclean 
spot, to select for this end the same spot on which 
Jeremiah had threatened the people with destruc- 
tion ; in this way the name of the spot, ever fresh in 
the memory of the people, reminded them constantly 
of the greatest of all crimes and the impending 
judgment. Matthew names Jeremiah as the older 
of the prophets, whose prophecy Zechariah merely 
amplifies; desiring, at the same time, to refer to the 
threatening of Jeremiah." 



§76. JESUS BEFORE PIIATE. 

In the description of the condemnation of Christ, the Evangelists complete each other. 
Matthew and Mark give only short sketches of Christ's hearing before Pilate, yet the 
former records the interesting dream of Pilate's wife. Luke gives the transactions before 
Herod, (chap, xxiii, 4-12.) John gives the fullest description of the hearing before Pilate, 
by recording Christ's conversations with the Eoman statesman, of which he had been an 
ear-witness. In order to understand the history of our Lord's passion properly, it will be 
necessary, in our introductory remarks to this and the following sections, to put together 
and arrange the accounts of the four Evangelists, in doing which we shall chiefly draw 
from the "Life of Christ" as delineated by Lange and Baumgarten. 

Jesus is brought early in the morning to the Prsetorium, translated common hall, (see 
foot-note on v. 27,) the official residence of the Eoman procurator, which was most prob- 
ably Herod's palace, into which, however, the priests and elders did not venture to enter, 
lest they should be defiled on the great Paschal festival. Pilate had, no doubt, been noti- 
fied beforehand in connection with the military detachment which had been asked for the 
arrest of Jesus; and as he was sufficiently acquainted with the Jewish character to know, 
that in cases of an outbreak of Jewish fanaticism the most resolute and firm conduct on 
the part of the Eoman authorities was necessary, we find him already at his post. Hav- 
ing, however, exasperated the Jews by former acts of his administration, (see foot-note on 
v. 2,) and being aware, that they had grounds of accusation against him, he evidently 
acted very cautiously on this occasion. His own safety required that he should do 
nothing which they might use as a weapon against him. Accommodating himself to 
their religious scruples, according to the Eoman maxim, he stepped out to the front of 
the Prastorium. The scene opened with the question of Pilate : " What accusation bring 
ye against this man ?" (John xviii, 29.) From the answer of the accusers, " If he were 
not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee," we have to infer, that 
they indulged the hope Pilate would not at all examine into the nature of the case, but, 
satisfied with their recognition of the Eoman sovereignty, lend them his power to execute 
their judgment. To this he replied: "Take ye him and judge him according to your 
law," which may mean, that he did not consider the case as involving capital punishment, 
but that he had no objection to their proceeding against him according to their ecclesias- 
tical law, so far as it did not involve capital punishment. Or, Pilate, to resent the de- 
mand of the priests, that he should, without examination, ratify their sentence, may 
have meant to say ironically: If you judge, you can also execute; but if I execute, I shall 
also judge. So much is clear, that from the very first the sharp-sighted Eoman perceived 
that it was a matter of religious hate, and that the Sanhedrim would not prosecute one 
who had a desire to free them from Eoman authority; but with a Eoman's instinctive re- 
spect for the recognized forms of justice, he had demanded the nature of the charge 



JESUS BEFORE PILATE. 603 



brought against the meek prisoner who stood before him. They now tell him, they have 
a capital case, and are forced to confess : " It is not lawful for us to put any man to 
death." (John xviii, 31.) The Evangelist adds: "That the saying of Jesus might be 
fulfilled, which he spoke, signifying what death he should die." If the Jews could have 
executed him according to the law on the charge of blasphemy, they would have stoned 
him to death — as they did afterward Stephen by mob-law. Divine Providence prevented 
this mode of death. Being compelled to deliver him up unto the Eomans, they brought 
about the manner of death, which the Lord had himself repeatedly told. 

Why Pilate begins the examination of Jesus with the question: "Art thou the king 
of the Jews?" is explained to us by Luke, (xxiii, 2.) It is in reply to their saying: "We 
found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying 
that he himself is Christ, a king." They accused our Lord of that of which they knew 
him innocent, for they hated and persecuted him for the very reason that he would not 
become a Messiah in the sense of a temporal king of the Jews, and he had told them a few 
days before with regard to the tribute money: "Render unto Caesar the things which are 
Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's." By thus maliciously perverting the 
truth, the rulers of the Jews were as guilty of the most heinous treachery as Judas him- 
self. "The Messianic kingdom, this completion of all gracious gifts of Jehovah, this 
highest consolation of all true Israelites, this heavenly ideal, whose very name and shadow 
suffice to fill the Jews of all times with enthusiasm," says Baumgarten, " is represented by 
these high-priests and rulers as a rebellion against the majesty of the Eoman emperor, as 
a breach of the peace of the world, and this charge they make before the tribunal of the 
imperial governor at Jerusalem. Never has treason assumed so dark and colossal a shape 
as here." 

With regard to the judicial procedure let us bear in mind that the Roman judge 
stands in front of the Prsetorium when he discusses with the Jews the nature of the 
charge; and when he proceeds to the official examination, he withdraws with the accused, 
and in all probability with such of the accusers as had made up their mind to forego the 
celebration of the whole Passover, reserving to themselves that of the so-called little 
Passah, and other witnesses into the Prsetorium. But when he pronounced the sentence 
he ascends the judgment-seat — an elevated, portable seat on the pavement, that is, in an 
open, paved space in front of the Prsetorium. The first question of Pilate: "Art thou 
the king of the Jews?" Jesus answers, according to John, (xviii, 33, 34,) with a counter- 
question — omitted by the other Evangelists : " Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did 
others tell thee of me?" Baumgarten finds in this question an indirect reproach, similar 
to the one administered unto Annas : as the high-priest could not but know what Jesus 
had taught in the Temple, so Pilate ought to have known whether Jesus had at any time 
been engaged in a political transaction that would come under his — the governor's — cog- 
nizance. But this is not probable; ISTeander and Lange call attention to the fact that 
Jesus could give neither an unqualifiedly-affirmative, nor an unqualifiedly-negative an- 
swer to this question. If he had answered with an unqualified "yes," he would have at 
once pleaded guilty of the crime laid to his charge, in the sense in which the governor 
asked him. By an unqualifiedly-negative answer he would have denied his Messiahship. 
It was, therefore, proper to inquire in which sense the governor's question was to be 
taken, whether in a religious or in a political sense, and for this reason the Lord asks the 
governor whether he said the thing of himself; that is, whether he said it in the Roman, 
political sense, or whether he was merely repeating a religious charge of the Jewish hei- 
rarchy. Pilate seems to admit that the question might have a religious sense, which he 
did not understand, and at the same time shows his Roman pride, not without some irri- 
tation, by saying : "Am I a Jew? [What have I to do with the religious questions of the 
Jews?] Thine own nation and the chief-priests have delivered thee unto me: what hast 
thou done?" (what crime hast thou committed?) (Chap, xviii, 35.) Lange observes cor- 



604 MATTHEW XXVII, 11-30. 



rectly: "In this question, put by the representative of the heathen world to the Messiah, 
there is a theocratic and world-historical significance. Jesus could not unqualifiedly say 
that he had done nothing, without placing the whole in a false light. The Eoman must 
know, not only that Jesus was innocent in the sense of the Eoman law, hut also that he 
is a king in the sense of the Jewish religion. He is to learn that there is still another 
world than the Eoman, namely, the kingdom of truth, and that Jesus is king in this 
kingdom. He is also told that Jesus has fallen into his hands only in consequence of the 
conflict between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world, in which he suc- 
cumbs outwardly, but only in order to conquer spiritually. In this sense Jesus answers : 
'My kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, then would my 
servants fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now is my kingdom not 
from hence.'" Jesus speaking of his kingdom, Pilate asks again: "Art thou a king 
then? and Jesus answered: Thou sayest that I am a king." (John xviii, 37.) The other 
Evangelists, omitting the preceding portions of this conversation, emphasize this answer, 
as the confession of Christ that he was really the king of the Jews in the higher sense of 
the Scriptures. For the purpose of explaining his words and of removing any sus- 
picion from the mind of his judge — for we must not lose sight of the fact, as Baumgarten 
remarks, that Jesus defends his innocence before Pilate in good faith, so that he can not 
be charged with having himself brought about his death by indifference or otherwise — 
Jesus adds: "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I 
should bear Avitness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice." 
The worldly-minded politician, perceiving no connection between truth and a kingdom, 
and considering Jesus to be a harmless enthusiast, asks in a half-pitying spirit, as if truth 
was an empty name, "What is truth?" and, without waiting for an answer, hurries out 
of the Prsetorium in order to declare to the Jews outside: " I find in him no fault at all." 
Here must be inserted what Luke says, (xxiii, 5,) that the Jews protested vehemently 
against this declaration of Pilate, adding: "He stirreth up the people, teaching through- 
out all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place." Pilate, to whom this prosecution 
had become irksome already, eagerly took hold of this information that Jesus had ap- 
peared first in Galilee, and that he was by birth a subject of Herod Antipas, and sent 
Jesus and his accusers at once to that Prince, who happened to be in Jerusalem during 
the feast. How the Savior was treated by Herod is related by Luke. "Without passing 
any sentence Herod sent him back to Pilate, in a manner which showed the latter that 
Jesus was regarded by Herod also as a religious enthusiast, but not guilty of any civil 
crime. By this Pilate was confirmed in his conviction of the innocence of Jesus. He, 
therefore, calls together the chief-priests, and the rulers, and the people, and seats him- 
self upon his judgment-seat, with the design to pronounce him innocent, and to end the 
trial, saying unto them: "Ye have brought this man unto me as one that perverteth the 
people; and behold, I, having examined him before you, have found no fault in this man 
touching those things whereof ye accuse him; no, nor yet Herod; for I sent you to him; 
and lo, nothing worthy of death is done unto him: I will, therefore, chastise him and re- 
lease him." (Luke xxiii, 14-16.) The scourging was to appease the rage of the priests, 
and the releasing was to take place under the provisions of a custom that at this feast a 
prisoner chosen by the people should be released from punishment. He presents, there- 
fore, to the people Jesus and Barabbas, between whom they were to choose. At this time 
he receives the warning message from his wife. But he had scarcely made the proposi- 
tion that Jesus should be set free, when the crowd, stirred up by the high-priests, com- 
menced at once to cry, (Matt, xxvii, 20; Mark xv, 11:) "Not this man, but Barabbas!" 
Pilate, however, was not willing to accede to the clamors of the Jews, but resolved to 
carry out his design. For this purpose he commanded the Lord to be led away in order 
to be scourged. This scourging was followed, according to the account of John, (xix, 
1-5,) by the cruel derision of his Israelitic royalty. According to Matthew, (verses 27-31,) 



JESUS BEFORE PILATE. 605 



and Mark, (xv, 17-20,) these cruelties of a ruthless soldiery took place after the sentence 
had been pronounced. Most commentators are, therefore, of opinion that he was scourged 
twice. But according to Lange and others, the account of these two Evangelists can be 
reconciled with that of John in the following manner. There were two kinds of scourg- 
ing in use among the Romans; the one was inflicted as a torture, the other was pre- 
paratory to the execution. It is not unreasonable to suppose that Pilate let the first 
scourging, by which he intended to move the infuriated populace to pity, pass for the 
second, after the sentence of death had been pronounced. The Evangelists may have 
looked upon this act from different points of view. John states it with reference to the 
end which Pilate had in view in ordering it; so does Luke; but Matthew and Mark state 
it in its world-historical significance, as the beginning of Christ's sufferings on the cross, 
and place it, therefore, at the close of his trial before Pilate; and thus the apparent chro- 
nological discrepancy between John (xix, 14) and Mark (xv, 25) is also satisfactorily 
accounted for. 

The scourging over, Pilate makes, according to John, a new effort to save Christ's life. 
While bringing him before the people with the marks of his mock royalty, he says: "Be- 
hold, I bring him forth to you that ye may know that I find no fault in him ; behold the 
man !" But instead of moving their pity, the rage of the high-priests and the crowd 
rises only the higher, and they cry out: "Crucify him, crucify him!" With bitter sar- 
casm Pilate rejoins: "Take ye him, and crucify him; for I find no fault in him !" Upon 
this they reply: "We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made him- 
self the Son of God." Seeing thus that they could not prevail with their political charge, 
they fall back upon their Jewish-theocratic charge of blasphemy, and consequently upon 
their first demand, that Pilate should merely sanction the sentence of death pronounced 
by themselves. This skeptical politician in the mean time had felt some mysterious influ- 
ences; the dream of his wife had disturbed him, the sacred majesty of this mysterious 
king had shaken his inmost soul, and the fear of harming Jesus, which he had shown at 
the opening of the hearing, increases when he hears this new charge. (John xix, 8.) 
He withdrew, therefore, again into the hall to renew the examination. "AVhence art 
thou?" he asks Jesus, not in a political sense, but with regard to his reputed higher 
origin. This question Jesus did not answer, (verse 14; compare John xix, 9; Mark 
xv, 5,) inasmuch as a judicial inquiry into this point did not come within the province 
of the heathen. Pilate, rather offended at his silence, said unto him : " Speakest thou not 
unto me? Knowest thou not, that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to re- 
lease thee?" To this Jesus answered: "Thou couldst have no power at all against me, 
except it were given thee from above; therefore, he that delivered me unto thee has the 
greater sin." And John, who reports this conversation, adds: "And from thencefoi'th 
Pilate sought to release him." By this the Evangelist evidently means to say, that he was 
now, more than ever, determined to release him. But the Jews also had now recourse to 
the last expedient. They said, assuming a threatening attitude: "If thou let this man 
go thou art not Csesar's friend." This temptation proved too strong for Pilate. He was 
guilty of heavy offenses in his administration, and had, therefore, reason to fear the Jews, 
if they, irritated by the release of Jesus, should repair to Eome and accuse him to the 
emperor. Add to this that the then Eoman emperor, Tiberius, is known to have eagerly 
listened to every rumor about politically-suspected persons, and if it should be proven 
against his procurator that he had treated a charge of this kind lightly, the latter had to 
look for the worst. This fear determined the governor's course. His purpose to defend 
the innocent was not strong enough to. overcome the fear of the emperor's frown and 
the loss of place and power. When he heard the threat of the Jews, says John, he 
brought Jesus forth and sat down on the judgment-seat, in the open, paved space before 
the palace. The first time he had ascended it for the purpose of acquitting Jesus, 
now he ascends it for the purpose of condemning him. "Behold here your king!" he 



606 MATTHEW XXVII, 11-30. 



said to the people, pointing to Jesus. It would seem that with this bitter mockery he re- 
sented the reproach of the Jews, that he was not the friend of the emperor. But the 
Jews cried out, "Away with him! crucify him!" And to his sarcastic question, "Shall I 
crucify your king?" the priests replied, "We have no king but the emperor." By this 
avowal they shamefully renounced all hope of the Messiah, delivering the theocratic 
people into the hands of the Gentiles. 

Pilate now reluctantly yielded. The manner in which he did so is more fully stated 
by Matthew. "When the clamors of the Jews waxed louder, and an insurrection seemed 
imminent, he took water, and washed his hands before the people, saying, "I am inno- 
cent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it." But this act, by which he wished to 
transfer the guilt of innocent blood to the infuriated throng around him, though no 
doubt fully understood, was contemptuously disregarded. Then answered all the people, 
and said, "His blood be on us, and on our children." As futile as this expiatory cere- 
mony was to Pilate, so efficient were the imprecations of the Jews upon themselves; and 
eighteen centuries have taught in what fearful manner they have been fulfilled. In addi- 
tion to Lange's sketch, Dr. Yan Oosterzee remarks: "By the delivery of Jesus into the 
hands of Pilate, the heathen word became, in common with the Jewish Church, guilty 
of the greatest crime that was ever committed by mankind. But it was one of the most 
adorable dispensations of Providence, that, at the very time in which Jesus was to die, a 
man was at the head of affairs in Judea who was every way qualified to be, in his ignorance, 
the minister of God's purposes for the redemption of the world. While he was, on the 
one hand, sensible enough to distinguish between truth and falsehood; courageous 
enough to declare his convictions openly, and to proclaim repeatedly the Lord's inno- 
cence ; conscientious enough to make every attempt to save the Lord's life : he was, on 
the other hand, so weak that he preferred the honor of men to the approbation of his 
conscience, and so selfish that he was more concerned for his own worldly interests than 
for the rights of the innocent. One can not but feel that exactly such a man had to be 
the judge under whom the Savior of the world was to suffer death." 

"Verses Jl-30. (Compare Mark xy, 2-20; Luke xxiii, 1-25; ;Johx xtiii, 29-xix, 16.) 

(11) And Jesus stood before the governor: and the governor asked him, saying, 
Art thou the King of the Jews? And Jesus said unto him, Thou sayest. (12) 
And when he was accused of the chief-priests and elders, he answered nothing. 
(13) Then said Pilate unto him, Hearest thou not how many things they witness 
against thee? (14) And he answered him to never a word; insomuch that the 
governor marveled greatly. (15) Now at that feast the governor was wont to 
release unto the people a prisoner, whom they would. (16) And they had then 
a notable prisoner, called Barabbas. (17) Therefore when they were gathered 
together, Pilate said unto them, Whom will ye that I release unto you? Barab- 
bas, or Jesus which is called Christ? (18) For he knew that for envy they had 
delivered him. (19) When he was set down on the judgment-seat, his wife sent 
unto him, saying, Plave thou nothing to do with that just man : for I have suffered 
many things this day in a dream because of him. (20) But the chief-priests and 
elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus. 
(21) The governor answered and said unto them, Whether of the twain will ye 
that I release unto you? They said, Barabbas. (22) Pilate saith unto them, 
What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? They all say unto him, 
Let him be crucified. (23) And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? 



JESUS BEFORE PILATE. 



607 



But they cried out the more, sayiug, Let him he crucified. (24) When Pilate saw 
that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, 
and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of 
this just person: see ye to it. (25) Then answered all the people, and said, His 
blood be on us, and on our children. (26) Then released he Barabbas unto them : 
and when he had scourged l Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. (27) Then the 
soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, 2 and gathered unto him 
the whole baud 3 of soldiers. (28) And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet 
robe. (29) And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his 
head, and a reed in his right hand : and they bowed the knee before him, and 
mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews ! (30) And they spit upon him, and 
took the reed, and smote him on the head. 



Verse 11. And the governor asked. In the 
introductory remarks to this section, we have already 
shown in what relation the synoptic accounts of the 
hearing before Pilate stand to that of John. Stier, 
however, advocates the view, that the first question 
and answer recorded by the Synoptists took place 
unconnected with the other proceedings, and pub- 
licly, in the presence, of all. He argues: "It is 
hardly conceivable that Pilate should have at once 
taken Jesus by himself, without asking him any 
question in public beforehand; but we may very 
readily conceive how the strange answer, which he 
received in reply to his question, may have induced 
the governor to ask the same question once more 
in private. The first affirmative answer, "thou sayest 
it" is ambiguous, implying that he was, in some 
sense, the King of the Jews, but not as a rebel 
against the emperor; not in such a manner that 
he had to fear an examination. For a person that 
is guilty does not at once admit the main point of 
the charge, except in defiance, and there is nothing 
defiant in the answer of Jesus. On the contrary, 
Pilate observes here passion and calmness, in 



strange and impressive contrast, so that he can not 
but presume that there is hid here, under the enig- 
matical "yes" of the accused, an enigma and 
mystery of an extraordinary nature. For this reason 
it resounds in his inmost soul : into this subject I 
must inquire in private with him. Leaving, there- 
fore, the accusers, standing outside, to their deepest 
chagrin, he withdraws to the Prastorium with the 
accused alone. The account of John does not lead 
us to suppose that Jews were present at this inside 
hearing. Romans may have been present, but we 
can account for John's knowledge of what was said, 
even without this supposition." Stier overlooks that 
judicial examinations were never held by the Romans 
without some of the accusing witnesses. 

Verses 12-14. At what time this silence took 
place, John tells us minutely, (xix, 9. See intro- 
ductory remarks.) Jesus answers, where it is his 
duty to answer, with conscious dignity; but with the 
same dignity he observes, also, a deep silence, when 
silence is in its place. 

Verses 15, 16. Now at the feast; that is, the 
Passover, which was emphatically the feast of the 



1 The Roman way of scourging was a far more griev- 
ous punishment than that of the Jews. The latter laid 
bare merely the upper part of the body, while the 
Romans stripped the whole body. The Jews counted 
the stripes — thirty-nine, (2 Cor. xi, 24) — while the 
Romans dealt them out without number and measure. 
The Roman scourge was also a far more horrible instru- 
ment — horribile flarjcllum — than that of the Jews. Only 
slaves were subject to this punishment. (Acts xxii, 25.) 
But, as the lives of slaves were counted of no value, 
still less regard was paid to their feelings. Scourging 
was generally inflicted by the lietors. But, as Pilate 
had no lietors at his command, he had the scourging 
done by soldiers. This was probably the reason why 
Jesus was not beaten or scourged with rods, but with 
the scourge made of leathern thongs. Those on whom 
this terrible punishment was inflicted were tied to a pil- 
lar, generally a very low one, so that the bent back was 
exposed to the hard stripes. There were, as remarked 
before, two kinds of scourging in vogue among the 



Romans. One kind was inflicted on those that were 
condemned to the cross, preparatory to the final exe- 
cution ; the other on delinquents, in order to extort a 
confession of guilt from them, or to punish them for 
some crime. The latter kind, not inferior to the first in 
severity, was inflicted on Jesus. 2 The Greek word is 
TrpaiTopioi-, from the Latin prcetorium. It meant, in the 
first place, the general's tent in the Roman camp ; then, 
also, the residence of provincial governors, where they 
administered justice. It served, at the same time, as 
the guard-house and prison of State. (Acts xxiii, 35.) 
For all these purposes the Romans used any existing 
large palaces in the principal towns of the provinces ; 
and from Josephus, (Bell. Jud., II, 14, §8,) we learn 
that the procurator of Judea resided during the feasts 
at Jerusalem, and used the palace of Herod as his prce- 
torium. 3 The whole band ; that is, the cohort, or tenth 
part of a legion, consisting, in the times of Augustus, 
of about six hundred men, which garrisoned Jerusalem. 
The term " whole band " must not be taken literally here. 



608 



MATTHEW XXVII, 11-30. 



Jews. It is not known when this custom arose. 
Some find in it a reference to the first-born of Israel, 
that were spared by the avenging angel. Grotius 
thinks that the Romans introduced it, in order to 
gain the good-will of the Jews. — They had a pris- 
oner, called Barabbas. Fritche and Tisehendorf 
adopt the reading, "Jesus Barabbas," which is found 
in several Minuscles, in the Syriac, and other trans- 
lations, and in Origen. "Barabbas" is only a sur- 
name, and means, "the Father's son." A remarka- 
ble coincidence, as Jesus was, in a particular sense, 
the Son of the Father! According to Mark and 
Luke, Barabbas was guilty of sedition and murder. 
It is very probable that he was a Messianic impostor. 
Thus, Divine Providence arranged it so that the peo- 
ple had to choose between the true and a false 
Messiah. Meyer thinks that the name "Jesus" was 
dropped from the manuscript, because the Church, 
or the transcribers, hesitated to connect the holy 
name "Jesus" with "Barabbas." 

Verse 19. His wife sent unto him. This inci- 
dent is peculiar to Matthew. Beautifully says 
Lange: "As, according to Matthew, the spirit of 
truth bears testimony for the newly-born Savior, by 
dreams of the night, to which the self-conscious 
testimony of the Magi corresponds; so the solemn 
political testimony of Pilate for the suffering Jesus 
is completed by the testimony of his wife, based on 
a dream. Thus each Evangelist selects from the 
storehouse of real facts that which best corresponds 
with his scope. Under the reign of Augustus it 
became customary for Roman magistrates to take 
their wives with them into their provinces ; but, 
during the reign of Tiberius, this custom began to 
be censured, (Tac. Ann., Ill, 33.) The name of 
this lady was, according to tradition, (Niceph. Hist. 
Eccl., I, 30,) Claudia Procula or Procla. She was, 
according to the Gospel of Nicodemus, a proselyte 
of the gate, and, possibly, a believer in Jesus." 

Verse 19. Have thou nothing to do with that 
just man. " A remarkable word from the lips of a 
Roman lady! How shall we account for it, that the 
wife of a heathen, holding the highest political posi- 
tion in Jerusalem, is occupied in her dreams with a 
Jewish Rabbi? How strange that she is the only one 
to take up his cause ; that she calls him a just man, 
at the very moment when the rulers of his nation 
and the whole populace clamor for his death? She 
must have been one of the then numerous class of 
Roman and Greek ladies, who, unsatisfied with 
paganism, turned their attention to the religion and 
worship of the Jews. If this supposition is correct, 
if her frame of mind was of the class described, we 
may take it for granted, that during the few past 
days, when all Jerusalem was in commotion, on 
account of Jesus' triumphal entry into the city, and 
the transactions in the Temple, she sought and found 
means to obtain such information concerning him, 
as deeply impressed her mind. The appellation, 
'that just man' or, 'that just one,' which she gave 



to Jesus, reminds us of the highest moral ideal to 
which Grecian philosophy arose. Plato uttered the 
memorable words, 'that a god must restore again 
the beginning and prototype of righteousness.' 
Still more significant and prophetic is another saying 
of the same philosopher: 'The common exhibition 
of righteousness and unrighteousness is altogether 
deficient. Unrighteousness will not be represented 
fully, till it wraps itself wholly in the garb of right- 
eousness, and he is the truly and perfectly just one, 
that has nothing else than an inward righteousness, 
while he is, at the same time, mocked, persecuted, 
maltreated, and killed.' Similar to this is the say- 
ing of Aristotle: 'The perfectly just man stands so 
far above the political order and constitution, as 
it exists, that he must break it, wherever he appears.' 
These sayings of the Greek philosophers were proph- 
ecies concerning Him who has restored, in the 
midst of a sinful and perverted world, the beginning 
and prototype of Divine righteousness, who perfected 
his obedience while he was reckoned with the trans- 
gressors, on whose silent and suffering innocence 
the Jewish Commonwealth and the Roman polity 
have been wrecked as on a rock. When, therefore, 
the wife of Pilate, in the fullest assurance, calls 
Jesus 'that just one,' at the moment when the whole 
world disavowed him, warning her husband so impress- 
ively, we hear the voice of the Grecian conscience; 
and when the Roman governor tells the Jews, again 
and again, that he finds no fault in him, we hear 
the voice of Roman law and justice. That the 
warning of his wife made some impression upon 
Pilate, appears from the last word he spoke: 'I am 
innocent of the blood of this just person,' (v. 24.)" 
(Baumgarten.) 

Verse 20. But the chief-priests and elders 
persuaded the multitude, etc. While Pilate lis- 
tens to and meditates upon the warning of his wife, 
the chief-priests and elders are busily engaged in 
stirring up the people still more, making them, no 
doubt, believe that Jesus was a false prophet, a blas- 
phemer, and Barabbas a champion of liberty. 

Verse 21. They said, Barabbas. Although the 
choice of Barabbas was effected through satanic 
influences, yet Jesus was honored by it. For to 
have been released as a condemned criminal simply 
through the pity of the people, would have obscured 
the purity and dignity of Jesus. The popular 
hatred was also honorable for Jesus, as an evidence 
that he had never connived at their wickedness and 
perverseness. Moreover, the injustice done to him 
is to console us, when in this world of wrongs the 
innocent is so often placed on an equal footing with 
the guilty, yea, punished in his place. At the same 
time, the preference given to Barabbas brought a 
swift and fearful punishment on the Jewish nation. 
The spirit of Barabbas, the spirit of rebellion, pos- 
sessed the people like a demon, goading them to 
increasing fury against the Romans, till they were 
utterly destroyed by them. 



JESUS BEFORE PILATE. 



609 



Verse 22. What shall I do then with Jesus? 
Significant, strange question! How many do not 
know what to do with Jesus! — They all say 
unto him, Let him be crucified! This is the voice 
of the people. The people insisted on the crucifix- 
ion of Jesus from hatred and blindness; God had 
decreed to let it come to pass from compassion 
toward a lost world. "It was one of the most 
remarkable counsels of God, that Jesus was to die 
on the cross. The sign of the heaviest curse was to 
be changed, by his death, into the sign of the great- 
est blessing. The pain, the shame, the slowness, the 
uninterrupted self-consciousness, the publicity, con- 
nected with this kind of capital punishment, made 
it, emphatically, the penalty of death. No sign 
could be so significant as that of the cross. By the 
grace of God, the cursed tree was to become the 
emblem of the tree of life, and the ignominious 
stake, on which arms of malefactors were wont 
to be expanded, was henceforth to be the banner of 
salvation, wrought out by the expanded arms of 
Jesus." (Lange.) 

Verse 24. He took water. He washed his 
hands, to signify thereby that he had no part in the 
execution clamored for. This was a symbolical act, 
common among the Jews and Gentiles. That 
Pilate endeavors to lay his guilt upon others, shows 
that his conscience was not at ease. 

Verse 25. His blood be on us; that is, the 
punishment for his death, if he is innocent, be upon 
us, (comp. chap, xxiii, 35.) What a daring impre- 
cation ! and how fearfully was it fulfilled in the de- 
struction of Jerusalem, when, according to the testi- 
mony of Josephus, so many Jews were crucified, 
that there was no more room for crosses. Judge 
Jones remarks on this passage: "Pilate had inti- 
mated to them his belief that they should some day 
suffer for their cruel and unjust conduct, and the 
meaning of this response may be thus expressed: 
'Your fear does not affect us: we have no fear that 
the blood of this man, whom you call just, will be 
demanded of us or our posterity. We willingly con- 
sent to bear all the vengeance which the Divine 
Justice shall see proper to inflict. We consent to 
be responsible for whatever injustice there may be, 
and to bear the punishment of it.' There was, how- 
ever, a meaning in these words which the blinded 
multitude did not intend, and which, nevertheless, 
has been fulfilled in respect to many of that race, 
and will yet be fulfilled in respect to the entiro 
nation. 'The blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin. 
It speaketh belter things than that of Abel.' (Heb. 
xii, 24;) and this imprecation, uttered in the spirit 
of hate, at that time, will hereafter be uttered in the 
spirit of mourning and bitterness, and be answered 
with the greatest blessing. (Zech. xii, 10.)" 

Verse 26. Then released he Barabbas unto 
them. It is easy to comprehend what a painful 
sting this his timid yielding left in his conscience, 
and why he afterward committed suicide. For a 



judge to abandon the innocent instead of defending 
him to the last, has been universally felt and ad- 
mitted to be one of the heaviest crimes. — And 
when he had scourged Jesus. The account of 
John, that Pilate made after the scourging another 
attempt to release Jesus, corrects the unchronological 
statement of Matthew and Mark. Luke also speaks of 
this scourging as a measure taken by Pilate, in order 
to appease, to some extent, the hatred of the Jews, and 
to move them to compassion. But Matthew looked 
on the scourging, as its object was not accomplished, 
as the actual transition to the crucifixion, as the be- 
ginning of the crucifixion itself. — He delivered 
him. By this act the Roman magistrate left the 
post assigned to him by God, and became a tool of 
the Jewish hierarchy. And, alas! for how many 
centuries have secular governments been the tool in 
the hands of the Romish hierarchy for the bloody 
persecutions of heretics ! To this very day scarcely 
any Roman Catholic government protects its citizens 
against the persecutions of the Church ; and would 
to God, the same could not be said even of some 
Protestant countries ! 

Verses 28-30. And they stripped him. As be- 
fore the ecclesiastical tribunal Christ's dignity as 
high-priest was mocked, so before the secular tri- 
bunal his dignity as King was made an object of 
cruel mockery. After they had stripped him of his 
own raiment, which, according to verse 31, they 
afterward put on him again, they arrayed him in a 
scarlet robe — a soldier's cloak, called sagvm — which 
was to represent the royal purple robe; for even 
kings and generals wore this sagum, only larger and 
made of finer texture. According to the term used 
by Matthew, the cloak or robe was a coccus-dyed, 
round pallium. Mark and John call it a purple 
robe ; this is easily accounted for, not only because 
purple and crimson — coccus-dyed — were often inter- 
changed on account of their great similarity, but 
also because the Evangelists had the purpose in 
view, for which it was put on him. — And when 
they had platted a crown of thorns. The exact 
species of the thorn used can not be determined. 
The object of the crowning seems to have been 
mockery, not the infliction of pain. The soldiers, 
most probably, took what first came to hand, to rep- 
resent the laurel-wreath, which victorious generals 
wore, as the reed was in place of the scepter. — Ram- 
bach makes the following pious reflections on the 
crown of thorns: " 1. While Christ declined worldly 
crowns, he accepted the crown of thorns. 2. This 
crown of thorns is more precious than all worldly 
crowns full of gold and pearls, being the sign of 
dying love, the sign of a king, who sheds his blood 
for his subjects, while temporal kings demand the 
blood of their subjects. 3. We ought to look upon 
this crown of thorns whenever we are tempted to in- 
dulge in sinful pleasures, or when the old Adam is 
about to raise his proud head. It is also to console 
us when the thorns of our sins, or grief, or envy 



39 



610 



MATTHEW XXVII, 31-50. 



■wound us ; and when in the hour of death cold 
sweat covers our face, may we then be refreshed by 
the blood which flowed from the head of Christ!" — 
And they bowed the knee before him. Having 
attired him as a king, they paid him mock homage — 
genuflexions and salutations, as they were custom- 



ary before crowned potentates : " Hail, king of the 
Jews." — And they spit upon him. While the 
Jews expressed by spitting their abhorrence and 
hatred against a supposed blasphemer, the heathen 
soldiers heaped this indignity upon him to express 
their contempt of the pretended king. 



§77. JESUS ON THE CROSS. 

"We arrange again, as in the preceding section, the accounts of the four Evangelists in 
their successive order, with a few general remarks on those portions of the Passion which 
are recorded by the other Evangelists, and which will be fully commented upon in the 
other Gospels. As soon as Pilate had pronounced the sentence of death upon Jesus, he 
was at once led out toward Golgotha; for the Jews desired greatly that the crucifixion 
might take place, if possible, before noon on account of the feast, so that his corpse could 
be disposed of before sundown. In their statement of the time of the crucifixion there is 
a discrepancy between John and Mark. Mark says: "And it was the third hour, and 
they crucified him;" but John : "It was the sixth hour" when Pilate pronounced the sen- 
tence of death. "Whoever is not blinded by prejudices will readily admit, that if the two 
statements involved necessarily a contradiction on a point so well and so universally 
known, the ancient Church would have tried to reconcile the discrepancy. Unless the 
apparent contradiction has arisen from a confounding of the Greek signs for three and 
six (j' and ?') by a transcriber, the solution proposed \>y Lange is the most natural one. 
Mark's "It was the third hour," can mean that it was past nine o'clock, that is — be- 
tween nine and twelve o'clock — when the crucifixion began; and this the more so as 
this Evangelist looks upon the scourging as the beginning of the execution. John, on 
the other hand, says it was about the sixth hour, that is, it was going toward midday, 
when the scourging was over and Pilate spoke the last word, after which Jesus was led 
at once toward Golgotha. John mentions the later hour indefinitely, probably because 
he wanted to express the idea that the Jews were anxious to bring the affair to an end, 
on account of the second, rather Sabbatical, half of the preparation-day which com- 
menced with midday. 

It was both a Eoman and Jewish custom to execute malefactors without the city. At 
the same time executions, to answer their full purpose, must take place in frequented 
places. Such a place was the locality where Christ was crucified, according to tradition, 
a somewhat elevated place lying south-west of the Temple Hill, at that time without the 
city walls, but subsequently built over and surrounded by Agrippa with a new wall as 
part of the city. Jesus bore his cross at first himself, as John expressly says. From the 
account of the Synoptists, that the attendants compelled Simon of Cyrene to bear the 
cross of Jesus, we must infer that our Lord had sunk under his burden, worn down and ex- 
hausted — not in spirit, but in body and soul — by all that had befallen him since the even- 
ing before, the agony in Gethsemane, the trial before the high-priest and before Pilate, 
the many insults, and finally the scourging, which alone has often proved fatal. Yet this 
state of exhaustion does not prevent the Son of man from addressing words of compassion 
and of needed exhortation to certain women that loudly lament and bewail his case. By 
these women "we have not to understand," as Stier remarks, "the women disciples from 
Galilee, but women from the city, who without properly perceiving his innocence and the 
guilt of his enemies, expressed their sympathy according to the stronger sensibility of the 
sex to such scenes of suffering." This touchingly-sublime scene is stated by Luke alone. 
Beholding, in spirit, the awful judgment that was to burst upon Jerusalem, he expressed 
special compassion toward the poor mothers whose awful sufferings Josephus has 



JESUS ON THE CROSS. 611 



recorded, for whom it would have been an alleviation had they been crushed by falling 
mountains. 

Whether it was owing to a special order of Pilate that two malefactors were led out 
at the same time with Jesus to be crucified with him, or whether this was an arrange- 
ment of the Jewish priesthood, in order to represent Jesus by crucifying him between 
two malefactors as the greatest of criminals, and thus heap the utmost ignominy upon 
him, can not be determined with certainty. Yet, as these multiplied executions greatly 
disturbed the progress of the feast, it is more probable that it was Pilate's object to mortify 
the Jews by crucifying their king between two malefactors. At all events, the prophecy 
of Isaiah concerning the servant of Jehovah, "that he was reckoned with the trans- 
gressors," was thereby literally fulfilled. 

Having arrived at Golgotha, they offered him a stupefying drink. But recognizing at 
once the nature of the beverage, he refused to drink. His holy soul shuddered infinitely 
more at the state of stupefaction that would have been produced by it, than at the effects 
of the anguish and pain that was prepared for him by his tormentors. On death by cru- 
cifixion, see note on verse 35. 

Having nailed him to the cross, his first word was, as Luke records: "Father, forgive 
them; for they know not what they do." "This first word from the cross discloses to us 
three things. First, the perfect love of the holy Son of man, maintained a<nd proved unto 
death ; for the cry, which went up to God, has for its presupposition that he, as man, retains 
nothing but forgiveness and love. His whole life was an expression of such love; his 
death sets upon it the last seal. So meekly and humbly does he die in the hands of his 
tormentors that it seems to him needless to speak of forgiveness on his own part. 
Secondly, it exhibits the ground of forgiveness for the sins of the world. This ground is, 
and must ever be, the intercession of the Son, who, in the appearance of like condemna- 
tion, can yet say 'Father.' While his blood is being poured out, the testimony, thus 
given beforehand, declares — for jou, for the forgiveness of sins. Thus we have here in 
the beginning of the proper sufferings of death a testimony concerning their cause, their 
design, and their fruit. To this end I suffer what they do ! But, Thirdly, how far does 
this atoning word extend, which then and now restrains deserved wrath against evil-do- 
ers? Who are the evil-doers for whom it was spoken and avails? Our Lord says, with 
designed indefiniteness, no more than 'them,' in order to make room for every one who 
will and who can include himself. It applies primarily to the executioners who crucify 
Mm, as the connection in Luke clearly teaches, but it includes, at the same time, all who 
are guilty by participation in what was done to him, in proportion as they in fact did not 
know what they did. This appealing intercession, with its gracious excuse, extends its 
arms over all sinners, and all sins in which error may be alleged and consequently re- 
pentance be hoped for. The sin of man, deceived by the serpent, may, as such, be called 
that of ignorance, and finds a sacrifice; hence the expression in Hebrews ix, 7. The sin 
of the devil knows well what its aim is and what it does. There is a sin unto death for 
which no prayer is to be offered; this was committed by Judas at least, probably by 
Caiaphas and others." (Condensed from Stier.) 

Having crucified him and parted his garments, the Roman soldiers sit down near the 
cross as a guard, in order to prevent that any one should take down the condemned pre- 
maturely or unlawfully; and the Jews, instead of being struck with horror at seeing 
the blood stream which they had invoked upon themselves and their children, glut their 
hatred by the sight, pitilessly reviling and mocking him. They wanted to put it now 
beyond all doubt, in spite of the superscription, that they had nothing to do with the one 
hanging on the cross. Even a dying murderer is seldom insulted, but the Just One must 
drink this cup also. Again we hear the people reiterate the old charge of their priests 
and scribes, that he had said he would destroy the Temple and build it up again in three 
days, that he was moreover a blasphemer, having made himself the Son of God. But the 



612 MATTHEW XXVII, 31-50. 



most fiendish malignity is manifested by the chief-priests and rulers, when they said, 
"He saved others; himself he can not save," with a tone, as Stier remarks, as if throw- 
ing doubt upon all his miracles; this, at least, was the design, but in the confusion of 
their tongues it runs as an enforced acknowledgment of his unselfish charity to man. 
The second word with which they mock him, is a bitter critique on the superscription: 
"If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe 
him." In these words the Jews gave, once more, vent to their sore disappointment and 
deep-seated hatred of Jesus because he refused to be a Messiah accoi'ding to their carnal 
conceptions. Their third blasphemy is directed not only against Christ, but even against 
God. "He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him; for he said, I 
am the Son of God." They must acknowledge that Jesus trusted in God; regarding that 
trust in God as put to confusion, they really blaspheme God himself in Christ. 

As the passing Jews, and even their rulers, indulged in such acts of inhuman malig- 
nity toward their suffering and bleeding countryman, the heathen soldiers commenced 
also to mock him. (Luke xxiii, 36.) They went to him, offered him their sour wine, 
(vinegar,) and said, tauntingly, "Save thyself, if thou be the king of the Jews." As 
Luke mentions, at this stage, the superscription on the cross, it would almost seem as if 
they were repeating it to insult not only Jesus but the Jews. While these streams of 
inhuman taunts were pouring upon the devoted head of the sufferer, the two malefactors 
also commenced to revile him, according to the accounts of Matthew and Mark, (divetSt- 
£ov.) But Luke expressly records that only one blasphemed, (ifiXarranj/iei.) The difference 
of meaning in these two Greek verbs leads us, as Lange thinks, to a solution of the dis- 
crepancy. But it seems more natural to leave the discrepancy as it is, and to hold fast 
Luke's express statement, than to assume that the penitent malefactor joined at first in 
reviling Christ in any sense. This will be considered in Luke. In order, however, to 
draw a full picture of what transpired on Golgotha, it is necessary to make here a few 
general remarks on the penitent malefactor, and the promise given unto him by the Sav- 
ior — the second word spoken by Christ on the cross. While the Lamb of God is offering 
himself as a sacrifice for the whole human race, that race — as represented by those who 
stand around the cross — look upon him either with dumb amazement and despairing 
grief, or with hearts full of hellish hatred. "It is a consoling thought, that among them 
one is found who, at the very time Christ is shedding his atoning blood, is imploring him 
for pardoning mercy. While his own disciples are dumb, and the whole world, by word 
and deed, is heaping shame and reproach upon Christ, this man is the only one that pro- 
tests against the conduct of the whole world, and defends his spotless innocence. And 
the royal majesty with which Jesus accepted his faith in his future glory, with which he 
made the notorious malefactor — that had been forced upon him as the outward companion 
of his present sufferings — a partaker of his approaching glory, without any stipulation 
or condition, was the first manifestation of that boundless glory of grace that has begun 
to reign with his death on the cross. Since Christ has pardoned upon Golgotha the 
dying criminal, while he, the faithful High-Priest, was himself hanging as a condemned 
criminal on the accursed tree, with his hands and feet pierced, heroic faith sees even 
Golgotha changed into the antechamber of the throne of Eternal Grace, into the sanc- 
tuary of atonement, and boldly dares to preach the Gospel to the worst of sinners in 
the hour of death, in prison, and under the gallows— while, to warn us against all abuse 
of this abounding grace, the other malefactor, with death in his bones, blasphemes and, 
at the side of the Savior, rushes to hell, because there is in him no fear of the judgment 
of God." (Lange.) 

His third word Jesus addresses to his mother and the beloved disciple who stood by 
her. (John xix, 25-27.) His friends had, at first, followed him only from a distance. 
(Luke xxiii, 49.) They were so completely paralyzed by the awful catastrophe, that 
their hearts, as it were, ceased to beat, and speech forsook them. By and by, however, 



JESUS ON THE CROSS. 613 



they venture nearer the cross. John mentions four; namely, the mother of Jesus, her 
sister, [Salome, see introductory remarks to § 28,] Mary, the wife of Cleophas, and 
Mary Magdalene. Jesus saw his mother and, standing hy her, the disciple whom he 
loved. Her — from whom he derived his earthly existence, who must have felt hereft, 
lonely, and forsaken, in a degree no other mother ever realized — he refers to the disciple 
of his special love, and the beloved disciple to his mother. "But why does he not," says 
Stier, "now call her mother? It has been said, to spare her; that this word might not 
still further excite her grief. It has also been said, in order not to publish the fact of 
her being his mother, and thus expose her to hostile observation and treatment. There 
may be something true in both these suppositions; but the chief reason is this, that her 
relation of mother is now finally abolished and given back; her person retreats; she is 
for the last time regarded as mother, in order to be so no longer. This is involved in the 
words which follow : 'Behold thy son !' (I am thy son no longer.) What a plain and irref- 
utable testimon} 7 against the office which the Church of Rome assigns to Mary!" Stier 
thinks, with Bengel, that John led Mary away immediately after the word of Jesus, and 
that he returned again to the cross alone. (John xix, 27, 35.) 

From the sixth to the ninth hour — that is, from noon till three, P. M. — a miraculous 
darkness spread over the whole land; and, just before it disappeared, Christ cried with a 
loud voice, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" On this fourth word, and the 
corresponding darkness out of which it was spoken, see the exegesis of verses 45, 46. 

While this word was strangely misunderstood, or blasphemously perverted by some 
of those that stood under the cross, they heard another exclamation, the fifth word of 
Jesus on the cross, "J thirst." John says, "After this, Jesus, knowing that all things 
were now accomplished, that the Scriptures might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst," (xix, 28.) 
We learn from these words of the Evangelist that Jesus had, with his "My God, my 
God," finished his redeeming work on the cross. He, therefore, did not hesitate to express 
a natural want. It would have been easy for him to overcome this thirst; but instead of 
closing his life in proud independence and Stoic indifference, unbecoming the archetype 
of humanity, Ave hear him, free from all self-sufficiency, resentment, or mistrust, express 
his last temporal want to the world — for whose redemption he had struggled unto death — 
hoping that he would be gratified in this, his last modest wish. Yet there was connected 
with this avowal of a physical need a spiritual meaning, which the Church never failed to 
attach to the fifth word of the Savior from the cross. He thirsted, not so much for a 
refreshing drink, as "for the refreshment of human love, for a final human greeting, for 
a human blessing," as Lange remarks; and Stier adds, "for the requital of his infinite 
love, for the souls of men." 

Having received the last meager favor from man, he spoke the sixth word on the 
cross — the great farewell to mankind, which John has preserved to the Church — "It is fin- 
ished." "To whom," says Stier, "does he speak this word? The first utterance on the 
cross was spoken to God, but for men; the second to a man, to comfort him with the sal- 
vation of God; the third to mortals, who in the love of God and his love are commended 
to each other. The fourth is the first which he speaks for himself alone with his God; 
and yet most impressively for us all. In the fifth, though still almost alone with his own 
need, he yet indirectly turned to men, and the sixth he speaks for himself, for the world, 
and for the Father. He proclaims it for himself, in contrast with the cry of agony, as a 
cry of victory and joy, yet in the sublimest repose which has scarcely emerged from the 
conflict. He proclaims his victory at the same time to the world, declaring to his breth- 
ren the great salvation he had wrought out for the great congregation. (Ps. xxii, 22.) 
Finally, he speaks this word out of the depth of his praying, thankful heart to the Father, 
as the ground and reason of what follows, 'Into thine hands I commend [now, because all 
is fulfilled] my spirit!' All is fulfilled, O Father, Avhich thou didst appoint, and which 
thou seest now accomplished." 



G14 



MATTHEW XXVII, 31-50. 



Having finished his work, and having himself declared this, nothing more was left for 
him than to close his life. As it had been his will to enter into the human form of exist- 
ence in the womb of his virgin mother by the operation of the Holy Ghost, so it is also 
the free and independent act of his will to bring his earthly life to a close. With a loud 
voice he utters his seventh and last word on the cross: "Father, into thy hands I com- 
mend my spirit." When he spoke these words, there was no more anguish or weakness; 
when he gave up his spirit, he had already overcome all bitterness of death. 

Verses 31— SO. (Compare Mark xv, 20-37; Luke xxiii, 26-46; John xix, 17-30.) 

(31) And after that they had mocked him, they took the robe off from him, 
and put his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him. (32) And as 
they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name : him they compelled 
to bear his cross. (33) And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, 
that is to say, a place of a skull, (34) they gave him vinegar to drink mingled with 
gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink. (35) And they crucified 
him, and parted his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was 
spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vest- 
ure did they cast lots. (36) And sitting down they watched him there; (37) and set 
up over his head his accusation written, THIS IS JESUS THE KING OP THE 
JEWS. (38) Then were there two thieves crucified with him ; one on the right 
hand, and another on the left. (39) And they that passed by reviled him, wagging 
their heads, (40) and saying, Thou that destroyest the Temple, and buildest it in 
three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross. 

(41) Likewise also the chief-priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said, 

(42) He saved others ; himself he can not save. If he be the King of Israel, let 
him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. (43) He trusted in 
God ; let him deliver him now, if he will have him : for he said, I am the Son of 
God. (44) The thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his 
teeth. (45) Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto 
the ninth hour. (46) And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, 
saying, Eli, Eli-, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast 
thou forsaken me ? (47) Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, 
said, This man calleth for Elias. (48) And straightway one of them ran, and 
took a sponge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to 
drink. (49) The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him. 
(50) Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. 



Verse 32. They found a man, etc. Cyrene was 
a city on the northern coast of Africa, where many 
Jews resided. Mark calls Simon the father of Alex- 
ander and Rufus, two men who must have been well 
known to the Christians of his day, probably as 
believers. He may have come to the feast to Jeru- 
salem, (Acts ii, 10;) but it is more probable that he 
had been residing there for some time; for Mark and 
Luke say he was coming out of the country, literally 
from a field, which seems to imply that he had 
been laboring there, and was returning before the 



hour when the servile work on that day was to cease. 
We are not told why he was selected from the crowd, 
but it is not probable that he would have been the 
subject of military impressment if he had not been 
a poor, laboring man. Rambach thinks that he 
showed some compassion, and was, therefore, com- 
pelled to bear the Savior's cross. From Mark's 
naming his sons, we may infer that this Simon 
became subsequently a follower of Jesus. 

Verse 33. Golgotha — in Chaldee, Gulgoltha; in 
Hebrew, Gulgoleth, a skull. According to Jerome 



JESUS ON THE CROSS. 



615 



and others, this name designates a common place 
of execution, full of skulls. But its name should 
then be the place of skulls, upaviuv t6tto<; not the 
place of a skull, as Mark has it, or simply Kpdvtov — 
a skull — as Luke has it. "Besides, it is doubtful," 
as Andrews remarks, " that the Jews had any one 
place set apart as a place of execution; and, if so, 
would a rich man like Joseph have had a garden 
there?" It is, therefore, more probable that the 
place received its name from its shape; that it was 
a rounded, low, bare hill. It would lead us too far, 
and has too little practical interest, to state all the 
arguments for and against the position that the spot 
preserved to this day has been correctly pointed 
out by tradition. The most complete summary of 
views on this subject is given in Andrews's Life of our 
Lord. 

Verse 34. They gave him vinegar to drink, 
mingled with gall. The custom prevailed among 
the ancients to give criminals that were led to execu- 
tion a drink that intoxicated and stupefied, (Mark 
xv, 23.) The Rabbins justified it as an act of 
humanity, and upon the ground of Prov. xxxi, 6. 
For this purpose wine of an inferior quality, mixed 
with narcotic herbs, was used. This wine was called 
5fof, sharpwine, vinegar, (Matthew,) also olvog, wine, 
(Mark.) It was mixed, according to Mark, with 
"myrrh;" according to Matthew, with "gall," by 
which we have not to understand the secretion from 
the liver, but bitter and stupefying herbs, such as 
wormwood, poppy, myrrh, and the like. The word 
used by Matthew is the one used by the LXX in 
Ps. lxix, 22. Jesus refused this beverage, because 
it would have prevented him, more or less, from 
suffering and dying with his consciousness clear and 
unobscured. Afterward, when he thirsted, and his 
work was accomplished, he drank of the pure ofoc, 
vinegar, that was offered to him. 

Verse 35. And they crucified him. This capi- 
tal punishment was in use among various ancient 
nations. It does not appear that it was practiced 
by the Jews; for the hanging a man on a tree, 
(Deut. xxi, 22, 23,) took place after he had already 
been put to death. The Mosaic capital punishments 
were by the sword, (Ex. xxi,) strangling and fire, 
(Lev. xx,) and stoning, (Deut. xxi.) It was judged 
by the Romans to be the most ignominious, as well as 
the most painful mode of execution, to which only 
slaves and the vilest criminals were condemned ; 
and to a Jew it was of additional horror, on 
account of the curse pronounced upon one that 
hangeth on a tree. Arrived at the place of execu- 
tion, the sufferer was stripped naked, his clothes 
being the perquisite of the soldiers; yet we have no 
reason to reject the ancient belief, that a linen cloth 
was bound round the sacred loins of the Savior, as 
the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, (chap, x,) 
mentions this cursorily in its narrative of the cruci- 
fixion. The cross consisted of two pieces of wood, 
variously joined together, either in the shape of 



X, or of T , or of -f-. The latter was the Latin cross, 
on which our Lord suffered, as early painters have 
represented it. The upright post or beam was 
driven into the ground, so that the feet of the con- 
demned were a foot or two above the earth; and he 
was lifted upon it, or else stretched upon it on the 
ground, and then lifted with it. Midway on the post 
was a projecting board, on which the body of the 
sufferer rested, to prevent the weight of the body 
from tearing away the hands. For the same pur- 
pose the arms also were generally tied with cords. 
It has been questioned whether four nails, one for 
each hand, and one for each foot, or three, allowing 
one nail for both feet, were used; the fo'-mer is more 
probable. It is also doubtful whether there was a 
support for the feet by a projecting board. Before 
the nailing or binding took place, a medicated cup 
was given, to deaden the pain. Dr. Chr. Gottlieb 
Richter, a German physician, describes the physical 
suffering endured by crucifixion thus: "1. The posi- 
tion of the body being immovable and unnatural, 
the arms being violently extended backward, the 
least motion caused the most painful sensation all 
over the body, but especially on the lacerated back 
and the pierced members. 2. The nails, being driven 
through the hands and feet, at those places where 
many nerves and tendons meet, which were, accord- 
ingly, either wounded or violently pressed, caused 
constantly-increasing pain. 3. Inflammation set in 
at the pierced hands and feet, and, in fact, every- 
where, where the circulation of the blood was ob- 
structed by the violent tension of the body. The 
pain, caused thereby, and the insufferable thirst 
increased every moment. 4. The blood, which found 
no place in the wounded and distended extremities, 
rushed to the head, extended the arteries unnatu- 
rally, and thus caused the most violent headache. 
5. In consequence of the general obstruction of 
circulation, the blood in the lungs accumulated, 
pressing the heart more and more, swelling all 
the veins, and thus causing nameless anguish. 
Loss of blood, through the open wounds, would 
have shortened the pain, but the blood clotted, and 
ceased flowing. Death generally set in slowly, the 
muscles, veins, and nerves gradually growing stiff; 
this process commencing with the extremities, and 
extending thence to the inner, nobler parts of the 
system. Notwithstanding the loss of blood by the 
scourge and on the cross, the victim hung often 
twelve hours, yea, sometimes till the following even- 
ing, between life and death, in fever and inexpress- 
ible anguish and pain, before fully expiring." Obvi- 
ous reasons can be assigned why the Redeemer of a 
lost world should die by crucifixion. It was not 
only the most painful, the most ignominious, and 
the most public death, but also best adapted to reveal 
the ethical glory of the God-man ; his hanging 
between heaven and earth was emblematical of his 
being the Mediator between God and men, and cor- 
responded to various types of the Old Testament — 



616 



MATTHEW XXVII, 31-50. 



the transfixing of the paschal lamb, and the elevation 
of the brazen serpent. Finally, it is said, that, as the 
serpent on a tree had overcome the first man, so he 
was to be conquered on a tree by the Second Adam. 
— And parted his garments. This was a fulfill- 
ment of Psalm xxii, 18. (Compare what is said 
on this Psalm in the note on v. 46.) — And upon 
my vesture did they cast lots, because it was 
the seamless coat worn by priests. (See more on 
this subject in John xix, 23.) 

Verse 37. And set up over his head his accu- 
sation, etc. This was done after his garments had 
been parted. The white tablet on which the charge 
or the sentence was written was called titulus. It 
was hung around the neck of the criminal on his 
way to the place of execution, or carried before him. 
In their hurry and excitement the Jews seem not 
to have noticed it, till it was affixed to the cross. 
John mentions particularly, that this superscription 
was written in the three principal languages of the 
civilized world at that time; namely, in Latin, the 
language of the ruling nation in those days ; in 
Greek, the language of the Hellenistic Jews, that 
had come to Jerusalem on the feast; and in Aramaic, 
the language still spoken in Palestine. The object 
of Pilate was, undoubtedly, to insult the Jews, and 
revenge himself for their threatenings at the trial. 
It was an official publication to the whole world of a 
great political fact; namely, of the rejection of their 
king by the Jews, and of the solemn, public declara- 
tion by priests and people that they had no other 
king but Cassar. Thus the true dignity of Christ 
was acknowledged in his very ignominy, and the 
Jionor of their rejected Messiah became their na- 
tional disgrace. 

Verse 38. Then were there two thieves cruci- 
fied with him. After the Lord had been nailed 
to the cross, the two malefactors were crucified 
by another set of soldiers, since those that crucified 
the Lord sat down and watched him. They were, 
in all probability, not robbers, in the common accept- 
ation of the word, but political criminals, fanatical 
rebels against the authority of the Romans, similar 
to those that brought on the Jewish war a few dec- 
ades later. (See more about them in Luke.) 

Verse 39. And they that passed by, etc. Lange 
calls attention to the fact, that it was a feast-day, on 
which the inhabitants of Jerusalem walked beyond 
the city gates. 

Verses 40-43. See introductory remarks. When 
they reiterated the charge concerning the Temple, it 
did not enter their minds that he would in three days 
again raise the temple of his body which they were 
destroying. In like blindness they reviled him with 
the words of the enemies of the Messiah, from Psalm 
xxii, 9, that were obscurely present before their 
minds, and thus fulfilled the prophecy to the letter. 
They know not what they say; they know not that 
he had ascended the cross, in order to save others. 
But that even the high-priests and scribes mock his 



admitted " trust in God," as now put to confusion, 
betrays the inmost wickedness of their hearts, for 
thus they really blaspheme God himself in Christ, 

Verse 44. The thieves also, etc. On the dif- 
ference between Matthew and Luke, see the intro- 
ductory remarks and Luke xxiii, 39. 

Verse 45. Now there was darkness, etc. 
" Could all these scenes of agony and woe," says 
Ellicott, " thus fearfully succeed each other, and 
nature remain impassive and unmoved? Was 
there no outward sign, no visible token that earth 
and heaven were sympathizing in the agonies of 
Him by whose hands they had been made and 
fashioned ? No, verily, it could not be. If one 
Evangelist, as we have already observed, tells us 
that on the night of the Lord's birth a heavenly 
brightness and glory shone forth amid the gloom, 
three inspired witnesses now tell us that a pall of 
darkness was spread over the whole land from the 
sixth to the ninth hour. But while they thus spe- 
cially notice the interval, it may be observed that 
they maintain the most solemn reserve as to the in- 
cidents by which it was marked." Even so, and for 
that reason we can not say any thing concerning 
the impression this miraculous phenomenon made 
upon the enemies of Christ, and how it was inter- 
preted by them, nor whether the darkness came in- 
stantaneously, as Stier thinks, or by slow degrees. 
But it is worthy of note, that with special reference 
to Amos viii, 9, even the Jewish Rabbins had de- 
clared, " that in the days of the Messiah the sun 
would be darkened at noonday." The silence of 
Josephus about this darkness can easily be ac- 
counted for; as a Jew he was, certainly, not well 
disposed to relate a phenomenon so favorable to the 
cause of Christianity ; he may easily have brought 
himself to believe that it had been a mere dark 
cloud or a dense fog, magnified into a miracle by 
the followers of Christ. A natural eclipse of the 
sun it can not have been, because the Passover was 
kept at the time of the full moon. It was, evidently, 
a miracle in the proper sense of the word ; as the 
language of God, it admits of more than one mean- 
ing. We may see in it a fit symbol of the judicial 
blindness that had commenced to befall Israel. 
God withdrew now from the Jewish nation the light 
of his grace, and was about to give them over to 
blindness and hardness of heart. Or it may have 
been designed, as Stier says, " to exhibit the amaze- 
ment of nature, and of the God of nature, at the 
wickedness of the crucifixion : the sun will no 
longer shine upon the scene. It may be put as in 
the apocryphal account of Dionysius Areopagita, 
who said in Egypt concerning this darkness, Either 
the Divinity himself is suffering, or sympathizes 
with one who suffers ! Or, as Draeseke expresses 
himself: ' Men strip themselves of all feeling, and 
sympathy passes into inanimate nature, when the 
Son of God dies.' We may say, further, that when 
created nature — the inanimate image of a hidden, 



JESUS ON THE CROSS. 



617 



spiritual world — hides itself in mourning, there is, as 
it were, a vail of sorrow thrown over the scene which 
now first, from this hour of noon, was going on to 
its full consummation ; the silent sign cries aloud 
that here is exhibited a dark mystery of the Divine 
counsel. Hitherto they have seen the Crucified — 
some with malicious joy, some with profound grief, 
all with astonishment; none with indifference; but 
now none shall see what remains for him to suffer, 
what no mind can conceive. All these thoughts 
have their truth; but they lead us finally to the only 
real and true signification of the supernatural dark- 
ness. It is the sympathizing symbol and image, 
silent but speaking, concealing and yet revealing, of 
the internal darkening of the soul which the Lord 
of nature now undergoes." — Over all the land, 
(itrl Traaav tt/v y/lv-) that is, over the whole earth. Ac- 
cording to the Hebrew idiom the word " earth" 
ofteu means only the land of Judea. If it is to be 
understood literally, it must, at least, be confined to 
the eastern hemisphere of the earth, on which the 
sun was then shining. In deciding the question 
whether the phrase "whole earth" is to be under- 
stood literally, we ought to have testimonies of pro- 
fane writers, and these testimonies must make it 
clear that the eclipse, which they record, took place 
at the same time at which the darkness recorded by 
the Evangelists occurred. As this darkness oc- 
curred during the full moon, when no ordinary 
eclipse can take place, we have a right to expect that, 
if noticed by other writers, it would be described as 
an extraordinary one, occurring during a full moon. 
Now the Church Fathers of the first centuries appeal 
to several testimonies of profane writers. Phlegon, 
a freedman of Hadrian, mentions, according to 
Eusebius, a great eclipse of the sun, that occurred in 
the fourth year of the twenty-second Olympiad, and 
that at the same time a great earthquake in Bithynia 
destroyed a large part of Nice. Eusebius refers also 
to a story told by Plutarch, as well authenticated ; 
it runs thus : " Epithersis was sailing to Italy on 
board a ship laden with many passengers and mer- 
chandise. On a certain evening the ship came near 
the island of Paxae. Most of the passengers were 
still awake. Then of a sudden a voice was heard 
coming from the island, which called the pilot 
Thamus, an Egyptian, distinctly by name. To the 
first two calls he made no reply; to the third he re- 
plied. Then the voice said much louder : ' When 
thou comest to the paludes, state that the great Pan 
has died.' Epithersis said that all were frightened 
by this strange voice. They were at a loss what to 
do, whether they should comply with the injunction 
or not. At length Thamus resolved to go on, if 
there should be a favorable wind; but to deliver the 
message, if there should be a calm. Now there was 
a calm at the paludes ; wherefore Thamus delivered 
the message from the prow of his ship, and scarcely 
had he spoken the words, when a great noise of 
lamentations and wailings followed. The affair be- 



came known also at Rome. The emperor, Tiberius, 
sent for Thamus and had it investigated, who this 
great Pan was." Tertullian appeals to the public 
records of the city of Rome, to prove that such a 
darkening of the sun took place ; and Suidas assures 
us that Dionysius, the Areopagite, then a heathen, 
saw the eclipse in Egypt, and exclaimed : " Either 
God himself is suffering, or sympathizes with one 
who suffers." In modern times the Chinese annals 
have also been appealed to. But if the Gospel rec- 
ords are at all authentic, an event like this which 
the Evangelists have recorded before so many of 
their cotemporaries, who could well remember the 
event, or could prove the falsehood of the statement, 
had this been the case, need I no such vouchers 
for its credibility; and these testimonies, if impar- 
tially examined, are by no means reliable. For, 1. 
They are to be found only in the writings of the 
Fathers of the Church. The writings to which they 
appeal are no longer extant, and the quotations can, 
consequently, not be verified. It is well known, 
how very uncritically these otherwise highly-deserv- 
ing men went to work, when they heard any thing 
that they might oppose to heathenism. We know, 
also, how ill they were qualified to judge about as- 
tronomical phenomena. But, 2. Even supposing 
that the testimonies in question are authentic, they 
do not prove any thing about the eclipse in question. 
For they speak, indeed, of an eclipse so great, " that 
the stars became visible at noonday" — which was 
also the case in Europe in 1706 — but they do not 
say that the eclipse in question happened at the 
time of the full moon, which they would certainly 
have mentioned as the most extraordinary about 
the whole. 3. The account of Phlegon does not 
agree with the most probable year of our Lord's 
death, which is also the case with the passage 
quoted from the Chinese annals, and the other testi- 
monies do not state the time when the reported 
eclipse took place. We, therefore, prefer to believe 
that the darkness extended only over the land of 
Judea, in which case the account of the Evangel- 
ists needs no confirmation by profane writers. This 
supposition, moreover, appears to us to be more 
in harmony with Divine wisdom, which uniformly 
makes use of the simplest means for the accomplish- 
ment of its purposes. This sign from heaven could 
have significance only for the Jewish people. Is it 
not then, more probable, that God, to accomplish 
this purpose, should create a body in the firma- 
ment standing lovv enough to withhold the light of 
the sun from the horizon of Palestine, than that he 
should change the course and order of the whole 
universe, remove the moon to another point of its 
orbit, and make all the planets stand still for three 
hours, without letting the other inhabitants of the 
globe know why he suspended the motion of the 
heavenly bodies against his established order? 
Verse 46. And about the ninth hour Jesus 

CRIED WITH A LOUD VOICE, SAYING, My GoD, MY 



618 



MATTHEW XXVII, 31-50. 



God, why hast thou forsaken me? This is the 
only word of Christ on the cross recorded by Mat- 
thew and Luke. It was spoken in Aramaic, which 
accounts for the misunderstanding of some of the 
bystanders mentioned in verse 47. Our Lord ex- 
presses his feelings in the first words of the twenty- 
second Psalm. There is an unfathomable depth in 
this mysterious utterance of the Savior. It was an 
ejaculation wrung from him by the intensest suffer- 
ings of the moment. It was the cry of dissolving 
nature. It is said of Luther, when he pondered on 
this enigmatical utterance, that he continued for a 
long time without food, sat wide-awake in his chair, 
and as motionless as a corpse ; and when at last he 
rose from the depths of his cogitations, as from the 
shaft of a mysterious mine, he broke into the ex- 
clamation, " God forsaken of God, who can under- 
stand it?" And yet there has been shed a great 
light upon it from the stand-point from which the 
German evangelical theologians of our day view the 
union of the Divine and the human in the person of 
the God-man, as the reader will see from their com- 
ments. Let us commence with Stier. He considers 
it necessary for a proper understanding, first of all 
to examine the twenty-second Psalm. Admitting 
that this Psalm does not belong to the so-called, 
directly Messianic Psalms — in which, as in Psalm 
ex, according to the decision of Jesus and his apos- 
tles, the prophet consciously speaks of, or intro- 
duces as speaking, the future Messiah as a subject 
distinguished from himself— but to the typical 
Psalms — in which David, proceeding from his own 
personal experience, is led by the Holy Spirit, whose 
language was on his lips, further onward to a de- 
lineation that, on the whole, as also in many par- 
ticulars, found its complete fulfillment only in 
Christ — he says: " Our Lord took the beginning of 
the Psalm as his cry of lamentation. Verse 8 was 
most literally fulfilled in the mouths of the mockers; 
so was verse 18. The whole delineation from verse 
12-18 is so wonderfully reproduced in the scene of 
Golgotha, that it seems as if we were reading a 
history of it written beforehand. Verse 22 is not 
only realized in its striking expression, Brethren, in 
John xx, 17, but it is quoted by apostolical authority 
in Heb. ii, 11, 12, as a direct prediction. These are 
the salient points which are illustrated and ex- 
plained in the New Testament, but the whole as 
such, apart from individual quotations, leads us 
directly to the Messiah. A Holy One of God is de- 
scribed in conflict and victory, in the deepest an- 
guish and ignominy first, then in the highest honor. 
In David's life there are many things similar, on 
which the Holy Spirit might base the prophecy; but 
we seek in vain for any single situation in his life 
which would entirely correspond. For we see a 
righteous man who, in verse 1, as in verses 10, 11, 
can, without any trace of personal sin or guilt, ap- 
peal to God as his God from his birth; who, never- 
theless, forsaken by this God as to his feeling and 



experience, is and remains miserable, finding less 
acceptance for his prayer than any other mortal 
praying in faith, (vs. 3-5 ;) a reproach of men, and 
despised of the people, not only threatened by rag- 
ing enemies, but internally broken and poured out 
like water, brought by the dark counsel of God into 
the dust of death— that is, abandoned to certain 
death — beholding himself already as dying, and his 
enemies already dividing his garments. Where and 
when did all this befall David ? As to him it was 
hyperbole, to which the Spirit impelled him, because 
it became the simplest truth on Calvary. And so, 
also, in the second part, where the victory is as 
glorious as the conflict was gloomy and dark. The 
anguish of death is followed — and it is the answer 
to the why — by a declaration and glorifying of the 
name of God, a salvation for all the miserable, far 
and wide, to the ends of the world, and among all 
the kindreds of the nations, by means of which the 
hearts of the comforted live forever, others lying in 
the dust of death are lifted up, and the people that 
shall be born are made partakers of his righteous- 
ness—and all this through the full accomplishment of 
salvation by this One Sufferer, who has ' done this!' 
What deliverance of David ever had, or ever could 
have, such results? Are we not involuntarily com- 
pelled to think of Isaiah liii ? Could David have 
conceived and uttered all this without an elevation 
beyond himself, even while lesser analogies in his 
own history might make him susceptible, and pre- 
pare him for such contemplations ? Thus all, as it 
is here predicted, has indeed its root in the experi- 
ence of Old Testament saints, especially David, who 
was also an anointed one of God, passing through 
shame and suffering ; nevertheless, it has its full and 
perfect truth only in Christ. So especially and most 
properly with regard to the cry of anguish in the be- 
ginning, which Christ makes his own, and thereby 
teaches us that he fully discerned himself in this 
Psalm. ' Not to strengthen himself,' as some ex- 
positors strangely represent it, ' did Christ com- 
mence to recite this Psalm, as we use hymns and 
Scripture in our sorrows, without being able in his 
exhaustion to go beyond the commencement of it!' 
The Lord thinks indeed of that Psalm which he had 
often contemplated before as a prophecy of himself; 
but the Spirit brings to his thought the word with 
which it commences at the crisis to which that word 
belonged. It presents to him at the proper moment 
the expression at once of dismay and trust, as both 
were struggling together in him ; and he seizes it as 
a rod and staff, for to such an end was it written for 
him. At the same time, we must bear in mind, that 
the Lord could not thus mourn over abandonment 
of God, out of feeling originally his own, as using a 
word, self-originated in his own consciousness ; it is 
rather a word strange to him personally — a word 
which grew out of the sufferings he undertook for 
humanity — a word of prophecy prepared for him as a 
witness that he now, as the Son of man, the afflicted 



JESUS ON THE CROSS. 



619 



Righteous One in the midst of the unrighteous, 
suffers and laments. But though the Son of God in 
the flesh does not now first form for himself this cry 
of profoundest anguish as his own personal word, 
he did nevertheless perfectly appropriate the word 
of the Psalm; rather, it has such a truth in his 
heart and upon his lips as it never had before 
and never will have again ; it perfectly expressed 
his meaning and his condition. Had it not been 
so, there would have been no prophecy fulfilled; 
yea, then he would not have said it. He utters 
it openly; for Divine Wisdom ordered it that all 
the world should know what was passing in the 
depth of his soul, and that not otherwise than as 
it was foretold. The Psalm itself shows us that he 
who felt himself forsaken was by no means actually 
forsaken ; and this is proved by the very first word 
of the prayer, for he who can speak to God must 
have God with him. From this, therefore, we pro- 
ceed in our whole exposition. First of all, we hold 
fast that Christ, as the Son of God, could never be 
forsaken by his Father; and this is expressly testi- 
fied in John xvi, 32. Only those who forsake God 
are forsaken of him. He who laments in this ' for- 
saken me,' who feels himself thus forsaken, is the 
same Son of man who said in Gethsemane, 'Not as I 
will.' The conflict of Gethsemane is here hight- 
ened and completed. There it was the conflict of 
the human will, but still in the clear consciousness 
of the Spirit triumphing over the flesh ; here appears 
even a struggle of the human consciousness, an 
actual obscuration of the light of the Spirit in the 
laboring soul. But, as in Gethsemane the natural 
repugnance to death, truly human but sinless, was 
merged into a perfect obedience of the Divine will, 
so here his faith holds out and overcomes even when 
his human consciousness is partly obscured. Feel- 
ing himself forsaken of God, he nevertheless leaves 
not God, and thus becomes our Immanuel, God with 
us. For a moment Jesus felt, indeed, not the near- 
ness of his God, and therefore calls upon him in the 
deepest lamentation. ' This was, on the one hand,' 
as Ebrard expresses it, 'a voluntary giving up by 
the Son of the sense of his Father's love, for the pur- 
pose of making that love the never-failing fountain 
of salvation for man ; but, on the other hand, it was 
at. the same time the demonstration and perfect 
work of the same love which is willing, because it is 
necessary for man's salvation, to sink entirely into 
oneness with humanity, even unto death, the wages 
of sin.' In Gethsemane the cup of death was pre- 
sented to him; and the scent, as it were, of its first 
drops produced in him the recoil from the full drink- 
ing which he then tasted in spirit; here he is fully 
drinking it, he is now actually as God-man in his 
humanity experiencing death; he is seized by it, 
though he could not be holden of it. (Acts ii, 24.) 
There he spoke with composure and resignation to 
his Almighty Father; here he cries, as if sinking, 
for help to his God. The corporeal suffering which 



Psalm xxii, 14, 15, describes— the pouring out of all 
his strength, the drying up of the sap of life, the 
fever of wounds, thirst, possibly even recurring vari- 
ations of fainting, threatening to swallow up all con- 
sciousness — all this was only the material substra- 
tum of his passion in the unity and mutual interpen- 
etration of body and soul which was perfect in him ; 
but all this is suffered by his sacred soul, internally 
full of the energy of life, and conscious of experien- 
cing death for the sake of sin. This was now his 
real dying, not merely the pang of bodily dissolu- 
tion, but the feeling of the dying soul. Still less 
was it any thing like a declining to die — as if he at 
the close might have hoped that this would be re- 
moved, as he had prayed in Gethsemane — but death 
and sin, on account of which death comes, presented 
themselves to his consciousness and feeling as in- 
separable concomitants. What a feeling must this 
have been to this Holy One, in whom the conscious- 
ness of God and the consciousness of life were one, 
as is the case of no other ! In dying he feels him- 
self forsaken of God, as no child of God ever was, 
because he had lived in and with God as none else 
had ever lived." Before we proceed further with 
the comment of Stier, we will here insert what 
Baumgarten, whom we quoted on the agony of 
Christ in Gethsemane, says on the nature of the 
death which the incarnate Son of God suffered. It 
does not essentially differ from Stier's exposition, 
but it is expressed with more philosophical precision, 
and may serve to make this deep subject still clearer. 
He says : " Jesus declares it as a fact, that he is for- 
saken of God. This means: he realizes the process 
of dying, through which he is now passing, as that 
death that was originally threatened to man by God. 
The creation and preservation of human life is the 
basis of all communion of God with man; if, there- 
fore, life is taken away by God, man's communion 
with his God ceases, he is forsaken of God. But be- 
cause man in his present state of alienation from 
God, brought on by the fall, no longer recognizes 
his life as the condition of his communion with God, 
the abyss of death is covered, as it were, with a vail 
from his view. Jesus alone, who realizes every 
moment of his life as a moment of his undisturbed 
communion with God, realizes also the approach of 
death as an approaching rupture of this communion, 
as a being forsaken of God. Thus Jesus suffers the 
death that had been threatened to sinful man. He 
has become the representative of sinful man in the 
fullest sense of the word, and through his having 
partaken of our flesh and blood alone could fallen 
man be reunited with God. Because man had for- 
saken God by his sin, God has put a stop to his com- 
munion with man by death, and death has passed on 
all men, because all men have sinned. As our 
representative, Christ had to suffer death as the 
wages of sin, but he deprived death thereby of its 
sting and power. For he clings to God, while God 
forsakes him. He does not forsake God even for a 



620 



MATTHEW XXVII, 31-50. 



moment, but, by the power of the Eternal Spirit 
that is in him, (Heb. ix, 14,) he overcomes his sense 
of being forsaken of God. Here, at the close of the 
life of Jesus, shines the inmost mystery of this life 
as bright as at its beginning. As he enters into the 
earthly or finite form of existence by the power of 
the Spirit of God, or, what is the same, as he who is 
with God, and is God from all eternity, becomes 
man by his own self-determination, so it appears in 
his death that he is united with God by God's eternal 
Spirit, and by this Spirit overcomes his state of be- 
ing forsaken of God, as the only-begotten and eternal 
Son of God. Thereby the bond of union with God, 
that had been broken by man, has in reality been re- 
stored again by and for man. But why did Christ 
express his state of being forsaken of God, and his 
victory over this state, in the form of an unanswered 
question ? He did it to make us understand that 
he had to pass through the agony of death to give 
us life; and whoever wishes to have part in Christ's 
victory, must have a realizing sense of this, his 
death-struggle." Let us now return to Stier's ex- 
position : " A threefold oppression he had to en- 
dure — the wickedness of human nature/row without, 
its weakness in himself, and the assaults of Satan, 
the prince of death, who, we may suppose, spoke to 
him lyingly of wrath, showing to him all the kingdoms 
of hell and their horrors. He sees nothing around 
and before him but sufferings and sins (Ps. xl, 12) 
inseparably interwoven; for in his sympathy, as the 
head and center of humanity, he assuredly feels the 
sins of the world, as if they were his own. Finally, 
his own heart forsook him ; that is, God himself, who 
is the life of his heart, has withdrawn himself 
Thus he, who had just comforted the malefactor with 
the promise of paradise, now hangs comfortless. 
And now let it be carefully observed that Christ, 
at the end of the three anxious hours, first sends up 
to heaven, in its full and uttered strength, the cry 
of anguish which had been three hours restrained. 
Although it is the most oppressive moment of 
supreme abandonment which urges the cry, it is at 
the same time removed by that cry. What he suf- 
fered during the three hours of deepening oppres- 
sion must forever be to our understanding an im- 
penetrable mystery, because we have in us no 
Divine-human experience of sin and death in their 
connection. But this is certain, he suffered what he 
suffered ' not as a punishment of himself in his con- 
sciousness, not as a judgment upon his own heart.' 
The theology which goes so far as to assert this, has 
always most unwarrantably overlooked the My God, 
my God, which belongs to and precedes the for- 
saken me — that unmoved and immovable My God ! 
He trusted in God — this ceases not now, but reaches 
its perfection. For God was his God from his 
mother's womb, (Ps. xxii, 9, 10;) which Psalm- 
word, as it respects Christ, has its deepest meaning 
in his miraculous and sacred birth. Verily, he did 
not take his farewell of God when he died; but in 



death he fulfilled his course and kept the faith ! 
While he thus calls upon his God, he finds his God 
again. And it now becomes manifest that the ' for- 
saking ' had not been an objective, indeed not an 
altogether subjective, abandonment. It is true, he 
says with the Psalmist only God — not Father. 
Never elsewhere had Christ spoken thus of 'his 
God,' (comp. John viii, 54; xx, 1*7.) He says only 
God, for now the man in him speaketh — neverthe- 
less, My God, with a propriety and fullness of mean- 
ing which no other could arrogate before or after 
him ; for the Holy One of God speaketh, who ex- 
perienced this abandonment for the sake of sinners. 
Assuredly there is a profound reason here why he 
does not this time dare to utter the Father-name ; 
yet God is not before him in such fearful wrath as 
to take from his lips the ' My God.' Consequently, 
Christ does not speak in the person and in the place 
of condemned sinners in any such sense as the the- 
ology of satisfaction teaches. A sinner that is 
abandoned of God dare not and can not cry my 
God, nor does he ask why, for he knows well where- 
fore, and has no remaining prayer, because no God, 
The why, as it regards Christ, is grounded upon the 
my, and such a why Christ alone can ask. When 
in Gethsemane he was clearly conscious of the other 
will of his I; he says concerning it, 'Not as I 
will !' When he upon Calvary cries out the ques- 
tion, why, he also gives the answer. His cry rent 
the vail of the darkness of his anguish. At once it 
is light without and within ; and the returning light 
is the victorious sign of life out of death." (Greatly 
condensed from Stier.) We close the exposition of 
this passage with the following beautiful extract 
from Lange : " The asking 'why,' is the pious ques- 
tion addressed by the holy, suffering Son to his 
eternal Father. This question of Christ looks back 
to the guilt of mankind, that had to be expiated; it 
looks up to the Father's countenance, wherein stern 
justice is being transformed into pardoning mercy; 
it looks forward to the blessed results of this his 
suffering. Because mankind had forsaken God, it 
seemed as if God was about to forsake also its holy 
Head; but as he forsook neither God nor man, he 
had to realize in his own soul the terrors felt by man 
in being forsaken of God, in order to find in these 
very terrors God again with the full glory of his grace 
for the pardoned race. We must not weaken the 
force of this lamentation, but endeavor to realize its 
significance in its full strength and depth. And the 
more we succeed herein, the more we find the full 
solution of the apparent contradiction in connecting 
a state of being forsaken of God with that of near- 
ness to him, judgment with reconciliation, the hor- 
rors of death with the victory over death. If the 
question is raised, how his bodily pain on the cross 
could once more lead him into this deep distress, 
after he had conquered the world — in his spirit (John 
xiii, 32) and in his soul in Gethsemane — it must be 
borne in mind, that in Christ the Word was made 



JESUS ON THE CROSS. 



621 



flesh, and that for this very reason the eternal Word 
had to suffer also in the flesh. By his death on the 
cross he realized the death-pangs of mankind to such 
an extent as he could not do in his Spirit alone. 
Upon Golgotha he experienced death itself in the 
unity of his being, his spirit, soul, and body taking 
part in the work. This we learn from his confession 
that in experiencing death he feels forsaken of 
God, though inwardly assured that, at the same time, 
he remains in indissoluble union with him; that he 
acknowledges in this his forsaken state an inscruta- 
ble judgment of God, while at the same time cleav- 
ing in this judgment to God, as his God, in a manner 
possible to him alone. Jesus tasted death as only a 
holy and pure life can taste it. He felt in his death 
the death of mankind, and in this death of mankind 
the wages of sin. This sensation he received into 
his self-consciousness and sanctified it in the loud 
lament : ' My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken 
me ?' It was the struggle with death, and at the 
same time a victory over death— a transformation 
of death into life by taking away the sting of death, 
the completion of the work of redemption. Thus 
this word of Christ is his greatest deed. But with 
the deed of Christ corresponds the deed of God. 
That moment, in which he cries as the lion of Judah 
to his Heavenly Father against the terrors of death 
and cleaves to his Father's heart in the midst of the 
terrors of death and the judgment of the world, is 
the moment in which the Father draws him up to 
his heart as his well-tried and tested Son, as the 
faithful priest-king of humanity. The cry of Christ, 
'My God! my God!' expresses a presentiment that, 
at that very moment, God is stepping forth from his 
dark hiding-place, the sun of grace breaking through 
the clouds of judgment. And so it is. The answer 
of God to his well-beloved Son's question is ex- 
pressed by the assurance with which he says, ' It is 
finished.' " 

Verses 47-49. Some or them that stood there, 
etc. These words were not spoken by the Roman 
soldiers, who knew nothing about Elias, but by some 
of the Jewish spectators. Most commentators take 
this remark for a wanton, mocking perversion, not 
for a misunderstanding of the words of Christ. But 
Olshausen and Lange are of the opinion that the 
time of scoffing had now passed, and that the super- 
natural darkness and the piercing cry of Jesus had 
filled the minds of all with awe and horror. These 
ruthless scoffers might now apprehend that the cruci- 
fied Jesus was, after all, the Messiah, and tremble 
at the idea that Elias, the expected forerunner of the 
Messiah, the executor of the Divine judgments, 
might come and avenge their bloody deed. — And 
straightway one of them run, etc. From what 
John says, (xix, 28,) we may infer that immedi- 
ately after the "Eli, Eli," Jesus said S'l thirst," 
which seems to have been spoken in so low a tone 
that some of the bystanders did not hear it. But 
one of them, prompted by sympathy, ran and filled, 



from a vessel standing there, a sponge, with soldier's 
wine, put it on a stalk of the hyssop-plant, generally 
one foot and a half long, and offered it to the Lord. 
According to John, this was the work of several. 
According to Matthew, the others say to the man 
with the sponge: Let be, let us see whether Elias 
will come to save him. According to Mark, the 
man himself says: "Let alone; let us see whether 
Elias will come to take him down." We can under- 
stand these words in his mouth only by supposing 
that he spoke them after he had given him the drink. 
Lange sees in the different accounts a faithful picture 
of the intense bewilderment into which the soldiers 
and Jews had been thrown in consequence of Christ's 
cry of agony and the appalling darkness, and sup- 
poses that some of them tried to conceal their fears 
under the garb of mockery, "like men who, striving 
to rid themselves of fear, call out the names of the 
beings they dread, as if in mockery." Stier rejects 
Lange's view entirely, and says: "It may be so in 
ordinary cases; but this scene at Golgotha, alone in 
its kind, is raised far beyond all such analogies. If 
there had been horror here, it would have been too 
profound to admit of any mockery whatever. Dur- 
ing the darkness they might have felt amazement, 
and expected some marvelous Divine intervention ; 
but when nothing resulted but this cry, and the 
return of light, all their anxiety vanished, and the 
mockery remained. And just so do the first two 
Evangelists, in historical and psychological truth, 
exhibit its immediate influence. Some of the guard 
round the cross, and probably others- with them, 
began at first to steel themselves against pity — not 
fright — by mockingly saying, This poor, wretched 
Messiah, calls in vain for Elias ! But there is one 
who thinks that the refreshment which his lips crave 
should not be denied to him, and hastens — -probably 
with the help of another or more — to make prepara- 
tion to give it. The others then speak, as it were, 
mocking him, for doing what seemed to be a need- 
less thing — Let be; wait, let us see whether Elias 
will come and save him ! So St. Matthew; and with 
this is quite consistent the characteristically more 
exact account in St. Mark, according to which he 
who gave the drink also said, Yea, verily, wait and 
let us see whether Elias will come and take him 
down! While the others said, Thou needest not to 
give him any refreshment, he who gave the drink, 
without being interrupted, says : Let me, neverthe- 
less, support him, while we wait for Elias." 

Verse 50. Jesus, when he had cried again with 

A LOUD VOICE, YIELDED UP THE GHOST. The last 

words of the dying Savior have been preserved to us, 
not by John, but by Luke, (xxiii, 46.) The hypoth- 
esis of an apparent death, which the rationalists 
adopt, because they deny the resurrection of Christ, 
needs no refutation here. What is necessary on this 
point the reader will find in § 79, where the evidences 
of Christ's resurrection are discussed, and in John 
xix, 32-35. 



622 MATTHEW XXVII, 51-66. 



§78. THE SIGNS AND INCIDENTS FOLLOWING THE DEATH OF CHRIST — 

HIS BURIAL. 

In arranging and sketching the incidents recorded by the Evangelists in immediate 
connection with the death of Christ, we follow again Baumgarten and Lange in the main. 
The death of him who lived and died, as no other man ever lived and died, is attended 
with and followed by significant signs, which happen in heaven, on earth, and under 
the earth; in the three realms of grace, of nature, and of death. The darkness, which 
covered the land of Judea during the last hours of Jesus' life, had lasted to the ninth 
hour, when Jesus expired. With the death of Jesus the luminary of heaven receives its 
light again. This is the fit emblem of the new day, which was to succeed the night of 
darkness in which the world was shrouded, and which could not usher in before Christ 
had completed his redeeming work on the cross. In the same moment when Jesus com- 
mended his spirit with a loud voice into the hands of his Heavenly Father, the earth was 
shaken so that the rocks rent, and the vail of the Temple, which vailed the holy of holies, 
the place of the Divine presence, was rent in twain from the top to the bottom. Jesus 
has entered through the vail of his flesh, which he has offered through the power of the 
eternal Spirit, into the holy of holies (Heb. x, 20) as the High-Priest of Israel and of the 
Gentiles, and has opened thereby, once for all, free access to the throne of Divine grace 
in heaven for all that are purifying and sprinkling their hearts with his holy blood by 
faith. (Heb. x, 22, 23.) Matthew mentions another still more mysterious event. "The 
graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints, which slept, arose." But, as he adds, 
"and came out of the graves after the resurrection" and as St. Paul teaches us expressly, 
"that Christ was the first-fruits of those that slept," we must infer that the actual leaving 
of their graves by the saints did not take place till after the resurrection of the Lord. 

But the effects of Christ's death upon the living become also visible at once. The 
Roman centurion, who stood under the cross superintending the crucifixion, having wit- 
nessed every thing that had transpired during the last hours of Christ's suffering, lifts up 
his voice — the voice which afterward burst forth more loudly from the heathen world 
against Israel's denial — and confesses: This man was that which Pilate declared him, a 
righteous man, and that for claiming which the Jews condemned him to death, the Son of 
God. In this testimony the soldiers joined, being affected in the same manner, and full of 
awe. (Verse 54.) The Jews also commenced to tremble. (Luke xxiii, 48.) Many a con- 
science was no doubt awakened, and a feeling of fearful suspense pervaded the multitude. 
In crowds, cursing and triumphant, they had come to Golgotha to crucify the Lord; in 
silence and confounded they went away. Thus the enemies of Christ left, at last, the field 
to his friends. The acquaintances of the Lord, who had stood afar off, without, however, 
losing sight of him for a moment, and especially the pious women who had followed him 
from Galilee to minister unto him, now ventured near, and claimed his dead body. 
Moreover, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, two rich and highly-respected men, both 
members of the Sanhedrim, who during Jesus' lifetime had been his disciples in secret, now 
shake off their timidity, and profess themselves boldly his disciples, ready to live and 
suffer for him. It was decreed in the counsels of the Father that an honorable burial 
should be prepared to his Son, and God brought it to pass that the enemies as well as the 
friends of Jesus took measures to bring about this Divine purpose. The Jews were very 
anxious that the crucified bodies might be taken down and be buried before the setting 
in of the Sabbath — six o'clock, Friday evening. It was against the law (Deut. xxi, 22, 
23) to let a criminal hang on the tree over night; add to this that the following day was 
not only a common Sabbath, but the great first Sabbath of the Jewish year, which com- 
menced with the Passover. For this reason they asked Pilate, according to John, before 
they knew that Christ was dead, to have the bones of the three crucified individuals 



THE SIGNS AND INCIDENTS FOLLOWING THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 623 

broken, and their bodies buried. Pilate granted their request. The soldiers that were 
commissioned for this purpose broke the legs of the two malefactors. But when they 
came to Jesus they found that he had already expired, whence we have to infer that 
Pilate had sent fresh soldiers to do this work. As Jesus was evidently dead, they did 
not break his bones, but, in order officially to verify his death, one of the soldiers pierced 
the Lord's side with his spear. Thus a type and a prophecy were remarkably fulfilled : "A 
bone of him shall not be broken," (Ex. xii, 46,) and "They shall look on him whom they 
pierced." (Zech. xii, 10.) But while this was done on Golgotha, and before a report of it 
had reached Pilate, the highly-respected and wealthy counselor, Joseph of Arimathea, 
applied to Pilate for the dead body of Jesus, and the governor readily granted the request 
after he had learned from the centurion that Jesus was already dead. The sacred corpse 
was accordingly taken down from the cross. Joseph procured new, clean linen in which 
the body of Jesus was to be wrapped, according to the Jewish manner of burying, while 
ISTicodemus brought a princely offering of myrrh and aloes, with which the linen was 
filled, and thus made an aromatic couch. A most honorable place of burial had also been 
provided, for Joseph owned a garden close by Golgotha, in which he had hewn for 
himself a new sepulcher wherein never man was yet laid. Thus another passage of 
Scripture was fulfilled: "He was with the rich in his death." (Isa. liii, 9.) The faithful 
women were likewise present at the burial. True to the instinct of their sex, they took a 
close view of the grave, and watched how Jesus was buried. (Mark xv, 47; Luke xxiii, 
55.) They insisted on contributing their share toward an honorable burial. While some 
of them, unwilling to leave the grave, remained sitting there, (Matt, xxvii, 61,) the others 
hastened home in order to prepare what they wished to add to the embalmment. Dur- 
ing the Sabbath their preparations were suspended, but the enemies of Jesus did not 
keep quiet. The dead Jesus gave them still greater uneasiness than the living had done. 
As early as the first night after their consummated murder, remembering that Jesus had 
predicted he would rise on the third day, they became so uneasy and fearful that they 
held a meeting on the morning of their great Passover Sabbath, in which they resolved 
to ask Pilate to have the sepulcher sealed and guarded. On the great Sabbath of the 
year the Sanhedrim is in the greatest perplexity as to the means whereby they might 
prevent that Jesus might not be preached to the people as having risen from the dead. 
Pilate acceded at once to their demand. They impressed the seal upon the stone in the 
presence of the guard, and then left the sepulcher in their special care, while the friends 
of Jesus, it seems, confined themselves so closely at home during the Sabbath that they 
did not even learn that a guard had been placed over the sepulcher. The women, at 
least, that went early on Sunday morning to the grave, knew nothing of this guard. 

Verses 51—66. (Compare Mark xt, 38-47; Luxe xxiii, 47-56; John xix, 31-42.) 

(51) And, behold, the vail of the Temple was rent in twain from the top to the 
bottom ; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent ; (52) and the graves were 
opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, (53) and came out of 
the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto 
many. (54) Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching 
Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, 
saying, Truly this was the Son of God. (55) And many women were there be- 
holding afar off, which followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering imto him : (56) 
Among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, 
and the mother of Zebedee's children. (57) "When the even was come, there came 
a rich man of Arimathea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus' disciple : 
(58) He went to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded 



624 



MATTHEW XXVII, 51-66. 



the body to be delivered. (59) And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped 
it in a clean linen cloth, (60) and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn 
out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher, and 
departed. (61) And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting over 
against the sepulcher. (62) Now the next day, that followed the day of the prep- 
aration, the chief-priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, (63) saying, Sir, 
we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I 
will rise again. (64) Command therefore that the sepulcher be made sure until 
the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto 
the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the 
first. (65) Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch : go your way, make it as sure 
as ye can. (66) So they went, and made the sepulcher sure, sealing the stone, and 
setting a watch. 



Verse 51. And behold the vail of the Temple 
was rent. There were two vails in the second Tem- 
ple: one separating the holy of holies from the sanc- 
tuary, the other that of the outer sanctuary. Here 
the vail of the inner sanctuary is undoubtedly meant, 
(Exod. xxvi, 31, etc.,) within which the high-priest 
alone entered, and that only once a year, to make 
expiation for the sins of the people, (Heb. ix, 7.) 
The vail was rent at the ninth hour, at the time when 
the evening sacrifice was burned. Thus the people 
learned the event; for we may well suppose that the 
priests were so frightened by it that they rushed out 
and stated the fact. Lange thinks that the rending 
of the vail was caused by the earthquake. To this 
it is objected, that an earthquake could not rend from 
top to bottom a vail, which, according to Josephus, 
was heavy, thick, and richly embroidered. Jerome 
says, that, according to the gospel of the Hebrews, a 
very thick beam of the Temple fell down. If this 
beam fell across the vail, the rent is easily accounted 
for. Whether, however, God made use of natural 
means or not in this event, it was certainly a work of 
special providence. Jewish tradition speaks, also, 
of several wonderful events, said to have happeued 
about forty years before the destruction of Jerusa- 
lem: e. g., that the light of the golden candlestick 
was extinguished; that the gate of the Temple 
flew open, by night, of its own accord, etc., which 
the Jews considered as signs of impending, heavy 
judgments. We see herein, undoubtedly, the reflex 
of the facts recorded by the Evangelists. — The sig- 
nificance of this great fact is explained in the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, (chaps, ix, 11, 12; x, 19, 20.) The 
vail rent in two proclaimed, in the most unmistakable 
language, 1. That the atonement for sin, typified by 
the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament, had been 
accomplished by the death of Jesus Christ, and that 
now the way into the holy of holies, access to God 
through the true high-priest, was open to all; 2. That 
for this very reason the typical sacrifices and the 
typical priesthood were at an end. God did not burst 



the shell till the kernel was ripe. Christ had not 
come to destroy, but to fulfill the law. Such a fulfill- 
ment had just taken place. As soon as the real 
atonement had been made, the typical was neces- 
sarily at an end. 

Verses 52, 53. And the graves were opened. 
The reader will bear in mind that the sepulchers 
of the Jews were altogether unlike ours, being arti- 
ficial or natural excavations in rocks. The entrance, 
that was sometimes perpendicular, (Luke xi, 44,) 
and often furnished with steps, sometimes horizontal, 
was closed either by a door or a large stone. — 
After his resurrection. These words must be 
referred to " arose" as well as to "came out of the 
graves." The graves were opened when the earth 
quaked and the rocks rent; there was a quickening 
power felt by the bodies of the saints, but they did not 
come to full life till Christ was risen. They were 
most probably saints that had been personally known 
to the men then living; such as Simon, Hannah, 
Zacharias, John the Baptist, Joseph, the foster-father 
of Jesus, etc. Whoever they were, they were not 
raised to a natural life, terminating again in death, 
but to eternal life, and must, therefore, be supposed 
to have ascended with the Savior to heaven. 

Verse 54. Now when they saw the earthquake, 
not only the effects which this powerful convulsion 
had on the rocky region of Golgotha, but, also, and 
especially, the manner in which Jesus expired, 
(according to Mark and Luke.) — Truly this was 
the Son of God. The centurion had, undoubtedly, 
heard that the Jews insisted upon his being put to 
death because he had said, "I am the Son of God." 
He saw in the supernatural phenomena the Divine 
seal upon the claims of Jesus, and called him "the 
Son of God," because Jesus had called himself so. 
Although we can not suppose that he had a clear 
idea of what this term implied, yet he certainly did 
not use it in the sense of heathen superstition. His 
meaning was : Jesus was no blasphemer, but was in 
reality what he claimed to be. This agrees with 



THE SIGNS AND INCIDENTS FOLLOWING THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 



625 



Luke's account, that he called him "a righteous 
man." 

Verses 57, 58. When the even was come , that 
is, before the close of the Jewish day, as before that 
time the corpses had to be removed, (Deut. xxi, 23.) 
— There came — first to Golgotha, in order to go 
thence to Pilate into the judgment-hall. Lange 
thinks that he joined the small number of the fol- 
lowers of Jesus on Golgotha, to profess himself for 
the first time publicly as a disciple of Christ. It is a 
very consoling thought, that under the cross of 
Christ the number of the old followers was enlarged 
by new ones. This is so to this day. — A rich max 
of Arimathea. Arimathea is most probably the 
Greek name for Ramathaim Zophim, the birthplace 
of Samuel, (1 Sam , i, 19.) This town lay, indeed, 
originally in the territory of the Samaritans, but was 
afterward added to Judea, and could, therefore, 
justly be termed "a city of the Jews," (Luke xxiii, 
51.) A Joseph is the foster-father of Christ, and 
another Joseph attends to his burial. John says 
that he was a disciple, but secretly, for fear of the 
Jews. Luke calls him a counselor — a member of 
the Sanhedrim — a good and just man, "who had 
not consented to the counsel and deed of them, but 
waited for the kingdom of God." So Mark ; Mat- 
thew adds, that he was a rich man. (Compare 
Isa. liii, 9.) — He went to Pilate, and begged 
the body of Jesus. Joseph was evidently in haste, 
perhaps apprehensive that the body of Jesus might 
be dishonored by the Jews ; for what John relates 
(xxix, 31-37) took place before. 

Verses 59, 60. He wrapped it in a clean linen- 
cloth. Further particulars are given by John. 
This was only a preparatory embalming, to preserve 
the body. After the Sabbath was over, the women 
intended properly to finish the work, and to adorn 
the body. — And laid it in his own new tomb. 
Not only by the Jews, but by all the civilized nations 
of antiquity, it was considered a great disgrace and 
misfortune not to receive a decent burial. It was a 
distinguished honor to be laid in a tomb new and 
untouched. 

Verse 61. Sitting over against the sepulcher. 
This touching feature is recorded by Matthew alone. 
Mark says that they beheld, that is, closely examined 
the sepulcher. The "other Mary" was the mother 
of James and Joses and the wife of Cleophas, (v. 5(5.) 
"The women, who, with the attachment of loving 
sisters, and the courage of heroes, sit in the dusk, 
in a lonesome garden, over against the sepulcher of 
Jesus, in silence, and sunk in deep meditation, form 
the brightest contrast to the crowds of women, who 
in the Orient often assemble in bright daylight about 
the graves, lamenting the dead with unbecoming 
noise. With Christ they had died to the world ; 
motionless they sat there till late in the evening, 
and thus lost the time to procure spices with the 
others, before the Sabbath, for the embalmment. 
But as soon as the Sabbath was over — six o'clock 



40 



Saturday evening — they made a purchase by them- 
selves, assisted by Salome. Thus the apparent dis- 
crepancy between Mark xvi, 1, and Luke xxiii, 56, 
with regard to the time when the spices were bought, 
disappears." (Lange.) We may add, that, if i/ydpacav, 
Mark xvi, 1, is translated "bought," as it ought to 
be, instead of "had bought," as in the English ver- 
sion, there is not even an apparent discrepancy. 

Verses 62-64. Now the next day that followed 
the day of preparation. The day of preparation 
was the day preceding the Sabbath; that is, Fri- 
day. In this year the day of preparation was at the 
same time the first day of the feast, which could 
also be called a Sabbath. This seems to be the 
reason why Matthew did not use the more simple 
term, "which is the Sabbath." — Sir, we remember 
that that deceiver said. The predictions of 
Jesus concerning his resurrection were more dis- 
tinctly remembered by his enemies than by his own 
disciples, for very obvious reasons; the disciples 
wished that the death of Jesus might not take place, 
and, accordingly, misunderstood his prophetic words 
about his death and resurrection, (see eh. xvi, 21.) 
But his enemies wished his death, and desired, at 
the same time, to prevent his resurrection, of which, 
moreover, they may have been reminded by the 
traitor. By confessing in advance their fear of his 
resurrection, they belie also their charge against 
Jesus about the destruction of the Temple; showing, 
now, that they had understood his words correctly. 

Verse 66. Sealing the stone. The sealing was 
done by means of a cord drawn across the stone at 
the mouth of the sepulcher, and fastened at either 
end to the rock by sealing-clay, upon which was 
stamped the official seal of Pilate. The stone, there- 
fore, could not be removed by any of the guard with- 
out cutting the cord or breaking the seal ; and the 
guard was to prevent the disciples from attempt- 
ing it. "How contemptible," says Lange, "are the 
means by which the modern Pharisees, and scribes 
attempt, like those of old, to shut up the life and 
spirit of Christ in the grave ! Antiquated seals of 
office and guards of soldiers obtained by begging ! 
Mental blindness goes hand in hand with the malice 
of the heart." Lisco remarks : " What a great re- 
semblance do the enemies of Christ in our days bear 
to those Jewish priests ! 1. They pretend to be fully 
satisfied of the worthlessness and insignificance of 
the Spirit indwelling in the Church. 2. Neverthe- 
less, they are in constant dread that it will break 
out again, even when they look upon it as sup- 
pressed. 3. All their measures to prevent the spread 
of the Gospel prove as ineffectual as did the sealing 
of the grave of Jesus. What did the murderers of 
Jesus gain by stationing a heathen guard and seal- 
ing the tomb of Jesus? They only became the in- 
struments in the hands of Divine Providence, to 
place the resurrection of Christ beyond all reason- 
able doubt. Thus must all assaults on the cause of 
Christ at last serve the furtherance of the Gospel." 



626 MATTHEW XXVIII, 1-10. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 
§79. CHRIST IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD. 

The Scriptures testify, that Christ had actually died and arose from the grave in his 
identical body to die henceforth no more. This resurrection is described in most pas- 
sages of the New Testament as a being raised by the Father, (Acts ii, 24, 32; iii, 15; 
xiii, 30; Eom. iv, 24; vi, 4; 1 Cor. vi, 14,) in so far as it was a declaration on the part of 
God the Father, that the Son did not die for any sin of his own but for the sin of the 
world, and that his death was an accepted and all-sufficient propitiation. But in other pas- 
sages the resurrection is represented as Christ's own act, (Acts i, 3 ; Eom. i, 4.) He him- 
self had declared that he would lay down his life of himself and that he had power to 
take it again, (John x, 17, 18 ; comp. ii, 19.) These two representations are perfectly 
consistent with each other. For the principle of the Son's never-failing life is the Father, 
who has given to the Son to have life in himself, (John v, 26.) It is the Father's glory 
and omnipotence which brought about this result. But this power does not affect the 
Son from without, but is in the Son, as the Father and the Son are one, (John x. 30 ; 
xiv, 10,) and the Son is in his personality as the God-man, the self-revealing power of 
the Father himself. If Christ's resurrection is viewed as his own act, it is the necessary 
development of the God-man. And it is from this point of view that the resurrection of 
Christ is chiefly contemplated by the modern divines of Germany. Lange says : " To re- 
deem man from the power of death, it was necessary that Christ himself should suffer 
death, the wages of sin, and this he did voluntarily. But as soon as he was dead, the 
power of the resurrection was to be realized in his holy organism in that form of trans- 
formation in which Adam in Paradise was destined to pass from the first into the second 
life, and which the saints living at the end of the world will realize. This transforma- 
tion had its roots in his Divine-human life, and the fruit of that life was his resurrection 
on the third day. By it he was not to return into the first life, as Lazarus, to die again. 
He was to belong neither to this nor to the other world exclusively, but to comprehend the 
two spheres of life in the power of perfect life. He had to realize in his own person the 
death of the body, both in the form of being divested of the body, and in the form of 
transformation, in order to reign as the Prince of Life over the whole domain of death. 
His holy organism could not be touched with corruption, because the spirit of eternal life 
had already breathed upon it." The same idea is expressed by Baumgarten somewhat 
differently: "Christ could not be held of death. The death which Jesus died was, in- 
deed, death in the fullest sense of the word. But dying he had conquered death, by hold- 
ing fast his God while he felt himself forsaken by him. Death being conquered by his 
faith, life must be its result. To Jesus, therefore, death was only a sleep, and his awak- 
ing from that sleep is not a passive, but a highly-active state. It is the power of inde- 
structible life which reigns in Jesus and triumphs even over death, by virtue of which he 
rises from the grave, and for this reason the apostles not only write that he was raised 
from the dead by the power of the Father, but state also that he rose from the dead by his 
own power." 

The resurrection of Jesus from the dead implies two things : 1. The restoration of his 
bodily life, which had come to an end in his death, by reuniting soul and body again, or, 
in other words, the continuation of his former life, which involves the consciousness of 
his identity. On this point there can be no doubt, since the sepulcher was found empty, and 
the risen Savior showed to his disciples the marks of his wounds, (Luke xxiv, 3, 39 ; John 
xx, 5, 12, 20, 27.) 2. The glorification of his former form of existence, so that he is no 
longer subject to the laws of human existence, hunger, thirst, the laws of gravitation, 



CHRIST IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD. 627 

etc., without, however, changing his personal identity. This, his new resurrection body, 
suddenly appeared and disappeared again, stood in the midst of the disciples while the 
doors were shut, etc. (Luke xxiv, 31; John xx, 26.) In our present state of existence it 
is impossible for us to form a clear and adequate idea of the form of existence in a glori- 
fied body. 

The resurrection of Jesus from the dead can appear incredible only to those who pro- 
nounce every fact that is not in accordance with the known laws of nature, however well 
attested, an impossibility. (See § 22 in the General Introduction.) On the other hand, 
whoever takes Jesus for what he is, according to his own word and that of his disciples, 
must look upon his resurrection, not only as in the highest degree credible, but as an 
absolute necessity. His resurrection from the dead, and his ascension, as well as his 
miraculous conception, can be doubted by him only that denies the historical facts of his 
life, his character, his words, and works. As it is inconceivable that the Son of man should 
have come into this world in the same way as other men do, so his whole historical life 
would be a self-contradiction, if his earthly connection with the world had ceased as that 
of other men. Because his historical and inexplicable personality is the greatest of all 
miracles, the miraculous is, in his case, natural and necessary. Death is the result of sin. 
If he had been held of death, he could not have possessed the sinlessness which can be 
irrefutably proved, (see § 29 in the General Introduction;) and he could not have been 
sinless if he had not possessed Divinity, which implies the independent and inalienable 
possession of life in itself. Death, therefore, could affect Christ only temporarily, and 
with the inevitable result of being conquered by the temporary and voluntary submission 
under its power by the incarnate Son of God. On the other hand, the work of redemption, 
the object of Christ's incarnation, and of every thing connected therewith, demanded, 
imperatively, that the Redeemer, who had suffered death, the wages of sin, should be 
divinely justified from all appearance of having himself sinned, and demonstrated to 
be the well-beloved Son of God by his restoration to imperishable life. This alone could 
inspire the fallen race with full confidence in the salvation he wrought out for them, fill- 
ing the heart of the believer with an assurance of having obtained peace with God 
through him, and imparting the power of a new, divine life. Without the resurrection 
of Christ from the dead, Christian faith would have no solid basis whatever; all preach- 
ing would be vain, (1 Cor. xv, 14,) as well as the believer's hope of the completion of 
his salvation — the resurrection of his own body. 

If there is any fact in history well attested, it is the resurrection of Jesus from the 
dead. His personality as the God-man is, as we have just shown, the first voucher for 
the truth and reality of his resurrection. The second we have in the incontrovertible cred- 
ibility of the Evangelists, based upon the authenticity of their records. (See General 
Introduction, § 2-1-26.) They saw and communed with their risen Master. Self-decep- 
tion on their part was impossible; instead of being ready to take any strange phenome- 
non for their risen Master, they refused to believe in the reports of his resurrection, 
although he had repeatedly foretold it, till they had an ocular demonstration of it. "Had 
they been disposed to call up visions by overworking their powei'S of imagination, and to 
see in these visions their risen Master, they would scarcely have looked upon the reports 
of the women as idle tales. Mary might have seen in a gardener her risen Master, but 
not, vice versa, in her risen Master a gardener; the two disciples, on their way to Em- 
maus, might have taken a stranger for their risen Master, but not their risen Master for a 
stranger; and, finally, the assembled disciples would not have taken their Master, who 
suddenly appeared in their midst, for a ghost, but would have rushed to him in ecstasy. 
And why should it have been necessary, in the case assumed, for the Lord to allay the 
fears of his disciples, and to convince them of his identity by eating with them and by 
showing them the marks of his wounds?" (Lange.) If Jesus had not actually risen 
from the dead, and if his disciples had not had the most incontrovertible proofs of the 



628 MATTHEW XXVIII, 1-10. 



fact, what possible motives could they have had for preaching Christ and the resurrec- 
tion? They realized certainly no temporal advantages from it. The Sanhedrim would 
have rewarded them most liberally, if they had been willing to say, "Our Master is not 
risen from the dead, as he had foretold; he has deceived us." In place of this, their 
preaching Christ and the resurrection brought them nothing but persecution unto death. 
Or, can we believe that those men who preached to the world that all liars shall have 
their portion in the lake of unquenchable fire, would have looked for a reward in the 
world to come for preaching the resurrection, while they knew that he was not risen? 
Add to the unimpeachable testimony of the Evangelists that of Paul, whose conversion 
to Christianity can not be rationally accounted for in any other way but by the reality 
of his having seen the risen Savior, and whose Epistles to the Eomans, Corinthians, and 
Galatians are admitted to be authentic even by the critics who have assailed the authen- 
ticity of almost every other book of the New Testament. (See General Introduction, 
§ 18.) The third voucher for the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the founding 
of the Christian Church. From out of the small number of the timid and trembling dis- 
ciples there arises, all at once, a Church, or congregation, filled with the most heroic faith 
and the most burning love, founded upon the confession of the one great fact, "Jesus, 
whom ye have crucified, God has raised from the dead;" and from this Church has pro- 
ceeded the greatest, most abiding, and most blessed change in the history of mankind. 
Can there be a greater folly than to assume that the system of faith which has imparted 
new life to the world originated with a few poor, unlearned, and uninfluential Jews, 
who, after their hopes had failed by the death of their Master, ventured to revive them 
again by more or less purposely-fabricated tales and false interpretations of Scripture, 
and are said, in this way, to have become the authors of a religion from which the most 
civilized nations have drawn their wisdom for eighteen centuries? Whoever can be- 
lieve something of this kind, believes — we will not say a more stupendous miracle than 
any of those recorded in the Scriptures — but he believes simply an absurdity. The fourth 
voucher is the witness which God bore to his risen Son by the outpouring of the Holy 
Ghost on the day of Pentecost, and the power to work miracles given to the apostles. 
Skeptics have asked the question, why the risen Christ appeared only to his disciples, 
not to his enemies and the people? It would constitute a sufficient answer to this ques- 
tion to say, "They had Moses and the prophets; if they did not believe them, they would 
not have believed if the risen Savior had appeared unto them." Such an appearance 
would have been for them only a frightful specter, because, owing to their hardness of 
heart, they lacked all susceptibility for such a revelation. Besides, the enemies of Christ 
had the strongest possible testimony of his resurrection from the Eoman soldiers whom 
they had placed as a watch at his sepulcher. And to the Jewish nation God himself 
testified the resurrection of his Son in a much more solemn and efficacious manner than 
could have been done by a public, visible appearance of Jesus Christ, by bestowing upon 
the apostles, on the day of Pentecost, the gift to proclaim to the Jews and proselytes, 
gathered from the different countries of the earth at Jerusalem, the wonderful works of 
God; that is, the great facts of our redemption in such a manner that — various as were 
the dialects and languages which they severally spoke — they all understood the preach- 
ing, and were convinced that God spoke through the apostles. This was a miracle 
which admitted of no illusion, and without which we can not rationally account for the 
success of the apostles in founding the Christian Church, and spreading the Gospel 
within their lifetime over the whole Eoman Empire. The reality of those miraculous 
gifts of the Holy Ghost, which were necessary for the founding of the Christian Church, 
is, moreover, proven by the ordinary operations of the same Spirit upon the hearts of 
men to this day. This sending the Spirit, which the Savior had promised to his disci- 
ples, is the fifth voucher for his resurrection, all-sufficient for itself. The Gospel of Jesus 
Christ is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believes; the power of God, 



CHRIST IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD. 629 

which convicts of sin, sets free from its guilt and dominion, and fills the heart with a 
peace which this world can neither give nor take away. 

Against the, resurrection of Christ, better attested than any other fact in history, the 
three following assertions are all that skepticism has, up to this time, been able to urge: 
1. It is said that Christ was only apparently dead; that Joseph of Arimathea discovered 
signs of life in him, and restored him to life again by careful treatment in the cool sepul- 
cher, and the liberal application of spices; that Jesus lived afterward in secret among 
the Essenes, and really died, sooner or later ! All this is too absurd to deserve a serious 
refutation. The certainty of Christ's death before his burial is beyond any reasonable 
doubt, (see note on John xix, 34, 35,) and superabundantly confirmed by the manner of 
his burial. 2. The old Jewish lie, that the discijtles stole the body while the soldiers slept, 
we shall consider in the next section. 3. It is asserted that the accounts which the 
Evangelists give of what took place on the resurrection morning, at the grave, present 
irreconcilable discrepancies; and this has been made the ground of objection to the ver- 
ity of the fact itself. Now suppose, even, that we are not able to remove the discrepancies 
with regard to every minor point, this would certainly not justify us in rejecting the truth 
of the fact itself. (Compare § 21 in the General Introduction.) We have no right to 
expect that each of the four Evangelists should have recorded in detail, and in consecu- 
tive order, all the wonderful incidents that took place on the resurrection morn. If they 
had done so, they would be charged with collusion. Their evident independence of each 
other in their records, and their showing no misgivings whatever concerning the incon- 
trovertible certainty of what they record, ought to impress even the greatest skeptic 
favorably. Alford says, on this point: "The independence and distinctness of the four 
narratives in this part have never been questioned; and, indeed, herein lie its principal 
difficulties. With regard to them I refer to what I have said in the Prolegomena, that, 
supposing us to be acquainted with, every thing said and done, in its order and exactness, we 
should, doubtless, be able to reconcile, or account for, the present forms of the narratives ; but, 
not having this key to the harmonizing of them, all attempts to do so in minute particu- 
lars must be full of arbitrary assumptions, and carry no certainty with them. And I 
may remark, that, of all harmonies, those of the incidents of these chapters are to me the 
most unsatisfactory. Giving their compilers all credit for the best intentions, I confess 
they seem to me to weaken instead of strengthening the evidence, which now rests — 
speaking merely objectively — on the unexceptional testimony of three independent nar- 
rators, and one who, besides, was an eye-witness of much that happened. If we are to 
compare the four, and ask which is to be taken as most nearly reporting the exact words 
and incidents, there can, I think, be no doubt on this. On internal as well as external 
ground, that of John takes the highest place, but not, of course, to the exclusion of those 
parts of the narrative which he does not touch. The improbability that the Evangelists 
had seen one another's accounts, becomes, in this part of their Gospels, an impossibility. 
Here and there we discern traces of a common narration as the ground of their reports; 
but they are very few." We agree with Alford in most of the above remarks; but we 
can not go so far as to consider "all the harmonies of this part of the Gospel history 
unsatisfactory," and shall, therefore, not "abandon," as he does, "all idea of harmo- 
nizing." 

In arranging the various events that transpired at the grave, as recorded by the four 
Evangelists, in their consecutive order, we will make Matthew our basis, for the very 
reason that what he records of the resurrection morn presents the chief difficulties. At 
the early dawn of the first day of the week, our Sunday, a number of women started, 
according to the four Evangelists, for the sepulcher of the Lord. Matthew names Mary 
Magdalene and the other Mary — that is, Mary the mother of James and Joses — the same 
women that had been sitting on Friday evening over against the Lord's sepulcher, 
(xxvii, 61.) According to Mark (xvi, 1) Salome was with them, who had joined them 



630 MATTHEW XXVIII, 1-10. 



already on Saturday evening, after the Sabbath was over, in order to make with them the 
last purchases for the final embalmment of the Lord. Luke, in speaking of the return of 
the women from the grave, mentions, with Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of 
James, a certain Joanna, the wife of Chusa. As Mary Magdalene may have arrived 
somewhat earlier at the grave than the other Mary and Salome, so the other women, 
mentioned by Luke, may have arrived a little later. John does not say that Mary 
Magdalene went to the grave in company with other women, yet indicates indirectly that 
she was not alone, by representing her as saying, " We know not where they have laid 
him." To John Mary Magdalene was the principal person among the women that went 
to the grave, because she brought to him and Peter the first news that the sepulcher was 
empty, and afterward that the Lord had appeared unto her. 

Mark says that the women intended to embalm the Lord, adding, that they remem- 
bered on their way that a heavy stone had been rolled before the sepulcher, for which 
reason they were distressed, and asked: "Who shall roll away the stone from the door 
of the sepulcher ?" But as soon as they came near the grave they saw that the stone was 
rolled away, (Mark xvi, 3. 4.) That the stone was rolled away, is stated by all the Evan- 
gelists, but Matthew alone mentions how this was done. An earthquake had taken place ; 
an angel had come down from heaven, had rolled the stone away from the door, and sat 
upon it. "His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow. The 
keepers of the sepulcher did shake for fear, and became as dead men." The question has 
been asked: How and by whom did the Evangelist learn these facts? That they had 
transpired before the arrival of the women is clear; for if they had been witnesses of the 
resurrection, it would not have been necessary for the angel to acquaint them with it. 
But even supposing that the Evangelist did not learn them by a direct revelation, it was 
natural for him to connect the earthquake with the resurrection; and that an angel had 
come from heaven at the time of the earthquake, was to be inferred from the fact, that 
the women saw the angel afterward in the sepulcher. It is also quite likely that some of 
the keepers were found by the women in their state of fright and agitation near the 
sepulcher. But whence did the Evangelist know that the angel sat on the stone? A 
sufficient answer to such a questioner would be to remind him that the Evangelist wrqte 
by inspiration, and God, who taught Moses the wonders of creation, could reveal to Mat- 
thew where the angel sat. Lange says: "On this stone was the official seal which the 
soldiers had to guard; it is, therefore, more than probable, that they kept this stone 
especially in view, and that all that was done with it made a deep impression upon 
them ; and how easy was it for the centurion, who had been converted under the cross, 
to learn all these facts from the guard, and afterward to communicate them to the 
apostles !" 

It is worthy of note, that the quickening of the body of the Lord and the act of his leav- 
ing the sepulcher are not described. No human eye witnessed these transactions, and 
none could have beheld their surpassing splendor. And if any human being had been 
deemed worthy to behold them, the Boman soldiers would certainly not have been chosen 
for it. It is characteristic of Divine wisdom, and in analogy with the order of salva- 
tion, that the apostles and believers of succeeding ages should learn the great fact, on 
which the Christian religion is based, first through credible witnesses. The women heard 
it from the angels ; the apostles through the women, and the world is to believe it on the 
testimony of the apostles. But as that which credible witnesses had told the disciples 
was afterward confirmed to them by the demonstration of their own senses, by seeing, 
hearing, and handling their risen Master, so there is offered to human reason irrefutable 
evidence of the credibility of the apostles, and the truth of the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ. 

As to what happened to the several women when they saw the stone rolled away, the 
accounts of the Evangelists differ. Matthew, whose uniform practice it is to omit details 



CHRIST IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD. 631 



and record only the leading points of events, states as one fact, what happened to Mary 
Magdalene and to the other women — and the same things virtually happened to the two 
parties : they both saw and conversed with the angels, and both saw and conversed with 
the Lord — while John records only, but in detail, what had happened to himself, to 
Peter, and to Mary Magdalene. "And," remarks Lange, "how well do the accounts 
themselves correspond with the character of the Evangelists ! Mark and Luke, disciples 
of the apostles, state, quite in keeping with the whole tenor of their Gospels, the events 
on the authority of the women, from whom they had probably learned them. But 
the two apostles, Matthew and John, state them according to the impression they made 
upon them, when they first heard them, each in his peculiar way. Matthew, whose main 
object is to describe the royal majesty of the Lord in a few bold strokes, merges the indi- 
vidual in the general, while John, in his characteristic way, gives us the general in the 
most important individual traits." Thus the whole apparent contradiction between 
John and the other Evangelists disappears at once ; while John confines himself to what 
happened to Mary Magdalene, the other Evangelists state what happened to the whole 
body of the women, mentioning Mary Magdalene, however, as one of the party. 

Mary Magdalene may, as we have said already, have come a few minutes before the 
other women to the grave; John says, "It was yet dark," and Mark, "The women came 
to the grave eai'ly in the morning at the rising of the sun." There is, however, no con- 
tradiction between the two accounts, even if we suppose that they all arrived at the same 
time at the grave, for we may understand by Mark's " at the rising of the sun," its first 
rays; and it must be borne in mind that the nearer the equator a country is, the shorter 
are its twilights. Mary Magdalene, no matter whether she arrived at the grave a few min- 
utes before the rest or at the same time with them, was more powerfully affected by the 
sight of the empty sepulcher than her companions. She comes at once to the conclusion 
that the body must have been stolen, and runs, therefore, in all haste back to the city, in 
order to inform Peter and John of what she had seen. While she was hastening to the 
city the other women turned toward the empty sepulcher. In the description of the 
angelic appearances which these women had, the Synoptists differ as to some minor 
points. According to Matthew, it would seem that the angel sitting on the stone ad- 
dressed the women; according to Mark and Luke, they enter into the empty grave; 
according to Mark, they saw " a young man sitting on the right side clothed in a long, 
white garment; " while according to Luke, "two men stood by them in shining gar- 
ments;" according to John, Mary Magdalene also saw alone " two angels in white, sitting, 
the one at the head and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain." The 
difference between the two angels of Luke and the one of Matthew and Mark, may be 
accounted for by supposing that the two latter Evangelists mention only the angel that 
addressed the women. Lange thinks, that as the Synoptists state what happened to Mary 
Magdalene and the other women as one event, Luke speaks of two angels as having ap- 
peared unto the latter party, while according to Matthew and Mark only one angel 
appeared, also, to Mary Magdalene. That, however, the efforts at harmonizing every little 
detail of such wonderful proceedings are uncalled for, is pertinently conceded even by 
that acute skeptic, Lessing. 

According to Matthew and Mark, the words spoken by the angel were the same, with 
the exception that, according to Mark, the women are told to go their way and tell his 
disciples and Peter, that the Lord would go before them into Galilee. But the words 
spoken by the angels, according to Luke, differ so much from those recorded by the two 
other Synoptists, that some commentators have assumed that Luke speaks of another 
angelic appearance to another party of women, not distinguished by the Evangelist from 
the first party. The women could not fully comprehend the joyous news at once. With 
fear and great joy they hasten away from the sepulcher. Matthew says, " They did run 
to bring his disciples word ;" but Mark, " They trembled and were amazed ; neither said 



632 MATTHEW XXVIII, 1-10. 



they any thing to any man, for they were afraid." The ohvious meaning is, that they 
said nothing to the strangers whom they met by the way, but hastened to find those for 
whom their message was intended. Matthew then relates that Jesus himself met these 
women on the way. This appearance of the Lord is not mentioned by any other Evan- 
gelist. According to the first clause of the ninth verse in the received text, it took place 
on their way back from the sepulcher to the city, and if this is the case, we are almost 
compelled to suppose that the Lord appeared to these women before he appeared to Mary 
Magdalene, because a considerable length of time was consumed bj^ what Mary Magda- 
lene did before the Lord appeared unto her; we have, then, to assume that Mark calls the 
appearance of the Lord to Mary Magdalene the first, not absolutely, but with reference to 
the two other appearances recorded by himself, just as the one called by him the last 
(xvi, 14) was likewise not the last of all our Lord's visible appearances. But we have no 
need to suppose that the Lord appeared to the women on their way from the sepulcher 
to the city. The first clause of the ninth verse in chapter twenty-eight of Matthew, "As 
they went to tell his disciples," is wanting in Codd. B, I), in twenty Minuscles, and in 
all the ancient versions. It is, therefore, ejected from the received text by Lachman and 
Tischendorf, and its ejection, approved by the best critics, gives us liberty to assume that, 
after the delivery of the first tidings to the apostles, the women directed their steps back 
again to the sepulcher, and that it was on their way there when the Lord vouchsafed to 
appear to them. This supposition rises almost to a certainty, when we consider that the 
apostles refused to believe their report, according to Luke xxiv, 9-11, which would be 
very difficult to be accounted for, if they had reported to them that they themselves had 
seen the Lord. Their testimony of this could scarcely have appeared to them as " idle tales," 
while we can very easily account for their doubts, so long as the women spoke only 
of the appearance of angels. The only difficulty in the passage of Luke, if thus under- 
stood, would be that he mentions Mary Magdalene as one of those women who had re- 
turned from the sepulcher, and whose report the disciples did not believe. But this 
difficulty is a slight one, inasmuch as Luke, not relating what happened to Mary Magda- 
lene, may have included her, with reference to what she had reported when she first re- 
turned from the grave, and because she had gone out with the other women. 

The details of Mary Magdalene's hasty return to the city and thence to the sepulcher 
in company of Peter and John, do not claim our attention here. Only one remark with 
regard to Peter may be expected. From Luke (xxiv, 12) it would seem that Peter did 
not go to the sepulcher till after the return of the women. But this difficulty disappears 
if we take into consideration that Luke, who, throughout his account, represents Mary 
Magdalene as in company with the other women, found no occasion to particularize about 
the news that induced Peter to hasten to the grave. John is not mentioned with Peter, 
but neither is he excluded ; for in verse 24 it is expressly stated, that " certain of them, 
that were with us, went to the sepulcher, and found it even so as the women had said." 

There are, in all, ten appearances of the Lord recorded in the New Testament: 1. 
The one vouchsafed to Mary Magdalene, (Mark xvi, 9.) 2. Then he appeared to the 
other women on their return, possibly from, but more probably to, the grave, (Matt. 
xxviii, 9, 10.) 3. To Peter before the evening of the resurrection day, (Luke xxiv, 34.) 
4. To the two disciples, who went to Emmaus in the afternoon of that day, (Luke xxiv, 
31.) 5. To the assembled disciples, Thomas alone being absent, on that night, (Luke 
xxiv, 36.) 6. Eight days later the Lord appeared to his assembled disciples again, 
Thomas being present, (John xx, 26.) The Passover had lasted to the preceding Friday. 
On Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, the disciples did not travel, and staid, also, the second 
Sunday at Jerusalem — a proof that this day had already become to them the Sabbath of 
the New Testament. In all probability they returned on the following Monday to Gali- 
lee. 7. The first appearance in Galilee took place at the Sea of Tiberias, (.John xxi.) 8. 
Then the Lord appeared to all his assembled disciples on the mount in Galilee, (Matt. 



CHRIST IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD. 



633 



xxviii, 16 ,• Mark xvi, 15-18; 1 Cor. xv, 6.) 9. Then unto James. 10. The last meeting 
with the eleven took place on the way from Jerusalem to the top of the Mountain of 
Olives, whence the Lord ascended up to heaven, (Mark xvi, 19; Luke xxiv, 50; Acts 
i, 4-9.) 

Verses 1— lO. (Compare Mark xvi, 1—11; Luke xxiv, 1-12; John - xx, 1-18.) 

(1) In the end, of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the 
week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepuleher. (2) And, 
behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from 
heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. (3) 
His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: (4) And for 
fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. (5) And the angel an- 
swered and said unto the women, Fear not ye : for I know that ye seek Jesus, which 
was crucified. (6) He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place 
where the Lord lay. (7) And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen 
from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see 
him : lo, I have told you. (8) And they departed quickly from the sepuleher with 
fear and great joy; and did run to bring his disciples word. (9) And as they 
went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they 
came and held him by the feet, and worshiped him. (10) Then said Jesus unto 
them, Be not afraid: go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall 
they see me. 



Verse 1. In the end of the Sabbath, [the Greek 
expression would justify the translation after the 
Sabbath, as Mark says,] as it began to dawn 
toward the first day of the week. The first day 
of the week had already begun the preceding even- 
ing; now day, as opposed to night, began to dawn. 
Lange thinks that the Evangelist used this rather 
strange designation of time designedly, to indicate 
that the Jewish Sabbath was now being superseded 
by the Christian Sunday, or Lord's day, (as Judaism 
was by Christianity. ) "The Lord's day is [as the com- 
pletion of the Redeemer's work] a new creation, the 
Sabbath of the New Testament dispensation, indi- 
cated as such not only because Jesus arose on that 
day from the dead, but also because he appeared on 
it to his disciples. That the Lord's day was kept by 
the apostles, as the Sabbath, may be inferred from 
the following passages: Acts xx, 7; 1 Cor. xvi, 1, 
2; Rev. i, 10." — Came Mart Magdalene — ac- 
cording to Mark and Luke, in order to anoint the 
body of the Lord. Mark names in addition to these 
two also Salome. Matthew omits the latter, confin- 
ing his remarks to the two women whom he had 
mentioned before. They knew nothing of the Ro- 
man watch. 

Verses 2-4. And behold there was a great 
earthquake. This shaking of the earth was prob- 
ably confined to the region near the sepuleher. — 
For the angel of the Lord descended. We see 
here again, as at the birth of Christ, the intimate 



connection of the kingdom of Christ with the world 
of spirits. The presence of angels is likewise typical 
of their offices at the final judgment. The angel is 
not used as an instrument to assist the Savior in 
breaking the barriers of the grave, but to impress 
upon the Roman guard — whose attention was aroused 
by the earthquake, but who were not proper sub- 
jects to behold the rising of the Savior — that his 
resurrection was the work of God. When we con- 
sider that even the women had to be prepared by the 
message of angels, before the Savior appeared to 
them, we can not doubt that the keepers had fallen to 
the ground ''as dead men," before the Lord came 
forth from the sepuleher. Some of the older com- 
mentators say that the Lord may have arisen 
before the stone was removed by the angel, as his 
glorified body passed through closed doors, and ap- 
peared and disappeared at will ; and that the open- 
ing of the sepuleher by the angel served only to 
expose it to inspection, and to give an ocular dem- 
onstration of the resurrection. 

Verse 5. If we had the account of Matthew 
alone, we might be led to think that the earthquake, 
the descent of the angel, and the falling down of 
the keepers took place in the presence of the women. 
But this is evidently not the case. Matthew's object 
is simply to state the fact of the resurrection, the 
message of the angel, and the words of the Savior, 
not the manner in which the women became cogni- 
zant of the facts. — Fear not ye. There is an em- 



634 



MATTHEW XXVIII, 1-10. 



phasis on the ye. Be not terrified like the guard, 
and his enemies. I have good tidings for you who 
seek Jesus, which was crucified. The Crucified ! 
The name of reproach and death is now glorified 
into a title of honor. It is the first high name of the 
risen Lord, given by the mouth of an angel; thus 
will the lowly One be ever named, both in heaven 
and on earth. Ye seek hira, even in disgrace and 
death; you are still the same who were with Jesus 
of Nazareth. Ye seek him in the wrong place, but 
ye shall, nevertheless, find him. 

Verse 6. He is risen, as he said. When the 
Lord had foretold the disciples his resurrection, he 
pointed back to the Old Testament Scriptures. The 
angels now point back to Ms words; for every testi- 
mony to truth which ever fell from his lips is con- 
firmed by his resurrection ; the first-born from the 
dead is the faithful Witness, (Rev. i, 5.) There 
seems to be also a gentle reproof in reminding them 
of the words of the Lord. 

Verse 1. He goes before you into Galilee, etc. 
Jesus had promised them before his death that he 
would appear unto them in Galilee, (see chap, xxvi, 
32.) Although the Lord appeared to several wo- 
men, to the two disciples on their way to Emmaus, 
and to the apostles at Jerusalem, yet his meeting 
the whole body of disciples was to take place in Gal- 
ilee. 

Verse 8. With fear and great joy. Fear con- 
tends in their hearts with their great joy, as is so 
often experienced by us all. Mark says : "And they 
said nothing to any man ;" that is, they said nothing 
in the way, before they came to the disciples. They 
have rightly understood the direction of the angel 
to tell it only to the disciples. 

Verse 9. And as they went to tell his disci- 
ples. These words are not considered genuine. 
We refer the reader to what we said in our introduc- 
tory remarks to this section. — And held him by 
the feet, and worshiped him. This was a kind of 
touching him, different from that which he forbade 
to Mary Magdalene. When he said to her " Touch 
me not," firj /uov a-rrrov, literally, take not hold of 
me, in the sense of keeping hold — for the Greek 
tense expresses action continued — our Lord had ref- 
erence to her peculiar frame of mind, the full expo- 
sition of which belongs to the passage in John. 
Here we will mention only so much as is necessary 
to distinguish it from the act of the women recorded 
by Matthew. In the immediate outpouring of her 
love, Mary seemed to want to hold him fast, lest the 
wonderful appearance should vanish again, and in 
doing so she betrayed that she did not at the time 
realize the higher relation in which her risen Lord 
now stood to her. She wanted to enjoy his com- 
munion in a human manner, as she had been wont 
during his earthly life. From this tone of mind 
Christ leads her away, by giving her to understand 
that she must no longer reckon upon any such inter- 



course with him as she had hitherto enjoyed, that 
his tarrying on earth was only transitory, and that 
the time of exalted and divine relationships had 
come. The act of the women which Matthew 
records is entirely different. " They at once recog- 
nize him," as Ellicott remarks, "with holy awe, not 
merely as their teacher, [Mary Magdalene addressed 
him Rabboni,] but as their risen Lord, and instinct- 
ively pay him an adoration, which, as Bengel rightly 
observed, was but rarely evinced toward our Lord by 
his immediate followers previous to his Passion." 

Verse 10. Go tell my brethren. We have to 
understand by the term "my brethren," not the apos- 
tles exclusively, but the whole body of his disciples 
that had followed him from Galilee to the feast. — 
That they go into Galilee, and there shall 
they see me. One of the most serious contradic- 
tions in the Gospel records Strauss pretends to find 
in this, that Jesus commanded his disciples, accord- 
ing to Matthew and Mark, to go to Galilee, in order 
to see him there, while, according to Luke, he tells 
them to tarry in Jerusalem till they should be en- 
dowed with power from on high ! Any Sunday school 
child could have told the learned critic that the com- 
mand recorded by Luke was spoken by our Lord 
after the apostles had returned again from Galilee 
to Jerusalem, and had reference to the time between 
the ascension and Pentecost. As to the command 
of the Lord, recorded by Matthew and Mark, it had 
reference to the whole body of disciples, and meant 
no more than this, that they should, without fear or 
dismay, in the joyful assurance of his resurrection, 
after the feast return to Galilee, where he would 
reveal himself to them all at once. Our Lord saw 
fit to appear to the apostles, as the leaders of the 
flock, before that time, and it was evidently a sur- 
prise to them. But all the disciples were not yet 
prepared to see him, at least not in Jerusalem. It 
would have exposed the infant Church to danger. 
We can also easily understand why the apostles 
needed a special direction to return to Galilee in 
order to meet the Lord there. They would naturally 
be inclined to stay where he had died and risen 
again. They tarried, not only to the close of the 
Passover, the Friday succeeding the day of the res- 
urrection, but also over Saturday, the Jewish Sab- 
bath, and over the second Lord's clay, on which the 
Lord visited them again and appeared unto Thomas, 
from which we may infer that they regarded the first 
day of the week as the Christian Sabbath. On the 
succeeding Monday we may suppose them to have 
left for Galilee. After the interview at the lake of 
Galilee, and the meeting with the whole body of dis- 
ciples on the mountain, the appearance of the Lord 
to James (1 Cor. xv, 7) may be supposed to have 
taken place, and through him the apostles may have 
been directed to go to Jerusalem earlier than they 
would otherwise have gone to attend the feast of 
Pentecost. 






THE SANHEDRIM'S SUPPRESSION OP THE SOLDIERS' TESTIMONY. 635 



§80. THE SANHEDRIM'S FRAUDULENT SUPPRESSION OF THE SOLDIERS' 

TESTIMONY. 

It is a strange and sad phenomenon that there are doctors of theology in Germany, 
who have summoned all their critical ingenuity to raise every conceivable objection to 
the credibility of Matthew's account of the Sanhedrim's fraudulent transaction. Their 
cavils, however, have been fully met by the evangelical school of German critics. 
Though not edifying, it may be profitable in some quarters to give the objections with 
their refutation. They are as follows: 

It is said, 1. "Whence did the high-priests and Pharisees know that Jesus had said 
that he would rise again in three days, since he had spoken of his resurrection before his 
enemies only in figurative language, and his disciples had not understood what he had 
told them plainly?" We answer this question with another question: Is it anywhere 
written that Jesus had forbidden his disciples to say to others what he had said to them 
about his crucifixion and resurrection? Is it, on the contrary, not probable in the highest 
degree, that this often-repeated declaration had through the disciples found its way into 
larger circles? When Jesus was crucified, is it not more than likely that many a one 
said, "He is said to have foretold this;" and should this not have called to remembrance 
what he had said about his resurrection? But that and why the enemies of Jesus were 
differently affected by these his words from his friends has been shown in chap, xxvii, 63- 
2. "How could the women expect to embalm the dead body on the morning of the resur- 
rection day, the sepulcher being guarded and sealed?" There is no evidence that the 
women knew any thing about the seal and guard, as the Sabbath intervened. The set- 
ting of the watch and affixing of the seal did, in all probability, not take place before 
Saturday evening. 3. "It is in the highest degree improbable that the Sanhedrim 
should have left the dead body in the hands of his disciples instead of keeping it in their 
own possession." After Joseph of Arimathea had received the body from Pilate, it was, 
of course, out of the hands of the high-priests. It was, moreover, in their interest to 
affect indifference. 4. "It is altogether improbable that the Sanhedrim should have be- 
lieved the words of the soldiers; but if they did, it is unaccountable why they have 
made the attempt to suppress their report." They had no cause whatever to doubt the 
report of the frightened soldiers about the earthquake, the rolling away of the stone, 
the empty sepulcher; Jesus himself the soldiers had not seen, but the most natural infer- 
ence was, that the resurrection foretold by Jesus had really taken place. That, however, 
those who had charged Jesus with casting out devils by Beelzebub, endeavored to sup- 
press this inference against their own conscience and better knowledge, is certainly in 
perfect keeping with the whole tenor of their conduct. 5. "It is improbable that the 
soldiers should have consented to spread this lie." Why? The corruption of the 
Eomans, both higher officers and common soldiers, is notorious. Possibly the priests 
accused them also of having been afraid of specters, and threatened to bring charges 
against them before Pilate. If, on the other hand, the Sanhedrim did not bring any 
charges against them, the soldiers had no reason to fear that Pilate would inquire into 
the affair. 6. "It is not likely that the Sanhedrim in their official character should have 
agreed to sanction a lie." But why not? The same Sanhedrim had officially agreed 
upon the most atrocious judicial murder! Well does Ebrard say: "What pious and con- 
scientious men do the Sanhedrists all at once become under the magic hands of Mr. Dr. 
Strauss! All the scattered Christians, these humble and quiet men, must, without any 
cause whatever, have devised and believed a palpable lie; but the murderers of Jesus 
were altogether too good to devise for the Roman soldiers a falsehood that had become for 
them a necessity!" Moreover, the Evangelist does not speak of a formal meeting of the 
Sanhedrim. It was, on the contrary, according to verse 12, a private conference of the 



636 



MATTHEW XXVIII, 11-15. 



deadly enemies of Jesus, in which the high-priests were probably advised to induce the 
soldiers, by any means whatsoever, to keep silent about what they had witnessed at the 
sepulcher. This accounts for Gamaliel's ignorance of the affair. (Compare Acts v, 39.) 
7. "But why do the apostles not appeal, in their Epistles, to what the soldiers had reported 
to the Sanhedrim as the most conclusive proof of the resurrection?" Because they stood 
in no need whatever of such a proof. The apostles very naturally appealed to what they 
had seen themselves, not to what the Jewish Sanhedrim had heard from some Boman 
soldiers. 8. "Why do they not appeal to this report of the soldiers, at least before the 
Sanhedrim?" This they might, and probably would have done, if the Sanhedrim had 
dared to contradict their testimony about the resurrection of their Master. (Acts iv, 10.) 
But the Sanhedrim did not dare to do this, (verse 14;) and so we find also in Acts (ii and 
v) that no one dared to contradict the fact of the resurrection. And because the Sanhe- 
drim did not dare to contradict the fact of the resurrection, the account of Matthew must 
be true. 9. "If this had really happened, the other Evangelists would not have passed 
by so important a testimony." This last objection is as futile as all the others. Accord- 
ing to this reasoning every fact recorded by only one Evangelist must be rejected. That 
Matthew recorded this fact was quite in keeping with the whole scope and character of 
his Gospel. For it was of especial importance for the Jewish Christians, for whom Mat- 
thew wrote his Gospel, and in full accordance with his purpose, to delineate fully the 
wicked opposition of the Jewish hierarchy. 

"Verses 11 — IS. 

(11) ISTow when they were going, behold, some of the watch came into the city, 
and shewed unto the chief-priests all the things that were done. (12) And when 
they were assembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large money 
unto the soldiers, (13) saying, Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole him 
away while we slept. (14) And if this come to the governor's ears, we will per- 
suade him, and secure you. (15) So they took the money, and did as they were 
taught : and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day. 



Verse 11. Some of the watch . . . shewed unto 
the chief-priests all the things that were done. 
"The ecclesiastical authorities who had put Christ to 
death were to receive official information of his res- 
urrection in a manner chosen by themselves. But 
these authorities suppressed this information by set- 
ting on foot and permitting an immense fraud, and 
God left to this work of infamy its free course, 
because the message of the resurrection was to 
spread, not in the form of human but Divine cer- 
tainty." (Lange.) 

Verses 12-15. "What a contrast does this narra- 
tive form with the one going before ! There truth, 
here falsehood ; there the hero appearing in the 
glory of his superabundantly-proven innocence, 
here the priesthood frightened and convicted of their 
crime; there the joy of victory in the disciples, 
here confusion and perplexity; there free ministers 
of truth, here bribed servants of falsehood ; there 
heroic women, here fleeing soldiers. The apparent 
defeat of the Lord is converted into the most glori- 
ous triumph, and the apparent triumph of his ene- 
mies into the most disgraceful defeat. In order to 
destroy the incontrovertible testimony of the most 



glorious miracle, the enemies of Christ resort to the 
most absurd lie, which, like all opposition to truth, is 
refuted by its own self-contradiction." — The absurd- 
ity and self-contradiction of the expedient upon 
which the Sanhedrim hit, in their perplexity, is gen- 
erally supposed to consist in this, that the soldiers at 
the grave recognized the disciples in their sleep, and 
yet suffered the theft to take place. But this is not 
the worst of it, as the assertion of the theft might 
possibly be predicated on this or that circumstance. 
The evident absurdity of the charge lies in a num- 
ber of other points; namely, that the whole Roman 
guard should have committed the crime, punishable 
with death, of falling asleep at their posts; that they 
should not have been awakened, even by the rolling 
away of the huge stone, in time to secure the robbers 
of the dead body ; that the disheartened disciples, 
who had given up all hope that their crucified Mas- 
ter would redeem Israel, should have ventured upon 
this hazardous undertaking in bright moonlight — 
for during the Passover the moon was always full — 
add to this that the disciples could have no possible 
motive to say that their Master had risen from the 
dead, if they were persuaded that he was still in the 



APPEARANCE OF THE LORD IN GALILEE.— THE GREAT COMMISSION. 



637 



embrace of death. No wonder that the priests did 
not dare to bring a charge against the soldiers for 
having slept at their post, or against the disciples 
for having stolen the body! No wonder that in all 
the hearings which the apostles had before the San- 
hedrim, on account of proclaiming the resurrection 
of Christ, no more is said of this foolish lie! With- 



out daring to contradict the testimony of the infant 
Church boldly and publicly, the Jewish hierarchy had 
this absurd charge clandestinely spread among the 
Jews, as Justin and Tertullian have proved, and this 
base lie was, as it were, the germ of the Talmud, 
which, by its absurd fables, has kept the cheated 
Jews u to this day from embracing their Messiah. 



§81. APPEARANCE OF THE LORD ON A MOUNTAIN IN GALILEE, — THE 

GREAT COMMISSION. 

That which Matthew records of the resurrection of the Lord forms a well-arranged 
and finished whole, and perfectly corresponds with the whole character of his Gospel. 
He describes the royal power of the risen Savior, "how the storms of earth and the 
angels of heaven minister unto him, (vs. 1-10;) how neither the seal of the Jews nor the 
arms of the Eomans hinder him, (vs. 11-15;) how he thus foils b}^ his resurrection the 
defiance of his enemies, and rekindles the hope of his desponding friends; how his power 
is unlimited in heaven and upon earth, and how he sends his apostles, in the name of the 
Triune God, with the message of salvation into all the world, certain in advance of the 
homage of all the world, and promising to his disciples, notwithstanding his impending 
departure, his everlasting, protecting, and consoling presence, (vs. 16-20.)" (Lange.) 

The appearance of the Lord on the mountain of Galilee is undoubtedly identical with 
the same of which Paul says, (1 Cor. xv, 6,) that there were five hundred brethren pres- 
ent, most of whom were still living when the apostle wrote his Epistle. That there were 
others present than the eleven, Matthew himself indicates clearly enough, partly by the 
remark of verse 17, "but some doubted" which we can not possibly understand of the 
apostles, to all of whom the Lord had already appeared in Jerusalem ; partly in verses 7 
and 10, where the promise is given that the Lord would appear unto all the brethren and 
women in Galilee; and Matthew did certainly not intend to make the impression that 
this promise was fulfilled only as far as the eleven were concerned. But why he men- 
tions the apostles alone is not difficult to explain. They are the leaders of the whole 
body of the disciples that were summoned to Galilee. As it is the main object of Mat- 
thew to show how Jesus, after he had been rejected by Israel after the flesh, exhibited 
himself after his resurrection as the founder of a spiritual kingdom that embraces all 
nations, he emphatically mentioned only the eleven, through whose apostolic mission 
this kingdom was to be established. Whatever is not necessarily connected with this, 
his main theme, he omits. The appearance vouchsafed to the women he mentions, as it 
seems, only for the purpose of giving to his readers a summary account of the first an- 
nouncement of the Lord's resurrection, and to explain to them how the disciples came to 
Galilee. At the same time he gives us to understand that there were other appearances 
besides those recorded by him. For he says, in verse 16, that the eleven met on the 
mountain, where Jesus had appointed them; but, in verses 7 and 9, he had spoken only of a 
general order not to stay in Jerusalem, but to return to Galilee. It is self-evident that 
the disciples, scattered all over Galilee, without any previous revelation and order, could 
not, of their own accord, have met at a certain time and at a certain place, in order to 
wait there for another appearance of Christ. Thus it appears, from Matthew himself, that 
the Lord must have appeared unto the apostles after their return to Galilee, in order to 
give them the direction mentioned in verse 16. This meeting is described by John, (chap, 
xxi,) on which occasion the Lord may have commissioned one of the apostles to assemble 
the disciples on a certain mountain. — The relation which this section bears to Mark xvi, 
15, 16, we shall examine when we come to the latter place. 



638 



MATTHEW XXVIII, 16-20. 



Verses 1C— SO. 

(16) Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where 
Jesus had appointed them. (17) And when they saw him, they worshiped him : 
hut some doubted. (18) And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power 
is given unto me in heaven and in earth. (19) Go ye therefore, and teach all 
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost : (20) Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have com- 
manded you : and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. 
Amen. 



Verse 16. Into a mountain, where. The Evan- 
gelist tells us that Jesus had designated some mount- 
ain to the disciples, without naming either the locality 
or time. It is needless to inquire what mountain it 
was. We know nothing about it. The appointment 
was most probably made at the meeting of Jesus 
with the seven disciples at the lake of Tiberias. 

Verse 17. And when they saw him, they wor- 
shiped him. "The faith in the Divinity of Christ 
that existed during the time of his sojourn on earth, 
as it were only as a spark in the breast of his disci- 
ples, was kindled into a blazing flame by the sight 
of the risen Savior." (Gerlach.) — But some doubt- 
ed. "We can not believe that any of the eleven 
apostles should have doubted, especially after all 
that had taken place according to Luke and John. 
Matthew gives us in this circumstance an intimation 
that many others were present with the eleven. But 
lohat did they doubt? We say with Ebrard, 'not 
whether Christ was risen, but whether the person 
they saw was Christ.' For although they had fol- 
lowed the summons to the mountain, and had 
been in the company of the apostles and brethren 
who had already seen the Lord, they might when 
they themselves saw him at first, especially if stand- 
ing at a distance, distrust their eyes in astonishment, 
or fail to believe at once, simply through wonder and 
joy." (Stier.) But Lange refers their doubts to 
the propriety of extending Divine adoration to him, 
such as was implied in the disciples' prostration 
before him, and finds in these doubts the germ of 
Ebionitism, as we see it subsequently developed 
among the Jewish Christians. 

Verse 18. And Jesus came, etc. ; that is, he came 
nearer to them and conversed with them. This and 
his powerful words were sufficient to dispel all doubts, 
of whatever kind they might be. — All power is 

GIVEN UNTO ME IN HEAVEN AND IN EARTH. In 

these words the God-man, as he stood before his 
disciples, claims supreme power over the whole uni- 
verse! Heaven is mentioned first, as the origin, 
ground, and seat of his dominion. From heaven, 
whither he will shortly go, he will send down his 
Spirit in holy influence and government. But he 
has also power in heaven (comp. Eph. i, 20-22; 



Col. ii, 10; 1 Pet. iii, 22.) All the angels worship 
him, even as man upon earth. " In or on earth " refers 
back to Dun. vii, 13, 14, and means his government 
over all nations on earth. Yet in his humanity, 
though that humanity was now glorified, he says "is 
given unto me." In a certain sense it was, indeed, 
given to the Son from all eternity, (Matt, xi, 27,) 
but by his incarnation he had emptied himself, 
(Phil, ii, 7,) so far as was necessary for his human 
nature. This state of humiliation is now at an 
end ; by his resurrection he has entered upon the 
state of exaltation. (Eph. i, 20-22; Phil, ii, 9-11.) 
His supreme Divinity he declares in his commission 
to baptize, representing himself as one Being with the 
Father and the Holy Ghost. 

Verses 19, 20. Therefore. This particle is want- 
ing in most manuscripts, but is required by the con- 
text, because the Divine majesty of Christ is the 
ground of both his sending his apostles, and of their 
entering upon their mission. The Lord's deduction, 
however, from his absolute and supreme power, must 
be especially considered. He does not say, because 
all power is given unto me, therefore go and reduce 
by force of arms the whole world to a state of sub- 
jection unto me. He exercises his power only in 
accordance with the free will of man in the kingdom 
of grace. — Teach all nations, baptizing them. 
It is much to be regretted that these important 
words are not translated more faithfully in our 
authorized version. In the original nothing is 
more plain than that the "teaching" of verse 19 is 
not identical with that of verse 20, as there are 
different words used with different meaning. A 
literal rendering would be: " Make disciples of all 
nations, baptizing them." . That "make disciples of" 
is a correct translation of /j.a-$7jTei>oaTe is admitted 
also by those who quote this text against infant bap- 
tism. But they argue thus : " As an adult can not 
be made a disciple by baptism without previous 
instruction, so a child can not. As, according to 
Mark xvi, 16, faith must precede baptism, so the 
making of disciples without previous instruction is 
out of the question in this place; the conditions of 
baptism are repentance and faith. Infants are una- 
ble either to repent or to believe, and therefore 



APPEARANCE OF THE LORD IN GALILEE.— THE GREAT COMMISSION. 639 



they can not be made disciples of Christ." To the 
objection urged against this reasoning, that infants 
would thereby be also excluded from heaven, faith 
and repentance being likewise the condition of sal- 
vation, the Baptists reply, that the Lord here does 
not speak of salvation, but of the mode of receiving 
men into his Church upon earth. They say, there- 
fore, that the question is not as to whether infants 
can be saved, but whether infants can become mem- 
bers of the visible Church. We admit this, but, in 
order to answer this question, another question must 
be asked and answered ; namely, Was there no 
Church of God on earth previous to the command 
of Christ given to his apostles to teach and baptize 
all nations ? If this were the case, then, indeed, an 
express command of Christ would be necessary to 
baptize children. On this point the whole question 
of infant baptism turns, and it will be fully consid- 
ered in the Dissertation on Baptism, which follows 
our comment on this section. Here we deem it suf- 
ficient to say that we consider the Church of the 
New Testament to be a continuation of the Church 
of God in the Old Testament, on the following 
grounds: 1. On account of the many promises con- 
cerning the Church of God in the Old Testament, 
(Deut, xviii, 15; Isa. ii, 2; lx, 1-5.) 2. Onaccountof 
what the apostles say of the Church of Christ, (Eph. 
ii, 18-20; iii, 6; Gal. iii, 29.) 3. On account of the 
nature and the design of the Church, (1 Pet. i, 12; 
ii, 5, 6; John i, 45 ; viii, 56; 1 Cor. x, 4; Matt, xxii, 
36-40.) In the light of these Scripture passages we 
maintain that Christ, in commanding his apostles to 
make disciples of all nations, and to baptize them in 
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost, extended the limits of the Church of 
God; it is no longer to be confined to the Jewish 
nation, (Acts xv, 14; comp. also the prior instruc- 
tion given to the disciples, Matt, x, 5, 6,) but is to 
receive all nations into its bosom. The heathen 
are, as Paul expresses it, to be grafted in and to 
partake of the root and fatness of the olive-tree, 
(Rom. xi, 17.) Again, Christ institutes a new rite 
for receiving members into his Church, baptism in 
place of circumcision. Now, if the Church of the 
New Testament was to differ from the Old Testa- 
ment Church with regard to the incorporation of 
children, would the Lord not have called the atten- 
tion of his disciples — who had been received into the 
Church of God as infants themselves — to this im- 
portant and radical change, and thus have guarded 
them and the believers of all subsequent ages 
against error and misunderstanding ? And this 
the more, as the Jews of those days were accus- 
tomed to receive into their Church even the children 
of such heathens as joined the Jewish Church ; so 
firmly was the principle rooted, that the children of 
believing parents must be incorporated into the 
family of the covenant people of God. " Is it a 
thing in itself probable," says Stier, " nay, is it a 
thing conceivable, that at the time when our Lord is 



contemplating the ground, procedure, and economy 
of his whole Church down to the end of the world, 
and giving for that purpose his final and decisive 
commissions and promises, he should not think of 
the difficult question, What is to be done with the 
children of the converted nations? — that children, 
whom he had blessed, should now be so entirely left 
out of sight as to be neither excluded from nor in- 
cluded in the arrangements of that great benedic- 
tion which he is now establishing?" To the objec- 
tion, that if Christ had instituted baptism in the 
place of circumcision, the apostles could not have 
been in doubt as to whether heathens were also to 
be circumcised or not, Lange remarks very cor- 
rectly : " The question as to how heathens were to 
be received into the Church, was not then answered ; 
yet the unconditional reception of believers is im- 
plied in the command, that the nations are to be 
converted to Christianity as nations, not first to be 
made Jews, and then Christians by baptism — on 
which account there was no need of making any 
mention of circumcision. The fuller light upon this 
point the Lord left to the future guidance of the 
Spirit." But to return to the main question, How is 
the discipling of nations to be effected ? The be- 
ginning must, of course, be made with individual 
adults, to whom the Gospel must be preached, pre- 
viously to baptism, as we learn from the commission, 
recorded by Mark. But, as in Matthew x, 12, 13, 
the Lord had already multitudes and families in 
his eye, and not merely individuals, so he now, 
in a great prophetic contemplation of the histoi-y of 
the world and of the Church, looks upon and em- 
braces the nations of the earth as extended families. 
Household and family bonds should not continue to 
be rent as at the beginning, but the people should be 
won and brought into the state of discipleship, as an 
extended family. Christianity was not designed to 
be a thing limited to individuals ; the consecration 
of a nation proceeds from the families, as the con- 
secration of families does from individuals. In 
the family rests the root of the natural life, which 
the Church must reach and work upon ; and as cer- 
tainly as Christ's object was not to pluck up these 
roots of human development, so certainly he must 
have designed infant baptism. — Against those who 
refuse to perceive in the command our Lord gave to 
his disciples any binding ordinance for future times, 
Stier says: "If the general commandment in Mat- 
thew were not sufficient to establish the permanent 
obligation of baptism by water, indubitable testi- 
mony is borne by Mark (xvi, 16.) God had from 
the times of the Gentile and Jewish washings pre- 
pared the way gradually for the expressive symbol ; 
. . . and the baptism of John did not belong to the 
transitory ordinances of the Old Testament; but it 
was a type and commencement of the New Testa- 
ment ordinance. . . . Let it be observed that the 
Supper and baptism are the only two command- 
ments and ordinances connected with an external 



640 



MATTHEW XXVIII, 16-20. 



thing, which he leaves behind to his Church ! As 
those who already belong to him, being his disciples, 
remember him and partake of him in the sacrament 
of the Lord's Supper; so was it necessary that the 
young discipleship should have an external mark of 
their acceptance into it, although this baptism must, 
of course, according to the power and reality of the 
New Testament, bring much more than a mere sign 
of profession." On the mode, the subjects, and the 
significance of baptism the reader is referred to the 
Dissertation at the close of this chapter. — All 
nations. " By this term, certainly all the Gentiles 
are first meant; so that the limitation of chapter x, 
5, 6, is now expressly withdrawn. It implies that all 
nations were essentially ripe for the Gospel when the 
Lord uttered his commission to the apostles, and the 
Church ever since has had no authority to deny the 
Gospel to any people on earth. The great commis- 
sion compels us, on the contrary, to perpetual, new 
endeavors ; it commands us to announce a mani- 
fested and present salvation in places and among 
people where the abominations of fetish superstition 
have assumed developments removed to the very 
utmost from the spirit of the Gospel. Our lofty con- 
fidence that nations may, by our preaching, make 
the one leap from the lowest to the highest, may ap- 
pear in the eyes of speculative reason sheer folly ; but 
our faith knows that the Lord of heaven and earth 
has gifts and graces which can outrun all natural 
processes of development. From 'all nations' Is- 
rael is not to be excluded. According to Luke, (xxiv, 
47,) the preaching among all nations was to begin 
at Jerusalem ; according to Acts i, 8, they were 
to be his witnesses to Jerusalem, and throughout 
Judea and Samaria, and thence to the ends of the 
earth. But it is significant that in this wide glance 
Israel, unclothed of his prerogative, is no longer 
specifically named, but merged in the new and uni- 
versal people or 'nation bringing forth the fruits 
thereof,' (chap, xxi, 43; Acts xv, 14.) — As it re- 
spects the Jewish Mission, the great apostle to the 
Gentiles has most expressly witnessed, by word and 
deed, that it must go on parallel with that of the 
Gentiles to the end of the age, inasmuch as God has 
not rejected his people, (Rom. xi, 13, 14.)" (Stier.) 
— In the name, e\g to bvo,ua, that is, into the name. 
The Baptists appeal to this preposition as a proof 
that fla-KTit^uv must here have the meaning of im- 
mersing. But etc has not always the meaning of 
"into;" it also denotes an end or object, as in Mat- 
thew iii, 11, elt; /jsravotav, unto repentance, and in Acts 
ii, 38, £(f aQeaiv, for the remission. The person bap- 
tized is handed over and consecrated to the Father, 
Son, and Holy Ghost, in order to realize in his per- 
son the saving and sanctifying influences of the 
three persons of the adorable Trinity. Meyer says: 
" By being baptized in the name of the Triune God, 
man assumes the obligation to make the name of 
the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost the object of his 
faith and confession. Thus the Corinthians were 



not baptized in the name of Paul, (1 Cor. i, 13,) be- 
cause the object of their faith and confession was 
not to be Paul, but Jesus Christ." — Of the Father, 
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. " This is 
the only passage in the Gospels in which the Lord 
himself named the three persons together. He had, 
indeed, in many passages spoken of both the Son 
and the Holy Ghost, as Divine personalities; but 
here they are placed side by side of each other, and 
the three together are represented as the God whom 
the believer obligates himself to serve by his bap- 
tism. The term 'person,' used by the Church, 
labors under some inconvenience, and can easily 
mislead. There is, however, no term in human 
language by which the coexistence of identity in 
being or substance with individual self-consciousness 
in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost could be more ap- 
propi-iately set forth, and no fault must, therefore, 
be found with the Fathers of the Church for making 
use of this term, but rather with the insufficiency of 
human language to express adequately by precise 
terms the absolutely-highest relations which sancti- 
fied reason alone can approach by intuition. The 
error to which the term ' person ' easily misleads, 
but against which all the Fathers of deeper penetra- 
tion have scrupulously labored to guard, is to con- 
ceive of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as being 
locally distinguished from each other and acting 
separately each for himself, while they must be con- 
ceived of as constantly interpenetrating each other." 
(Olshausen.) The proper place for a full discussion 
on the doctrine of the adorable Trinity is not here, 
but John i, 1. We confine ourselves, therefore, to a 
few remarks: 1. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost must 
be, linguistically, taken as distinct subjects be- 
cause the term " name," followed by a genitive, is 
always used of persons. 2. They must be equal, 
consequently Divine persons, because they are co- 
ordinated, and supreme adoration is vindicated to 
each of them. Even Julian the Apostate under- 
stood the passage in this sense, and hence charged 
the Christians with polytheism. 3. The unity or 
oneness of the three persons is emphatically taught 
by the singular of "name," it being said "in the 
name," not "in the names." As at the baptism of 
Christ the three persons of the Trinity revealed 
themselves for the first time fully as the Triune God, 
so baptism is to be administered — but not before the 
day of Pentecost — in the name of the Father, who 
has revealed himself in sending his Son — of the Son, 
declared to be such with power by his resurrection 
from the dead — and of the Holy Ghost, who was 
soon to be imparted. On the ground that, in 
Acts ii, 38, baptism in the name of Jesus is men- 
tioned, it has been called in question whether the 
Lord intended here to give us the words with which 
baptism is to be administered. But there is no 
reason to doubt this ; the expression in the Acts is 
simply a brief designation of Christian baptism in 
distinction from the various Jewish baptisms — the 



A DISSERTATION ON CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. 



641 



name of Christ presupposing that of the Father and 
of the Holy Ghost. — Teaching them. All that are 
baptized, adults as well as infants, stand in need of 
this teaching, which is to be distinguished from the 
preaching of the Gospel, that necessarily precedes 
the baptism of adults. The first "them" in the 
text takes the individuals, both adults and infants, 
from out of the mass of the people for baptism ; 
while the second "them" refers to those who had 
become disciples and were baptized. Thus we have, 
in this "teaching them," the institution of the office 
of teaching or preaching for the baptized, whether 
adults or infants. With the commission given to 
the apostles, the Lord, at the same time, instituted 
the Christian ministry, with its twofold work of mak- 
ing disciples and of building up the disciples in the 
faith. The one is the missionary, the other the 
pastoral work of the Church. But the two are 
mutually so blended with each other, that they can 
not be separated — the end again and again becoming 
the beginning — and the interpenetration of the two 
is to continue in the Church till ifs final consumma- 
tion, till the disciples actually keep and fulfill all 
the commandments delivered to their obedience. 
(Thoughts of Stier condensed and modified.) — To 

OBSERVE ALL THINGS WHATSOEVER I HAVE COMMANDED 

You. " That which the Lord himself commanded 
and committed to his disciples, is to be taught and 
handed down, that men may hold it fast and act ac- 
cording to it — nothing more, and nothing different ! 
He, therefore, refuses his sanction and promise to all 
ordinances of men which depart from his precepts, 
while all that is needful for the instruction and edifi- 
cation of the Church will be pointed out by his Spirit 
and drawn from his words. Again, all that was 
committed to the first disciples applies at the same 
time to all disciples. Whoever in all nations will be, 
let him be my disciple, like yourselves I Every com- 
mission from my Father to you is also for them ; ye 
shall not keep back from them any one of my say- 
ings and blessings. Give them to keep, to under- 
stand, to believe, to do all that I have given to you ! 
Finally, it was obviously intended that they should 
also impose the commission which they had just now 
received, as binding; they were to say to all who 
followed, and those again to succeeding ones, in his 
name— Go ye forth, convert the nations, baptize, and 
teach ! Every man must in his degree enter into the 
great work, when and as far ps he feels his own in- 
terest in it; and this explains to us how the Lord 
could say to those he first addressed, ' I am with 
you unto the end of the world !' " (Stier.) — And lo, 
I am with you\ " His power preceded as the ground 
and authority of all, the promised aid of his mighty 
presence closes the whole. Would he send them 
forth into all the world, and not himself be with and 
in all his messengers in all places ? As before 
Omnipotence, so now Omnipresence is imputed to 
the Lord by himself. He is with his disciples — for 
their strength, their defense, their assistance, their 



light, and their life — in various ways, and by the 
medium of various instrumentalities ; yet in all 
these, and every-where, as the personal I. This 
holds good to a certain extent of every believer in 
his own individual person ; more particularly of 
every little company united in his name, (chap. 
xviii, 20;) and most fully of his whole Church, of 
his entire people among the nations, as essentially 
fulfilling the Old Testament promise. (See Levit. 
xxvi, 11, 12; comp. 2 Cor. vi, 16.) In this sense he 
makes the collective body of his true disciples, and 
even every individual among them, as far as he is 
such, infallible. The perversion of this truth is the 
Romish doctrine, that ' the bishops assembled under 
their head, [the Pope — instead of the Church gath- 
ered in the name of Christ,] are infallible, whether 
assembled in one place or dispersed over all the 
earth.' The Almighty and All-present needs no rep- 
resentative or deputy on earth. Only those among 
whom and with whom he is in truth, convert and 
teach others again, that they may become disciples. 
When he said, ' Behold, I am with you alway,' he 
had not been visibly present with them during all 
the forty days ; and yet it was plain in his visits that 
he had been virtually always with them. After 
his ascension, and before his second coming, they 
were not to look again for his visible appearance, 
neither on a mountain, nor any where else, but 
wherever those who go forth to fulfill his commis- 
sion iire found in all the earth, there he is. This 
word, consequently, announces and includes the as- 
cension ; hence St. Matthew closes with this word, 
instead of giving the external narrative of the as- 
cension, which from this declaration must have been 
self-evident to all." (Condensed and transposed 
from Stier.) — Alway — literally all days. "By this 
term are not only all the years to the end of time 
characterized as years of salvation, but also all the 
days, even the darkest, appear as days of salvation." 
(Lange.) — Even unto the end of the world; that 
is, "unto the completion of this ason, which takes 
place with the second advent of Christ, and involves, 
at the same time, the end of the world. These words 
contain also the promise, that the Lord goes with 
his servants, who preach the Gospel, to the extreme 
limits of the world." (Lange.) As certainly as the 
Lord speaks of historical days, just so certainly does 
he testify, that a historically-impending end, a last 
day, will come. 



A DISSERTATION ON 
BAPTISM. 



CHRISTIAN 



41 



Reluctant as we may feel to enter upon the dis- 
cussion of controverted points — on which the pro- 
foundest scholars, most acute thinkers, and Chris- 
tians of unquestioned piety and sincerity have taken 
opposite sides, and on which volumes after volumes 
have been written without effecting, in general, a 



642 



MATTHEW XXVIII, 16-2U. 



radical change of previous conviction on the sub- 
ject — nevertheless, the doctrinal character of this 
Commentary imperatively demands an answer to 
two questions: 1. Is infant baptism Scriptural? 2. 
Does the Greek word paTrri&cv mean exclusively to 
immerse, or is the administration of baptism by other 
modes of applying the water in this ordinance con- 
sistent with the legitimate meaning of this Greek 
verb? We will endeavor to answer these questions 
as impartially as one can who does not hold a neu- 
tral position, but has conscientiously arrived at con- 
clusions that appear to his own mind satisfactory — 
candidly stating the opposite arguments and eschew- 
ing all unauthorized deductions and imputations too 
frequently made in this controversy on both sides; 
such, for instance, as the charge of the pedobaptists 
against the Baptists, that to deny baptism to their 
children is to withhold from them Christian nurture 
and education, or the charge of the Baptists against 
the pedobaptist Churches that the purity of the 
Church is inconsistent with the practice of infant 
baptism. 

ON INFANT BAPTISM. 

Impartial men on both sides will concede that 
there are no passages in the New Testament from 
which we can draw any direct and positive proof 
either for or against the practice of infant bap- 
tism by the apostles. While Baptists rely an the 
silence of the New Testament concerning the bap- 
tism of infants, pedobaptists appeal to the mention 
of whole households as implying it, urging, moreover, 
that the very silence of the New Testament is a 
proof for infant baptism, because infants had been 
incorporated into the Jewish Church by circumcis- 
ion, and a change of their relation to the New Test- 
ament Church would have required a positive decla- 
ration on the part of Christ and his apostles. But all 
arguments for or against infant baptism having 
been practiced by the apostles are more or less con- 
jectural, and can only be used as collateral evidence. 
The question itself turns upon what the New Testa- 
ment teaches as to the nature of baptism itself. 
According to the conception formed of the nature 
of baptism will be the interpretations of the passages 
on the ground of which it is both asserted and de- 
nied that infant baptism was practiced in the apos- 
tolic Church. We have, therefore, first of all to 
examine the various views which have been drawn 
from the New Testament concerning the nature of 
baptism. The limits of our present investigation do 
not permit a specific exposition of every passage that 
has a bearing upon the subject, and whether the re- 
sults at which we shall arrive are consistent with all 
the passages of the New Testament that treat of bap- 
tism will, of course, be left to the reader to decide. 

Let us, then, consider each of the several views 
as to the nature of Christian baptism, on which the 
Christian world bases the bestowing or withholding 
of this rite from infants. 



I. It is not only the doctrine of the Roman Cath- 
olic Church, but also that of some Protestant denom- 
inations, that baptism is the necessary means of re- 
generation. For a refutation of this doctrine, we 
need not examine here those passages that are 
generally appealed to. (John iii, 5; Eph. v, 26; 
Tit. iii, 5.) That these passages do not make re- 
generation depend upon baptism, is apparent from 
the following considerations. 1. If regeneration de- 
pended upon baptism it is hard to see why the Lord 
should not have designated the unbaptized as well 
as the unbelievers as those that "shall be damned." 
(Mark xvi, 16.) 2. If the apostle Paul had consid- 
ered baptism as a necessary means of salvation, he 
would not have thanked God for having baptized at 
Corinth no one except Crispus and Gaius. (1 Cor. 
i, 14.) 3. The assertion that baptism and regenera- 
tion are inseparably connected, is refuted by exam- 
ples of conversion and regeneration preceding bap- 
tism recorded in Acts, as well as by the case of Simon 
the sorcerer, who was baptized without having ever 
been regenerated in heart. 4. The notion of a be- 
ing transferred from the bondage of sin into the 
liberty of the children of God by baptism, or of the 
application of water being necessary for the remis- 
sion of sins, is contrary to the whole tenor and spirit 
of the Gospel, by which we are taught that as the 
blood of Christ is the only meritorious cause of the 
romission of sins, so faith is the only condition of 
our justification. — Now, it is clear, that, if regen- 
eration is to depend on baptism, as is held by 
the largest portion of the Christian Church, in- 
fant baptism can not be maintained for a mo- 
ment. " Regeneration in an unconscious state," 
says Dr. Ebrard, " is impossible ; Christ enters into 
the hearts of men only in the light of his grace, and 
experience teaches that the baptized child is as well 
an heir to sin as the unbaptized, being even subject 
to special vicious tempers inherited from parents or 
grandparents, and that it can be set free from the 
bondage of sinful propensities only by a self-con- 
scious repentance and conversion." Still stronger 
is the language used by Dr. Schenkel in his " ®og- 
matif:" "If any proposition is beyond dispute, it 
is this, that the personal, self-conscious spirit of God 
savingly operates only on the personal, self-conscious 
spirit of man. For this reason we feel constrained to 
concede to the opponents of infant baptism without 
any reservation, that upon the newly-born, uncon- 
scious infant no effect whatever is produced through 
baptism, neither by means of the water, nor by that 
of the Word, nor by the Holy Ghost; and this is 
confirmed by the fact that no child has a personal 
recollection of his baptism and, much less, of having 
been regenerated through baptism. The idea, that 
by means of baptism a spiritual germ is implanted 
into the soul of the child, or that an unconscious 
faith is produced there which is afterward developed 
into consciousness is equally untenable, and ought 
to be carefully guarded against. 



A DISSERTATION ON CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. 



643 



II. In diametrical opposition to the old Church- 
doctrine, that regeneration is the necessary effect of 
the act of baptism, the Baptists insist upon regener- 
ation, or faith connected with genuine repentance 
and wrought by the Holy Ghost, as the necessary 
condition of Christian baptism. According to this 
view baptism is the external sign and seal of an 
inward work of grace, and the Divinely-appointed 
act by which believers alone can be received as 
members of the visible Church. It is obvious that, 
according to this view, the baptism of infant chil- 
dren, that are not only incapable of believing, but 
have no consciousness at all of what is done with 
them in baptism, is both meaningless and unscrip- 
tural. Baptists appeal mainly to the words of 
Christ, (Mark xvi, 15. 16 :) "Go ye into all the world 
and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that 
helieveih and is baptized, shall be saved ; but he that 
believeth not, shall be damned." Here the Lord 
makes preaching the necessary condition of faith, 
and faith the necessary condition of baptism. It 
can not be denied that we find in the recorded prac- 
tice of the apostles faith uniformly preceding bap- 
tism. When the Jews, on the day of Pentecost, 
were pricked in their hearts by the preaching of 
Peter, and asked the apostles what they must do in 
order to be saved, Peter answered unto them, that 
they must be converted and be baptized in the name 
of the Lord Jesus for the remission of their sins ; 
and they were not baptized before they had received 
the Word in faith. Those, also, that heard Philip 
preach at Samaria, believed first and were then bap- 
tized. In like manner, the Ethiopian eunuch did 
not receive baptism before he had made confession 
of his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; so Saul of 
Tarsus and Cornelius. That the apostles baptized 
no adults without previous faith, is not called into 
question. But does the fact that adults were not 
baptized without faith in Jesus Christ, warrant the 
conclusion that the visible Church of the New Testa- 
ment did not receive infants by baptism into her 
bosom, as well as the Church of God in the Old Testa- 
ment had received them through circumcision ? In 
proof that the apostles uniformly represented in 
their teachings baptism as connected with saving 
faith, those passages in the apostolic Epistles are ap- 
pealed to, in which the apostles represent believers 
" as cleansed with the washing of water by the 
Word," (Eph. v, 26,) as "saved by the washing of 
regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost," (Tit. 
iii, 5;) those that were baptized as "having put on 
Christ," (Gal. iii, 27,) "as baptized into his death," 
(Rom. vi, 3,) as "buried with him in baptism," (Col. 
ii, 12,) and baptism itself as "the answer of a good 
conscience toward God," (1 Pet. iii, 21.) It is not 
necessary to enter here upon an examination of 
these passages for the purpose of showing that the 
state of grace described therein in connection with 
baptism is on this account not inseparably connected 
with the act of baptism. We are not disposed to call 



into question that, for the most part, those that 
were baptized by the apostles really put on Christ 
and realized the renewing of the Holy Ghost. But 
does this warrant the conclusion of the Baptists, that 
only converted and regenerate persons may be re- 
ceived into the Church by baptism ? Which human 
tribunal is competent to decide whether the applicant 
for baptism is really converted and regenerated? 
Had regeneration been the condition of baptism 
laid down by the apostles, Philip — whom we must 
suppose to have possessed the gift of discerning 
the Spirit — would never have baptized Simon the 
sorcerer. The error of the Baptists appears to us to 
lie in this, that they confound the visible and the in- 
visible Church, making the first to consist of regen- 
erate persons exclusively. 

li'I. A middle ground between baptismal regenera- 
tion and the fundamental principle upon which the 
Baptists base their views, has been sought by maintain- 
ing that baptism, according to its true and original 
design, is the sign and seal of regeneration, but that 
regeneration is realized only in the adult believer, 
while in the infant it is simply incipient. This 
view is thus represented by Dr. Ebrard (St)riftlia)e 
Dogmattf, p. 621:) "Baptism has originally the de- 
sign that the adult that has become a believer in the 
Gospel and has thereby been brought to repentance, 
be regenerated in baptism. The infant, however, 
is not regenerated in baptism, but only implanted 
into the body of Christ — the Church — and brought 
under the mediate and immediate influences of pre- 
venting and preserving grace. This implanting of 
the infant into the Church we may consider as the 
prevenient act of the regenerating grace flowing 
from the Head of the Church, and compare it to a 
gardener's planting a little tree, too young to be 
grafted, in the nursery, where, by good soil and the 
very best attention, it is prepared for grafting, which 
act of the gardener may be called the beginning of 
the grafting process itself. Infant baptism is, there- 
fore, a modification of baptism, not contrary to its 
original design." But we ask, where is the Scrip- 
tural warrant for thus modifying the original design 
of a Divine institution, and to ascribe to baptism 
two different designs; namely, that of regeneration 
in adults, and that of simply implanting into the 
nursery of the Church with regard to infants ? On 
such a ground, infant baptism can not be justified. 
We have no right to administer baptism to any other 
subjects than to those in whom its true and original 
idea can be realized. Dr. Ebrard himself, as we 
have seen above, considers "regeneration impossi- 
ble in an unconscious state." We can, therefore, 
consistently, do only one of two things : we must 
either maintain the connection of baptism with 
regeneration on the Baptist ground and restrict bap- 
tism to adults only; or we must disconnect the idea 
of regeneration from baptism altogether, in the 
adult as well as in the infant. This leads us to that 
view of the nature and design of baptism which 



644 



MATTHEW XXVIII, 16-20. 



appears to us the mos tenable. Baptism can not be 
the efficient cause or condition of regeneration, nor, 
on the other hand, the Divinely-appointed seal of 
a previously-wrought regeneration, for the Divine 
seal of regeneration is the testimony of the Spirit, 
not baptism. 

IV. What, then, is baptism ? However widely 
the views of the nature of baptism differ, yet 
all Christians — the Quakers alone excepted, who 
reject baptism as an outward rite altogether — con- 
cede that baptism — whatever other ideas they may 
connect with it — is the initiatory rite of the Chris- 
tian Church, and that it is the sign and seal of the 
covenant of grace. This definition of baptism, which 
we have stated for the sake of clearness in two prop- 
ositions, although they are strictly speaking identical, 
we propose now examining in detail, hoping thaClwe 
may succeed in developing from it the true, Scrip- 
tural idea of baptism : 

1. Baptism is the rite by which we are to be 
incorporated into the Church. But what have 
we to understand, in this connection, by the term 
Church ? At this point of our investigation, the 
question concerning the nature of baptism is 
changed into a question concerning the nature of 
the Church. If we understand by it the mystic 
body of which Christ is the Head, and in whose 
members the Holy Spirit dwells, the communion of 
saints in the strict sense of the word, we can enter 
it only by an inward act, faith wrought in the heart 
by the Holy Ghost. Baptism, as an outward act, 
can introduce us only into the outward communion 
of those that profess Christ; that is, the visible 
Church of Jesus Christ. The visible Church, con- 
sisting of the different Christian denominations, with 
their confessions of faith, forms of worship, and 
Church discipline, differs from the so-called invisible 
Church in this, that not all of her members are also 
members of the latter, which is the body of Jesus 
Christ. The real purpose which the different 
branches of the Christian Church subserve, is to 
win and educate men for the invisible Church, which 
consists of the regenerate exclusively. One of the 
functions of the visible Church is, besides the preach- 
ing of the Word, to administer baptism. By bap- 
tism men are to be transplanted from out of the 
world into the Church, and admitted to all privileges 
of membership on the solemn promise to cherish a 
disposition and to lead a life conformable to the 
spirit of the Gospel. In itself the act of baptism is 
a merely-outward act; an internal effect attaches to 
it only by virtue of attending circumstances, whether 
they be preceding or succeeding. That the Church 
is not justified to baptize an adult on any other con- 
dition than that of repentance toward God and faith 
in Jesus Christ, is self-evident. But on what ground 
is the Church justified in receiving infants by bap- 
tism as members into its pale ? In order to answer 
this question, we have to consider baptism, 

2. As the sign and seal of the covenant of grace, 



into which God has entered through his Son with the 
whole human race since the fall, and which he has 
fully revealed through the Gospel and commanded to 
be offered unto all nations. This universal cove- 
nant of grace was typified by the covenant which 
God made with Abraham. The promise given to 
Abraham was, that in his seed, that is, in Christ, 
(Gal. iii, 16,) all the nations of the earth should be 
blessed. As the seal of his faith in this promise, 
Abraham received the sign of circumcision and the 
command that all his male descendants should 
receive, eight days after their birth, the same sign, 
because it pleased God — passing by, for the present, 
the other nations — to make the descendants of Abra- 
ham his people ; that is, to make them partakers of 
the typical blessings of his covenant. But as soon 
as the promised Christ had come, and fulfilled all 
things that were written of him, and the blessings 
of the covenant of grace were to be offered unto all 
nations, circumcision, the sign of faith in the Mes- 
siah to come, had necessarily to cease, and in its 
place came the command, " Go and make disciples 
of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the 
Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and teach- 
ing them to observe all things whatsoever I have 
commanded you." 

Before we proceed further, let us consider the ob- 
jections made to maintaining that baptism took the 
place of circumcision as the sign of the covenant of 
grace. They are, (1.) " The Jewish Church, for which 
circumcision was instituted, was a mere national 
institution, and offered only temporal blessings." 
But how does this accord with what Paul teaches, 
(Rom. xi, 16-26,) that Israel, that is, the Jewish 
Church, those only excepted that were broken off 
because of unbelief, was the olive-tree, into which 
the converted Gentiles were grafted, and so became 
partakers of the root and fatness of the olive-tree ? 
How could the apostle have made use of this lan- 
guage, if the Jewish Church was merely a national 
institution, offering only temporal blessings? (2.) 
" If baptism had taken the place of circumcision, 
the apostle Paul would not have circumcised Tim- 
othy." The reply to this objection is, that in the 
days of the apostles circumcision was, indeed, not 
only a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, but 
was also looked upon as the national mark of a Jew. 
Now, as the apostle in his Epistles has warned the 
Churches repeatedly and most forcibly against the 
use of circumcision as the Old Testament sacra- 
ment, we must infer that he had Timothy circum- 
cised in the latter sense, in order not to wound 
the national feelings of the Jews. He made Tim- 
othy a proselyte, that he might win the Jews to 
Christ. (3.) " Admitting that the covenant with Abra- 
ham was a type of the New Testament, the seal of 
this new covenant must not be a merely emblemat- 
ical and ceremonial purification, like circumcision, 
but a real inward purification, corresponding to the 
outward sign of the water and requiring faith and 






A DISSERTATION ON CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. 



645 



repentance, and can, therefore, not be administered 
unto infants, as was circumcision." It is obvious at 
once, that this objection entirely loses sight of the 
corresponding points of comparison. Circumcision 
was the condition of admission to the enjoyment of 
all the privileges that God's covenant with Abraham 
secured to the Israelites, and, at the same time, the 
abiding sign and seal of membership in the cove- 
nant of promise. The same may be said with re- 
gard to baptism ; that the privileges and obligations 
of the members of the New Testament Church are 
greater than those in the Old Testament, does not 
alter the case. Infant children, made by Divine ap- 
pointment members of the Old Testament Church, 
were no more prepared to fulfill in their infancy the 
obligations of the covenant to which they belong, 
than infant children are in the Christian Church. 
St. Paul says that every one circumcised is bound to 
keep the whole law. Can an infant be thus bound ? 
Can an infant thus keep or break the law ? Can in- 
fants make a covenant? No more than they can 
repent and believe. If infants are not to be bap- 
tized because they can not repent and believe, nei- 
ther ought they to have been circumcised. The 
objection last named, however, leads us to a more 
thorough examination into the relation which in- 
fants bear to the covenant of grace of which bap- 
tism is the sign and seal. If circumcision and bap- 
tism are called signs and seals of a covenant, it must 
be borne in mind, that the covenant is not one that 
man makes with God, but one whose sole author is 
God; and this implies, that what God requires of 
man is based upon the preceding promise of God. 
"We see this in Abraham, the father of the faithful. 
The covenant which God made with him (Gen. xii, 
1-3) preceded his faith. It was after the Lord had 
spoken to him that he manifested his faith by obey- 
ing the Divine command, and the covenant on the 
part of God had been in force twenty and four years 
before God required of him to be circumcised him- 
self and to have all his descendants circumcised, as 
the token of the covenant which God had made with 
him and his seed. From this we see that God is 
willing to enter into a covenant with man before 
man has fulfilled the conditions which the covenant 
imposes upon him — a truth which every believer 
knows from personal experience. Without the pre- 
venient grace of God — preceding every thing that 
man does and can do — no man could exercise sav- 
ing faith. It is in accordance with this truth, that 
God required all Israelitish male children to be cir- 
cumcised on the eighth day, and thereby to be re- 
ceived into the Old Testament Church, guaranteeing 
unto them all the privileges and blessings of the 
Abrahamitic covenant, and imposing upon them all 
the obligations arising from the covenant. Why, 
then, should infants be unworthy to be received into 
the New Testament Church by baptism with the prom- 
ise of forgiveness of sins and regeneration on condi- 
tion of subsequent repentance and faith ? If such 



was not the will of Christ, is there not good reason to 
suppose that he would have expressly forbidden in- 
fant baptism, or, at least, prevented it? The ab- 
sence of such an express prohibition would necessa- 
rily have misled believing Jews and converted Gen- 
tiles. For the heathens that became converts to 
Judaism had to submit to the rite of circumcision 
with their children, and the Jews, whose children 
had always part in the covenant with God through 
circumcision, could not but expect that the new and 
perfect covenant would secure to their children the 
same privileges. Rev. J. C. F. Frey, a converted 
Israelite, says: " Of one thing I am certain: when, 
at some future day, my beloved brethren of the house 
of Judah and of Israel shall be converted to the 
Messiah and brought back into the bosom of his 
Church, they will never consent that their children 
should be deprived of their membership and be ex- 
cluded from the visible Church ! Since the days of 
Abraham their children have been members of the 
Church and participants of the seal of the covenant. 
What! would they exclaim, is the Church of the Mes- 
siah and his glorious dispensation less than our old 
Mosaic Church ? No, this can not be." If the rela- 
tion of infants to the Christian Church was to be a dif- 
ferent one from that which children bore to the patri- 
archal and the Mosaic Church, would the apostles not 
have deemed it necessary to explain and justify this 
change, and to remove the prejudices arising hence 
against the Christian Church? Instead of this the 
apostle Peter says on the day of Pentecost: "The 
promise is unto you and to your children" — -words 
which — though they admit of a different interpret- 
ation — were very well calculated to confirm the 
Jews in their belief, that their children were mem- 
bers of the covenant. That the command of the 
Lord to make disciples of all nations by baptizing 
them means more than "make in all nations disci- 
ples of those that repent and believe by baptizing 
them," will scarcely be called in question by an 
unbiased interpreter. (See note on Matt, xxviii, 19.) 
The right, yea, the solemn duty, of incorporat- 
ing children by baptism into the membership of 
the visible Church rests, moreover, as we have seen 
in Matt, xix, 14, on our Lord's declaration: " Of 
such is the kingdom of heaven." If an infant inca- 
pable of believing can have part in Christ, the head, 
it can also have part in his body, the Church. A 
child of believing parents, a child that sees the light 
of the world in the Church, is entitled by his very 
birth to baptism, has an inalienable claim upon the 
Church and the Church upon the child. The bap- 
tism of a child is the sacramental recognition of its 
share in the universal redemption through Jesus 
Christ, a sign and seal, that by virtue of this redemp- 
tion it is accepted of God during the period of in- 
fancy and irresponsible childhood, and an heir of 
eternal life ; and — in so far as baptism constitutes the 
very beginning of salvation, the entrance into the 
visible kingdom of God, and as the sacrament of 



646 



MATTHEW XXVIII, 16-20. 



promise points to sanctification as yet to be com- 
pleted ; in so far, therefore, as baptism is the expres- 
sion of prevenient grace — Lutheran divines have said, 
very correctly, that the object of baptism is more 
fully realized in the baptism of an infant than in 
that of an adult. But the object of infant baptism 
is not as they would have it, " to implant the germ 
of regeneration into the unconscious child, to pro- 
duce in it an unconscious faith, that is to be devel- 
oped into consciousness," but to incorporate the 
child by baptism into the membership of the visible 
Church, and thus to bring it within the enlighten- 
ing, renewing, and sanctifying influence of the 
means of grace, and to protect it thereby against 
the corrupting influence of the world, which lies in 
wickedness. In this sense Peter represents baptism 
as the antitype of the ark of the Deluge, and Paul 
calls the passage of Israel through the Red Sea a 
baptism, because the Israelites were thereby sepa- 
rated from Egypt and saved from the power of 
Pharoah. In the same sense the children of believ- 
ers are called "holy," because they are separated 
from the world and its contaminating influences. In 
all these respects baptism exerts its full efficacy upon 
children. The Church obligates herself to communi- 
cate to the baptized infant from its earliest develop- 
ment the means of grace intrusted to her, by the 
use of which it is to become a child of God. The 
child is not to grow up as a heathen, in order to be- 
come a Christian afterward, but its life is to be 
developed from the very start in the discipleship of 
Christ. To this whole argumentation, however, 
Baptists make the following objections: 

1. "The Church is not authorized to receive any 
one as a member into her bosom that is as yet una- 
ble, of his own free will, to realize his Church mem- 
bership by his faith and practice." To this objec- 
tion we reply, why did the All-Wise God command 
that the male children of the Israelites should be 
made members of his Church in the Old Testament 
by circumcision, before they could either enjoy the 
full personal privileges of their membership or ful- 
fill its obligations? 

2. "The unbaptized child of Christian parents 
can enjoy the influence of the means of grace and 
Christian education just as well as the baptized." 
Whether this is the case in the same degree, and 
whether it would be the case at all, if no infants were 
baptized, is very questionable, but granted that this 
may be — we ask: To whom does the unbaptized 
child owe the influence of the means of grace and 
its Christian education ? Is it not the Christian 
Church that dispenses these blessings to the child ? 
Is it, therefore, not as much the duty of Christian 
parents, by giving their children the divinely-ap- 
pointed seal of the covenant, to incorporate them into 
his Church, as this was the solemn duty of parents 
in the Church of the Old Testament? With the 
same right that it is said of children that they can 
enjoy all the privileges and blessings of the Church, 



unbaptized as well as baptized, these children could 
say, when they have grown up and have become con- 
verted, we do not need external baptism, we can 
enjoy the blessings of salvation and be saved with- 
out it. But how could the visible Church exist 
without a visible bond — without the sacrament of 
baptism, the sign and seal of a visible union with 
each other and with God? And what would the 
visible Church be this day, if infant baptism had 
never been practiced? 

3. Of more weight is the objection that "infant 
baptism, in the sense of an incorporation into the 
Church, is nugatory, unless the believing parents 
and the Church fulfill their obligations to give to the 
baptized child a Christian education in the fullest 
sense of the word, and that the baptism of the child 
gives no guarantee for this." We frankly acknowl- 
edge the truth in the first part of the objection; 
and, fully as we are convinced that little children 
have a right and ought to be incorporated into the 
Church, we nevertheless can not defend the indis- 
criminate administration of infant baptism. Where 
there is no ground whatever to expect that the bap- 
tized child will grow up within reach of Christian 
nurture and control, infant baptism appears to us 
unauthorized, because void of meaning and aim. 
It is true that all children sustain the same relation 
to the general atonement, and all will be benefited 
by it; but the benefit will come to them through dif- 
ferent modes and instrumentalities. If a child is to 
grow up under the saving influences of Christian 
nurture, and of the means of grace and instruction 
dispensed by the Church, into which it is incorpo- 
rated by baptism, how can she conscientiously im- 
press the sign and seal of her training, guidance, 
and protection upon the forehead of a child over 
whom and whose parents she has no control what- 
ever? This principle of responsibility is clearly 
recognized in the covenant which the Lord made 
with Abraham, when he says: "For I know him. 
that he will command his children and his house- 
hold after him, and they shall keep the way of the 
Lord, to do justice and judgment." Would an 
apostle have baptized the child of an Olympian 
wrestler, or of a priestess of Bacchus, if its parents, 
without becoming Christians themselves, had applied 
for its baptism merely as an outward ceremony ? It 
can not be denied that the head of the Church has 
circumscribed the seal of the covenant within cer- 
tain limits; and if the Church transcends these 
limits, she deprives the ordinance of baptism of its 
significance and force. There is, indeed, a sad in- 
consistency in many portions of the pedobaptist 
Church with regard to the treatment of the baptized 
children within her pale. They treat them, virtually, 
not as being incorporated into the Church by baptism, 
no more than the Baptist Churches do their unbap- 
tized children. The most consistent of the pedobap- 
tist Churches, in this respect, it must be confessed, 
are those that hold to baptismal regeneration; and 



A DISSERTATION ON CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. 



647 



other pedobaptist Churches, which recognize in bap- 
tism only an initiatory rite, ought to imitate them in 
their practice, while keeping aloof from their doc- 
trinal error. But, admitting that infant baptism 
has its Scriptural authority and significance only 
then, when the parent and the Church obligate 
themselves to train up the child, from its earliest 
development, in the nurture and admonition of the 
Lord — we maintain, also, that the misuse of infant 
baptism does not destroy its Scriptural authority. 
Is not the baptism of adults subject to misuse as 
much as infant baptism? How many adults have 
been baptized on the confession of repentance and 
faith, who were as unworthy of this ordinance as 
Simon Magus was ? And is the holy ordinance not 
more desecrated in their case than in the case of in- 
nocent children, of whom Christ has declared that 
the kingdom of heaven is theirs? Is not the sacra- 
ment of the Lord's Supper also abused, as, in fact, 
every means of grace and every gift of God? As 
to the grave charge brought against infant baptism, 
"that by it the Church is filled with unconverted 
members and robbed of its spirituality," it can be 
easily shown that when pedobaptist Churches lost 
their spiritual life, it was not the effect of infant 
baptism, but of putting baptism by water in the 
place of regeneration by the Spirit, or of forcing 
baptism upon an unwilling people by the secular 
government. And what candid Baptist will deny 
that there are Churches and congregations which 
practice infant baptism without losing thereby spir- 
itual life and apostolical discipline? 

4. " If infant baptism had been designed by the 
Lord, we would have an express command or some 
apostolical precedent." On this point we have re- 
marked above, that infant baptism, in order to be 
practiced, did not require an express command; we 
would, on the contrary, have more right to expect a 
positive prohibition, if it was not to be practiced. 
Apostolical precedents can, indeed, not be proven, 
but may be inferred from those passages that speak 
of the baptism of whole families, (Acts xvi, 15, 33 ; 
1 Cor. i, 16.) 

5. Finally, it is said that "there is no instance of 
infant baptism recorded in the writings of the Fathers 
of the second century ; that it arose at a later period 
from ascribing to the water of baptism the magical 
power of washing away sins and of regeneration." 
This is a question of Church history, and it is not 
the province of exegesis to discuss it thoroughly, 
yet in so far as the New Testament contains neither 
an express command nor a prohibition of infant 
baptism, it deserves our attention here. Baptists 
admit that infant baptism was universally prac- 
ticed in the fifth century. In the great controversy 
with Pelagius, his opponents charged him with un- 
dermining and supplanting infant baptism, because 
he taught that infants were without original sin. 
But he denied this charge most positively, saying 
that he had not even heard of an impious heretic 



who favored this view. In the confession of faith 
(Libellus Fidei) which he and Celestius sent to the 
bishop of Rome in 417, he says: "We hold to a 
baptism, which is to be administered unto infants 
with the same sacramental words as unto adults." 
And again : " We admit that infants must be bap- 
tized for the remission of sins, [by which Pelagius, 
however, understood sins not yet committed,] ac- 
cording to the practice of the universal Church and 
the sense of the Gospel." Augustin, previous to his 
controversy with Pelagius, had asserted in his work 
on baptism, (De Baptismo, lib. IV,) that infant bap- 
tism had not been introduced by councils, but had 
always been practiced by the universal Church, as 
having been handed down by apostolical authority." 
If this had not been the case, is it likely that Pela- 
gius and his party should have adhered so firmly 
to this practice, when Augustin deduced from this 
very practice one of his strongest arguments in favor 
of his doctrine of the natural depravity of children ? 
It is not necessary to quote here any of the many 
undisputed testimonies of fathers and councils be- 
tween the times of Augustin and the third century, 
which make plain and unequivocal mention of infant 
baptism and compare it with circumcision. It may 
suffice to state, that we meet during the whole fourth 
century with no opposition to infant baptism, and 
that all the various sects, without any exception, 
recognized and practiced infant baptism as early as 
the beginning of the fourth century. The council 
of Eliberis (A. D. 305) decreed, that those that had 
been baptized in their infancy by heretical sects 
should be received into the Church without any 
term of probation. Equally direct is the testimony 
that the Donatists — who withdrew A. D. 311 from the 
Church, and wanted to rebaptize those that had been 
baptized by Bishop Cecilianus — practiced infant bap- 
tism. Toward the middle of the third century the 
question of Bishop Fidus was proposed to a council 
in Africa, attended by sixty-six clergymen and pre- 
sided over by Cyprian: "Whether it was not better 
to put off the baptism of infants to the eighth day 
after their birth, than to baptize them on the second 
or third day?" As a reason against this latter 
custom, it was said that circumcision had been ad- 
ministered at the eighth day, and that it was unbe- 
coming to give to a newly-born babe the holy kiss, 
that was customary in those days. The unanimous 
decision of the council was, that baptism was not to 
be denied to an infant before the eighth day. From 
this decision it appears that one hundred and fifty 
years after the death of John no doubt existed about 
the apostolical authority of infant baptism. Was it, 
then, introduced between the middle of the second 
and the middle of the third century? That it was 
in vogue in the times of Tertullian, about A. D. 200, 
appears from the opposition which he raised against 
it. His reasons against it are : (1.) The importance 
of baptism, which ought not to be confided to in- 
fants, just as their property is not intrusted to their 



648 



MATTHEW XXVIII, 16-20. 



care; (2.) The heavy responsibility of sponsors; (3.) 
The innocence of infants; (4.) The necessity to be 
previously instructed in the faith ; (5.) The heavy re- 
sponsibility of the individual baptized, since sins 
committed after baptism are so hard to wash away. 
For the last reason he advises even adults — single 
persons, widowers, widows, etc. — to put off their 
baptism till they are either married or have fully 
made up their minds to lead a life of celibacy. Yet 
he is not in favor of putting off baptism, neither in 
the case of children nor of adults, " when their lives 
are in danger." For it must be borne in mind that 
he was for putting off baptism, simply because he 
ascribed to the water of baptism the magical power 
of washing away sins and of regeneration. From 
this it appears that it was not infant baptism, 
but the first objection against it "which arose from 
ascribing to the water of baptism the magical power 
of washing away sins and of regeneration." That 
such unscriptural notions are, indeed, met with in 
the earliest Fathers, can not be denied; but they had 
certainly nothing to do with infant baptism, being 
applied to the baptism of adults as well as that of 
children; they arose from Oriental theosophy and 
the philosophical speculations of the Fathers, to 
which was subsequently added the Judaizing, hie- 
rarchical spirit. It must, moreover, be borne in mind 
that Tertulliaii does not oppose infant baptism, as an 
innovation of recent date and opposed to apostolical 
order. If this had been the case, he would not have 
failed to lay great stress upon it. And ■ how easily 
could he have proved it, as he was born only about 
forty years after the death of John ! Thus we see 
that Tertullian's objections against infant baptism 
prove its existence and apostolical authority toward 
the close of the second century, provided that Ter- 
tullian, in the passage referred to, speaks of infants, 
and not, as the Baptists claim, of children from 
seven to ten years old. A younger cotemporary 
of Tertullian, Origen, says, in his annotations on 
the Epistle to the Romans, " The Church has re- 
ceived authority from the apostles to baptize in- 
fants." We have now gone up to the second cen- 
tury. Is it probable that infant baptism was intro- 
duced in this century, which immediately succeeded 
the times of the apostles ? The Fathers of this cen- 
tury say but little of baptism. They were mainly 
engaged in refuting the many errors that arose in 
so many places. Yet we meet with two passages 
that are worth noticing. Irenasus, born about A. 
D. 97, and well acquainted with Polycarp, the friend 
and disciple of the apostle John, writes, (Adv. 
Hasret, Lib. II, chap, xviii:) "Christ has come to 
save all through himself, that is, all that are born 
again unto God, infants, {infantes,) little ones, {par- 
vulos,) boys, youths, and older persons. For this 
object he has passed through every period of life ; to 
infants he has become an infant, sanctifying infants; 
to the little ones he has become a little one, sancti- 
fying those that are of this age, and giving them, at 



the same time, an example of piety, righteousness, 
and obedience; to the young men he has become a 
young man, having set them an example of imita- 
tion, and sanctifying them unto God ; so likewise to 
older persons," etc. It is difficult to understand by 
the " being born again unto God," as applied to in- 
fants, any thing else than being baptized. It was 
first with reference to Jewish proselytes, that bap- 
tism was called a new birth, that is, a being born 
into a new state or condition ; and this designation 
of baptism became more and more general, on ac- 
count of John iii, 5, and Tit. iii, 5. Even Neander, 
who, in general, sides with the Baptists, admits that 
this passage refers to infant baptism, especially, on 
account of the distinction made between "infants" 
and "little ones." Now, if Irenasus speaks here of 
infant baptism, we have a testimony which decides 
the question in a Church-historical point of view. 
But the fact, in itself, that Irenseus, who lived to the 
close of the second century, has left no testimony 
against infant baptism, proves that it was not intro-, 
duced during his time ; for this Father has written a 
book for the very purpose of mentioning and refut- 
ing all errors and innovations, that had come into 
use since the days of the apostles. If, thus, infant 
baptism had crept into use during his life, he would 
certainly have exposed the innovation. The other 
passage is in Justin Martyr, who wrote about forty 
years after the death of John ; it reads : " There are 
many persons among us of both sexes, sixty and 
seventy years old, who were made disciples of Christ 
[e/ja&7}TEu&i}oav ru Xpioru] from childhood, and 
have remained unspotted." The Baptists maintain, 
indeed, that the " being made disciples of Christ," 
has no reference at all to baptism, but only means, 
to receive Christian instruction or education. But 
it ought to be borne in mind that Justin speaks 
of members of the Church, and uses the same term 
that Christ used in connection with the command to 
baptize. But, supposing that these two passages 
are no decisive authority for infant baptism, must it 
not be admitted that infant baptism, if it was not 
practiced by the apostles, must have come into use 
in the times of Polycarp and Irenajus? and how im- 
probable is this supposition 1 The apostle John 
wrote his Epistles and the Apocalypse toward the 
close of his life. One of the main objects of his 
Epistles was to warn against the heresies that had 
then already sprung up; but he makes no allusion 
to infant baptism. In the Letters addressed to the 
seven Churches the bishops are blamed on account 
of many things that had crept into use, but infant 
baptism is none of these censurable innovations, and 
no fault is found with the angel — bishop — of the 
Church at Smyrna, who was Polycarp, as we are in- 
formed by Church history. Now, is it probable that 
Polycarp, the intimate friend of John, who survived 
him by sixty-five years, who had been instructed by 
the apostle himself, and was so highly esteemed on 
account of his firm adherence to apostolical doc- 



A DISSERTATION ON CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. 



649 



trines and practices, and who, in old age, sealed his 
faith by a martyr's death, should have suffered in- 
fant baptism to come into use, without protesting 
against it, if it was not apostolical ? Or is it likely 
that Irenaeus should have kept silent — the disciple 
and friend of Polycarp, who lived almost to the close 
of the second century? Or if they had protested 
against it, is it credible that Origen, who was born 
twelve years after the death of Irenaeus, should have 
written: "The Church has received the command 
from the apostles to baptize children?" 

ON THE MODE OF BAPTISM. 

The Baptists maintain that the Greek word 
PaTT-'iL,eiV' — -to baptize — derived from panreiv, has no 
other meaning than to dip, immerse; and in sup- 
port of this their position, they appeal to the clas- 
sical literature of Greece, in which they say this 
was the uniform meaning of ^anTi^eiv. It can not 
be denied that this was the primary, though not ex- 
clusive meaning of the term, but it does not follow 
from this that the word must have the same meaning 
in the New Testament. The Greek classical writers 
flourished centuries before Christ, and it is well 
known that there are words in every language which 
have not only modified their original meaning, but 
actually reversed it. We will give but one example. 
The word "dyyeXof" means in the classics always a 
''messenger," never an "angel;" but must we infer 
from this, that when the New Testament speaks of 
'•'angels" we have to understand thereby not beings 
of a higher order, but only " messengers ?" The 
writers of the New Testament made use of the 
Greek language as they found it, but they had neces- 
sarily to attach new meanings to many words of 
that language. As the word Pottteiv means origin- 
ally to dip, but received in the course of time the 
meaning of " dyeing," because a cloth that is dyed 
is dipped into the fluid, so it is not difficult to see 
how the word (iairrit^eLv, that originally meant "to 
immerse," "to sink," received the meaning of "puri- 
fying" when it was used of a religious act that was 
emblematical of purification, such as the initiatory 
rite of the Church of God, in the Old Testament as 
well as in the New, was in the nature of the case. 
How frequently is it the case, that the effect of an 
action is expressed by the same word, that meant 
originally the action itself! While the Baptists 
maintain that there is no passage in the New Testa- 
ment in which the word f}airTifriv can be translated by 
any other word than "immerse," or "dip;" the pedo- 
baptlsts maintain that this word, whenever it is used 
of a religious act, signifies to purify by means of 
the application of water, whether by sprinkling, 
pouring, or immersing, and that it is also used in 
this sense when referring to the real inward purifica- 
tion by the Holy Ghost, of which water baptism 
is the outward symbol. This view has been best 
set forth by Dr. E. Beecher, who argues as follows : 
1. In John iii, 25, it is said: "Then there arose 



a question between some of John's disciples and 
the Jews about purifying." The connection shows 
plainly that the question was about baptism, and 
that, therefore, the term purifying is used here as 
synonymous with baptizing. The answer given by 
John to his disciples admits of no other interpret- 
ation. 

2. If the word /3aTrri^etv had no other meaning 
than to immerse, we could not understand the ques- 
tion which the Jews, that had come from Jerusalem, 
put to John: "Why baptizest thou then, if thou art 
not that Christ?" nor the answer which John re- 
turned to it. It had not been predicted that the 
Messiah would immerse, but that he would purify — 
sprinkle, (Isa. Iii, 15; Ezek. xxxvi, 25 ; Mai. iii, 2, 3.) 
It was, therefore, natural that the Jewish authorities 
asked John — when he purified the people emblemat- 
ically with water at the Jordan, and, at the same 
time, confessed that he was not Christ — " Why bap- 
tizest [purifesf] thou then ?" And the Baptist's an- 
swer is in perfect keeping with the import of the ques- 
tion, as if he had said : " Do not imagine that I am 
the great Purifier promised by the prophets ; I baptize 
[purify] only with water, but He shall baptize 
[purify] with the Holy Ghost." Now, inasmuch as 
the element of water is intended to represent em- 
blematically the purifying power of the Holy Ghost, 
have we not a right to expect that the manner in 
which the Holy Ghost is communicated to the re- 
cipient will correspond to the manner in which the 
person baptized is brought into contact with the 
element of water, that the latter is to represent the 
former; in short, that the human agent baptizes in 
the same manner with water, in which God baptizes 
with the Holy Ghost ? The simple question, there- 
fore, is, whether the baptism of the Holy Ghost 
is represented in the Scriptures as an immersion 
of the recipient into the Holy Ghost, or as a 
descending, sending down, falling, shedding, pour- 
ing out of the Holy Ghost upon the recipient? 
The reader will please examine for himself the fol- 
lowing passages: Acts ii, 16-18, 33; x, 44-46; xi, 
15, 16; Tit. iii, 6. 

3. In Hebrews ix, 10, the Old Testament service 
is described as consisting in " meats and drinks, and 
divers washings ^aTrriafiotg] and carnal ordinances." 
These "divers washings or baptisms" were purifica- 
tions of various kinds, consisting in sprinklings, 
washings, and bathings, of which the apostle in- 
stances several in the following verses. On exam- 
ining the passages which prescribe these ceremonies, 
(Num. xix, 1*7—20 ; Lev. xvi, 3-15; Num. viii, 7; 
Ex. xxx, 18, 20,) we find that these washings, which 
the apostle calls baptisms, were never performed by 
immersion, but by sprinkling, and the word baptism 
can, therefore, in Hebrews ix, 10, not mean immer- 
sion. Had it been the will of God that the purify- 
ing, emblematically represented by baptism, should 
be performed in only one way, namely, by immer- 
sion, this one way would certainly have been set 



650 



MATTHEW XXVIII, 16-20. 



forth as distinctly as similar ordinances are described 
in the Old Testament; nor would the inspired writ- 
ers have been led to use the term baptism in any 
other sense than that of immersion. 

4. This will appear still more fully from a close 
examination of Mark vii, 3, and Luke xi, 38. Mark 
vii, 3, 4, reads : " For the Pharisees and all the 
Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, 
holding the tradition of the elders. And when they 
come from the market, except they wash [baptize 
themselves] they eat not. And many other things 
there be which they have received to hold, as the 
washing [baptizing] of cups, and pots, and brazen 
vessels, and tables." By Luke xi, 38, the washing 
of hands is called baptizing, where it is said : " The 
Pharisees marveled, that he [Jesus] had not first 
washed [baptized himself] before dinner." Are we 
to suppose that the Jews were in the habit of im- 
mersing themselves before every meal, and that they 
immersed also their furniture and even their tables, 
or — as the Greek term properly means— their benches, 
on which three to four could recline, and which were 
often fastened to the wall? This is the more in- 
credible, since the personal washings prescribed by 
the law were performed, as we have seen, only by 
sprinkling. Moreover, Josephus mentions bathing 
before meals as a custom peculiar to the Essenes. 
Add to this, that in Judea, where water was at cer- 
tain seasons of the year so rare an article, private 
baths can scarcely have been in general use, and that 
on pictures which represent Greek baths the persons 
bathing stand or sit by the basin while the water is 
poured upon them. We must here also call atten- 
tion to the great difficulties with which we meet in 
the report of the baptism of three thousand persons 
on the day of Pentecost, of that of the jailer at 
Philippi, and of Paul at Damascus, if we suppose 
that baptism was invariably performed by immer- 
sion. 

5. As a further proof that the word paiTTi&iv has, 
in the writings of the New Testament, not the mean- 
ing of immersing, but of purifying, it is to be taken 
into consideration, that it is used in the latter sense 
in the Apocrypha of the Old Testament. Their 
authors were Jews, who were well acquainted with 
the personal washings prescribed in the ceremonial 
law, and who used the same dialect in which the 
New Testament is written. In Judith xii, V, and 
Sirach xxxiv, 25, the word PanrlC,eiv means nothing 
but washing. It is also of great weight, that the 
Latin and Greek Fathers, to whom Baptists have ap- 
pealed as high authorities, vise the word pcnrrifriv not 
in the sense of immersing, but in that of cleansing, 
purifying. Dr. Beecher quotes a number of pas- 
sages ; we shall content ourselves with giving only 
one. Proclus paraphrases the words of John to 
Christ in this way: "How dare I baptize thee? 
When is fire purified by chaff? When does a sod 
wash the fountain ? How shall I, a criminal, purify 
my Judge? How shall I baptize thee, Lord? I 



see no fault in thee." What meaning would there be 
in a translation like this: "How shall I, a criminal, 
immerse my Judge?" But if we understand by 
/SaTTTi^ecv purifying, the meaning is perfectly plain 
and clear: "How shall I, a criminal, purify, that is, 
absolve or acquit my Judge ?•" 

Against the position, that fia-xTi{,uv means in the 
New Testament to "purify " in general, not to " im- 
merse," the following objections are urged: 

1. " It can not have this meaning in Matt, xx, 22, 
and Luke xii, 50." We readily admit that it has in 
these passages its original signification. But the 
meaning of " purifying ," as was remarked above, is 
claimed for j3airri^eiv only, when it is used with ref- 
erence to a religious act, that symbolizes the cleans- 
ing from sin, and this is not the case in the passages 
in question. 

2. " The circumstances attending the baptism of 
John justify the inference, that it was performed by 
immersion alone. 1 ' The reader is referred to the 
notes on chapter iii, 6, 16. Why John baptized at 
the Jordan may be accounted for without assuming 
that he baptized by immersion. As he baptized so 
many thousands, it is not surprising that he chose a 
place where water was plenty, and still more so, 
that he made the people come to the river, instead 
of carrying the water from the river in order to bap- 
tize them. Great stress is also laid on John iii, 23 : 
"And John was baptizing in Enon, near to Salim, 
because there was much water there." Enon had 
its name from the springs, in which it abounded. 
If John had chosen Enon for his baptism because of 
the " much water there " for the purpose of immers- 
ing in place of the Jordan, it would have been un- 
favorable to this purpose. But if we suppose that 
he chose Enon on account of its many springs, as a 
place affording to the thousands thronging to him 
an abundance of good water for drinking in this 
sparsely-settled country, his choice is well ac- 
counted for. 

3. The passages, Bomans vi, 3, and Colossians ii, 
12, are appealed to in proof of immersion with great 
assurance. It is confidently contended, that the im- 
mersion of the person baptized, and his rising again 
from out of the water, is incontrovertibly proved by 
the comparison drawn by the apostle between bap- 
tism and the burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ 
from the dead. This is not the place for a full ex- 
position of these passages, yet a few general remarks 
may find a place here. Let us, therefore, examine 
the apostle's argument. To the question, " Shall we 
continue in sin, that grace may abound ?" (Bom. 
vi, 1,) the apostle replies, in the first place: "God 
forbid ! How shall we, that are dead to sin, live 
any longer therein?" As if he had said: If the 
sinner's justification by faith involves his dying unto 
sin, how can he continue in sin in a justified state ? 
This conclusion he corroborates by a reference to 
the significance of Christian baptism. "Know ye 
not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus 



A DISSERTATION ON CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. 



651 



Christ, were baptized into his death?" that is, know 
ye not, that ye, that received Christian baptism, 
have thereby assumed the obligation, to die unto sin, 
as he died for your sins ? And then the apostle goes 
on to say: "Therefore we are buried with him by 
baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised 
up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so 
we also should walk in newness of life." The 
apostle's object is to compare the believer's death 
unto sin with the death of Christ, and his walk in 
newness of life with the resurrection of Christ. But 
in order to express the idea of the believer's dying 
unto sin fully and forcibly, he makes use of the 
term, "We are buried with him into death," be- 
cause burial is the last and surest proof of death, and 
adds "by baptism" because those whom the apostle 
addressed, confessed and confirmed by their baptism 
their faith in Christ, by which they had died unto 
sin. That baptism is mentioned here as identical 
with faith in Jesus Christ, we see from Colossians, 
(ii, 12,) where the apostle says: "Buried with him 
in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him 
through the faith of the operation of God, who has 
raised him from the dead." If the apostle had in- 
tended to describe here the mode of baptism — not 
required by the scope of his argument — that is, to 
represent immersion as a being buried with Christ, 
he would also have called the rising out of the water 
a resurrection with Jesus Christ. But the apostle 
says not, buried with him into the water, but into 
death, and it is clear that the expression "into 
death" must be understood figuratively of death 
unto sin. The term "buried into death" is, conse- 
quently, synonymous with the other expressions 
used by the apostle: "Dead with Christ," (v. 8,) 
" dead unto sin," (v. 11,) just as the walking in new- 
ness of life is called a "being risen with Christ," (Col. 
iii, 1,) a "being raised together with him," (Eph. 
ii, 6.) Dying unto sin is compared to the death of 
Christ, just as walking in newness of life to the 
resurrection of Christ. That the apostle does not 
refer to the mode of the application of the water, but 
solely to this, tha-t the believer must look upon him- 
self as being, with Christ, dead unto sin, (v. 11,) ap- 
pears plainly from the fact, that he represents this 
death unto sin under other images. As he speaks in 
verse 4 of our being buried with Christ by baptism 
into death, so he speaks in verse 5 of " our having 
been planted together in the likeness of his death," 
and in verse 6 of "our old man being crucified with 
him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that 
henceforth we should not serve sin." Under these 
three different images one and the same idea is rep- 
resented ; namely, that we are dead unto sin with 
Christ. Are we, then, justified in interpreting the 
comparison in verse 4, literally, and in verses 5, 6, 
figuratively ? In the parallel passage of the Epis- 
tle to the Colossians we find, moreover, the same idea 
expressed under a still different image. In Colos- 
sians ii, 11, the apostle says, that "we are" [not only 



buried with Christ by baptism into death, but also] 
circumcised in him with the circumcision made with- 
out hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the 
flesh" — that is, of the whole body, the sum total of the 
sins of the flesh. It is admitted on all hands, that the 
apostle speaks here not of circumcision proper. He 
introduces circumcision, merely because it signified 
cleansing from filth, and then passes on to baptism, 
because it had the same meaning. All that the 
apostle wanted to prove is, that Christians ought to 
be dead unto sin. He mentions circumcision and 
baptism only with reference to their -significance 
and object. This interpretation of these two pas- 
sages receives an additional confirmation from the 
fact that baptism is no where else represented under 
the image of the grave or of death, but always as 
a cleansing like the ablutions of the Old Testament; 
moreover, the death of Christ, the meritorious cause 
of our cleansing from sin, is symbolized, not in the 
sacrament of baptism, but in the Lord's Supper. 

4. The strongest proofs advanced by the Baptists, 
that liairri^eiv has no other meaning than that of 
immersing, are of a historical character. It is main- 
tained: (1.) "That this word, in nearly all versions, 
is rendered either by a word that means to immerse, 
or is left untranslated. (2.) That the great majority 
of pedobaptistic theologians, especially the great lin- 
guists of Germany from Luther down to the present 
day, admit, that fiaitTi^uv means nothing else than 
to immerse. (3.) That, according to the incontro- 
vertible testimony of Church history, baptism was 
administered in the earliest ages of the Church by 
immersion, while pouring or sprinkling came into 
use in a later period, and was practiced at first only 
in the case of sick persons." 

It is not the province of a commentary to enter 
into a full discussion of a question of Church his- 
tory. But even if we admit the three points — the 
first and second point will stand or fall with the 
third — it does not subvert the pedobaptist inter- 
pretation of j3airri^eiii, for the following reasons : 

1. There is no historical testimony on record that, 
in the first centuries of the Christian era, baptism was 
exclusively administered by immersion. It is, on the 
contrary, very remarkable that a painting from the 
fourth or fifth century, when immersion was still the 
order of the day, represents Christ as standing in 
the water while John pours water upon his head 
from a bowl. In the same way, a painting of the 
baptism of Constantine the Great does not represent 
the emperor as being immersed, but as sitting in a 
basin while water is being poured upon his head. 
To this very day baptism is administered by pouring, 
not only in the whole Greek Church, but also in the 
Churches of Asia Minor. 

2. That immersion became predominant at a very 
early period of the Church is easily accounted for by 
the strong predilection of that period for imposing 
ceremonies, and especially by the misinterpretation 
of the figurative language of Romans vi, 4, and 



652 



MATTHEW XXVIII, 16-20. 



Colossians ii, 12. This appears from the fact that 
most of the German interpreters, who claim for 
PaTTTifciv the exclusive meaning of immersing, base 
their view solely on Romans vi, 4; and in the same 
way the ancient versions may be accounted for. 
That some of the figurative expressions of the apos- 
tles were literally interpreted at an early period, 
and that, in consequence of it various unscrip- 
tural ceremonies were introduced, appears from the 
writings of those very Fathers to whom the Baptists 
mainly appeal in support of immersing. Because 
Paul and John speak of an unction of Christians, 
the custom arose of applying oil in baptism. Be- 
cause Peter speaks of the sincere milk of the Gos- 
pel which the new-born babes ought to desire, milk 
and honey were laid upon the tongue of the person 
baptized. In order to symbolize the putting off of 
the old man and the putting on of the new man, the 
subject of baptism laid off all clothes and put on 
white ones after baptism. Because baptism is ad- 
ministered in the name of the three persons of the 
adorable Trinity, a threefold immersion was adopted. 
Under these circumstances it is not difficult to per- 
ceive how strong an incentive to immersion the 
words, "We are buried with Christ by baptism into 
death," must have been. 

3. We do not deny that the apostles may have 
administered baptism at times by immersion; but 
there is 'not one example on record in the whole 
New Testament which proves positively that they did 
so. But, even if they baptized by immersion, they 
never commanded that immersion should be the 
only mode of administering baptism. Now, if the 
Baptists maintain that we have no authority to bap- 
tize infants, because we have no plain apostolical ex- 
ample and no express command for it, they have no 
right to claim immersion as the only valid mode of 
baptism, because they can point to no undisputed 
apostolical example, and to no express command. We 
must distinguish, both in baptism and in the Lord's 
Supper, between the essential and the non-essential. 



As it is not essential to the Lord's Supper to cele- 
brate it by night, or in a reclining position, or with 
unleavened bread, so the quantity of water applied 
in baptism and the mode of its application are in 
themselves indifferent. Finally, inasmuch as bap- 
tism is the Divinely-appointed rite of entering into 
his Church for all men in all ages and countries, and 
under all circumstances, we may take it for granted 
that Christ chose such a rite as would be fully 
adapted to so universal an application. But is this 
the case if immersion is the only mode of adminis- 
tering baptism ? For such as are sick unto death, 
in icy regions, or in torrid regions and deserts, im- 
mersion is out of the question. Is it, then, not rea- 
sonable to suppose that the great Head of the 
Church, in designating the rite, designedly chose a 
term which indicates simply that which is symbol- 
ized by the application of water, but leaves the 
mode of its application undefined? It must, more- 
over, not be forgotten that, in those ages and coun- 
tries where immersion was practiced, immersion was 
never considered absolutely necessary or essential 
to the validity of the sacrament. This is testified 
by the same historical authorities that are appealed 
to in proof of immersion. The assertion that bap- 
tism by immersion alone is valid, was first made by 
the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century. If this 
assertion were well founded, it would follow that, 
before the Reformation of the sixteenth century, the 
visible Church of Christ had entirely disappeared; 
that the reformers, and the many other men of God 
who were not immersed, were no members of the 
Church of Christ, although God owned and blessed 
their labors so signally; in short, that the visible 
Church consists of those alone that have been re- 
ceived into it by immersion ! No wonder, therefore, 
that old Roger Williams, who could not see how bap 
tism could be restored again, if once lost, became 
so perplexed about the doctrines of the Baptists 
and the visible Church, as to reject altogether, with 
the Quakers, both baptism and the visible Church! 



THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK. 



INTRODUCTION 



TO 



THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK, 



1. Its Authorship. 



The oldest testimony concerning the authorship of the second Gospel is that of Bapias, 
Bishop of Hierapolis, as given by Eusebius in his Hist. Eccl., III, 39 ; it is to this effect: 
" This also [John] the elder said : Mark, being the interpreter of Peter, wrote down ex- 
actly whatever things he remembered, but yet not in the order in which Christ either spoke 
or did them." Irenseus also calls Mark an interpreter and follower of Peter, and cites 
the opening and the concluding words of the Gospel as we now possess them. Eusebius 
says further, on the authority of Clement of Alexandria, that the hearers of Peter at 
Rome desired Mark, the follower of Peter, to leave with them a record of his teaching; 
upon which Mark wrote his Gospel, which the apostle afterward sanctioned with his author- 
ity, and directed that it should be read in the Churches. (Euseb. H. E., II, 15.) Else- 
where, quoting Clement again, we have the same account, except that Peter is there 
described as "neither hindering nor urging" the undertaking. (Euseb. H. E., YI, 14.) 
Both statements are easily harmonized by supposing that Peter neither helped nor hin- 
dered the work before it was completed, but gave his approval afterward. Subsequent 
Fathers repeat the statement of Eusebius. 

But what have we to understand by Mark " being the interpreter of Peter ?" Some 
explain this word to mean that Mark translated into Greek what Peter dictated to him in 
Aramaic. But if this had been the case, the Gospel would have borne no other name than 
that of Peter, and there are internal evidences against this supposition. We should cer- 
tainly have a more detailed account of several events which concerned Peter more espe- 
cially; as, e. g., of what took place on the morning of the resurrection. It is far more 
probable to suppose that the influence of the apostle Peter upon Mark's Gospel was only 
an indirect one, and that the latter was called an interpreter of Peter, because his Gospel 
conformed more exactly than the others to Peter's preaching. It is natural that the early 
Fathers would attach especial importance to the relation between Peter and Mark, in order 
to strengthen the apostolical authority of the latter's Gospel. " It is likely," says Alford, 
"that Mark, from continual intercourse with and listening to Peter, and possibly from 
preservation of many of his narratives entire, may have been able to preserve in his Gos- 
pel those vivid and original touches of description and filling-out of the incidents which 
we discover in it." There are certainly peculiarities in this Gospel which can not be 

otherwise accounted for than by the supposition that the writer drew his account from a 

655 



656 INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK. 

vigilant eye-witness. The description of the same points that Matthew and Luke record is 
far more vivid ; touches are introduced that make us almost, while reading, eye-witnesses 
of what the Savior said and did. On the various critical suppositions with regard to the 
relation of the Gospel of Mark to those of Matthew and Luke, see General Introduc- 
tion, § 32. 

" As an Evangelist of youthful freshness and zeal, who delights more to deal in facts, 
and to represent living scenes, than to state abstract doctrines and ideas," says Lange, 
"Mark draws upon the evangelical tradition for material in order to delineate in a few 
graphic sketches a history of the official life of Christ. And the tradition of the evan- 
gelical history, which is his guide, came to him chiefly through the medium of Peter, 
whose mode of viewing and delivering it was peculiarly suited to the wants to supply which 
Mark seems to have designed; the style of the lively Evangelist corresponds also to 
Peter's ardent temperament and practical character. Add to this that the Evangelist 
was solicited by the Christians of Rome to write his Gospel, whose wants were best met 
by a graphic narrative of the principal facts from the public ministry of Jesus. In all 
this we see the origin of just such a Gospel as our second Gospel is. Mark narrates in 
his own original, style ; consequently there is stamped upon his narratives the impress of 
his own impulsive, vigorous character; he draws for his subject-matter on the discourses 
of Peter, in which the facts and events were related out of their chronological connection ; 
for this reason his Gospel lacks the order of historical sequence ; he writes for the Chris- 
tians at Rome, and this accounts for his confining himself to the concrete and using so 
many Latin words and phrases." 

The authenticity of this Gospel is sufficiently attested by Justin and Tatian. (See 
General Introduction, § 9.) To this must be added, that the author's name is not that 
of a renowned and influential founder of the Church, which an apocryphal gospel would 
most likely have selected; nevertheless the Gospel of Mark was received by the Church 
without any opposition. The objections that have been raised to the genuineness of its 
close — chap, xvi, 9-20 — we shall consider in our comments on this passage. 

§ 2. Time and Place op its Composition. 

Eusebius (H. E., Ill, 1) says on the authority of Irenasus, that Mark published (jrapa- 
deocoxe, literally, delivered, set forth) his Gospel after the death of Peter and Paul. The 
statement of Clement of Alexandria — also quoted by Eusebius, (H. E., VI, 14)— that it 
was written during the lifetime of Peter, is not contradictory ; for Clement's statement 
may refer to the beginning, and that of Irenseus to the conclusion of the composition ; the 
composition and the publication of a book do by no means coincide in point of time. As 
long as the apostles preached the Gospel by word of mouth, the Church could very well 
do without any authentic record, but after the apostles had died, the need of a written 
record was deeply felt. It can not well be supposed that it dates before the reference to 
Mark in the Epistle to the Colossians, (iv, 10,) where he is only introduced as a relative 
of Barnabas, as if this was his greatest distinction, and this Epistle was written about A. 
D. 62. So much is certain, that it could not have been written after the destruction of 
Jerusalem ; for the omission of all allusion to so signal a fulfillment of our Lord's proph- 
ecy would be inexplicable. 



INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK. 657 

As the place where this Gospel was written, Clement, Eusebius, Jerome, and others 
mention Eome, and there is no internal evidence against this statement; yet the Latin 
expressions in the Gospel furnish no conclusive proof; for there is no reason to doubt 
that, wherever the Gospel was written, the writer had been at Rome and was familiar with 
the language. An isolated notice by Chrysostom that it was composed at Alexandria, is 
not only not confirmed by any other Alexandrian Father, but even Chrysostom himself 
seems to have had some misgivings about it. The tradition, that the Evangelist spent the 
last years of his life, and died at Alexandria, has probably given rise to this statement 
of Chrysostom. 

That Mark wrote his Gospel in Greek there can be no reasonable doubt. The asser- 
tion of some writers of the Romish Church that it was originally written in Latin, is des- 
titute of any external or internal evidence. A Latin Gospel written for the use of Roman 
Christians could not have been lost without any mention of it by an ancient writer. The 
unfounded report of a Latin original arose from the tradition that the Evangelist wrote 
for the Christians at Rome. The old Syriac version has the gloss : " He [Mark] preached 
the Gospel at Rome in the Roman language," and on the strength of this gloss some Latin 
manuscripts of the Orient represent him as having written his Gospel in Latin. This 
view was eagerly laid hold of by Roman Catholic theologains, in order to give the greater 
authority to the Vulgate, but it was subsequently given up again as altogether untenable. 
A pretended Latin autograph at Venice has been identified as a fragment of the Vulgate. 

§ 3. Biographical Notices of Mark. 

The Evangelist Mark is the same that is called in Acts John Mark, (xii, 12, 25 ; xv, 
37,) John, (xiii, 5, 13,) and Marie, (xv, 39; compare Col. iv, 10; 2 Tim. iv, 11; Phile., 24.) 
His Jewish name appears to have been John, but when he entered into the Christian min- 
istry he assumed the name Hark — a very common name among the Romans — and this 
name gradually superseded the former. His familiarity with the Latin language, that 
enabled him to act as Peter's interpreter, has given rise to the supposition, that either 
his father or some near relative of his was a Roman proselyte. According to Acts xii, 
12, he was the son of a respectable Christian lady at Jerusalem, named Mary, in whose 
house the disciples used to meet. Olshausen and Lange are of opinion that the event 
related by Mark alone, as occurring to a young man in the night, when our Lord was 
seized in Gethsemane, befell himself. From the fact that the mother of Mark evidently 
was a person of means and influence, Lange infers that she may have been the owner of 
the garden of Gethsemane or a house near by — a supposition strengthened by the strik- 
ing resemblance which the young man on the occasion in question, and afterward Mark 
in his relation to the apostle Paul, manifested ; both exhibiting an impulsive and resolute, 
but at the same time unsteady and changeable temper. 

From 1 Pet. v, 13, it has been inferred that Peter was his spiritual father. Being 

the son of a Christian mother, that attached herself so firmly to the other heroic women 

of the New Testament, we need not wonder that he consecrated himself at an early period 

to the cause of apostolic missions. According to Acts xii, 25, Paul and Barnabas took 

him with themselves on their journey from Jerusalem to Antioch, possibly in prospect of 

the missionary tour, which he shortly afterward made with them in the character of an 

42 



658 INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK. 



evangelist or servant. (Acts xiii, 5.) He journeyed with them to Seleucia and Cyprus, 
and thence to Asia Minor. But when they came to Perga in Pamphylia, he left them 
and returned to Jerusalem, while the two apostles continued their journey as far as Pi- 
sidia. "When they were subsequently about to make the same tour again from Antioch for 
the purpose of visiting and strengthening the newly-formed Churches, Barnabas, the uncle 
of Mark, (Col. iv, 10,) proposed to take him along again, (Acts xv, 37 ;) Paul, however, 
opposed this proposition so decidedly that the two apostles separated, and Barnabas went 
alone with Mark to Cyprus. But after more than ten years we find the amicable relation 
between him and Paul restored again; for the apostle mentions him (Col. iv, 10, and 
Philemon, 24) with Luke as his fellow-laborer during his first imprisonment at Rome. 
" Shortly afterward we find him in company of the apostle Peter at Babylon — the real 
Babylon, not the mystical Babylon, Rome — whence Peter sends greetings from his son 
Mark (1 Peter v, 13) to the Christians in Asia Minor, whom he addresses. And as Paul 
directs Timothy during his second imprisonment (2 Tim. iv, 11) to bring Mark with him 
to Rome, we may fairly conclude, that Mark was then on his way back from Babylon. It 
is not unlikely that Peter arrived with Mark at Rome; for the tradition, that Peter suf- 
fered martyrdom at Rome at the same time with Paul, comes to us fully authenticated, 
and on this fact are based the other testimonies of antiquity, that Mark acted as the in- 
terpreter of Peter. The character of his Gospel attests his longer intercourse with Peter 
as fully as Luke's Gospel proves the latter's intimacy with Paul." (According to Lange.) 
It is the universal testimony of antiquity that after Peter's death Mark went from Rome 
to Alexandria, founded a Church, (Euseb., Ill, 34,) and suffered martyrdom there. 

§ 4. The Peculiar Character and Object op the Second Gospel. 

The scope and characteristics of this Gospel are most clearly set forth by Lange, whose 
remarks we give here in a free, condensed form, both from his ^cben 3cfll and the Intro- 
duction to his Commentary on Mark. While in the Gospel of Matthew our Lord is prom- 
inently set forth as the theocratic king in whom the law and the prophets have found their 
complete fulfillment, Mark, without reference to the previous revelations of God to his 
people, except a brief notice of John the Baptist, as his immediate forerunner, introduces 
Jesus Christ to his readers at once as the Son of God. An appropriate motto for Mark's 
Gospel would be the words of Peter : " How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the 
Holy Ghost and with power; who went about doing good, and healing all that were op- 
pressed of the devil; for God was with him." (Acts x, 38.) Mark's chief aim is evi- 
dently to record the exploits of the Son of God in his war against Satan. It is a memoir 
of his victorious conflicts with the various opposing powers of darkness and sin; and the 
style of the Evangelist is peculiarly adapted to his purpose to give a rapid, but vivid 
sketch of the mighty deeds of Jesus. He uses the present tense, instead of the narrative 
aorist, almost in every chapter. The word t-uditoi;-, " straightway," is used forty-one 
times. He gives further force and vividness to his style by the accumulation of negatives 
and other emphatic additions or reiterations, by the choice of rare words and constructions, 
by an apparently-modern phraseology, by the use of Latin and Aramaic words, and espe- 
cially by his richness in lively and interesting detail, especially with regard to our Lord's 
looks, gestures, feelings, etc. How Christ moved the minds of the people, calling forth 



INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK. 659 



all possible emotions in them, fright, fear, confidence, hope, delight, and ecstasy, and how 
he controlled them by his heavenly power, reproving, healing, and sanctifying, we can 
best learn from Mark. He makes the personality of Jesus pass before our enraptured 
eyes in life-like pictures following each other in rapid succession. He is constantly sur- 
rounded by large crowds of people, so that there is at times no room for standing, no 
time for eating; yea, his active love shines forth in such bright luster that his brothers 
and mother attempted on one occasion to take him by force from out of the crowd, ap- 
prehending that he might be beside himself, (iii, 21.) Where his arrival becomes known, 
the diseased of the whole neighborhood are brought to him, or placed in litters in the 
market-place, that they may but touch the hem of his garment, and all that touch it are 
healed. Even the mere appearance of Christ affects the multitudes to such an extent 
that they tremble for awe and joy, (ix, 15.) Of the seven words uttered by the Savior 
on the cross, Mark has recorded but the one heart-rending exclamation: "My God, my 
God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Of the resurrection, likewise, he mentions only the 
stirring and overpowering points. The disciples in their sore distress refuse to believe 
any report of the resurrection ; but as soon as Christ himself appears in their midst, up- 
braiding them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, their minds are changed at once. 
They are prepared for their great commission to preach the Gospel to every creature, and 
when they went forth, immediately the Divine power accompanied them, authenticating 
their message. Thus we see how from the beginning to the end Mark's Gospel is a record 
of the glorious triumph of the Son of God over all the powers of the world, sin, and Satan. 
Far from being an epitome of Matthew or Luke, it has a most distinct and peculiar char- 
acter, being a living, organic whole, and its different parts harmoniously conditioning and 
explaining each other. 

That Mark wrote his Gospel for Gentile Christians is placed beyond reasonable doubt 
by internal evidences. " The genealogy of our Lord and other matters interesting chiefly 
to the Jews we find omitted; such as the references to the Old Testament and law in 
Matthew xii, 5-7, the reflections on the request of the scribes and Pharisees for a sign, 
(Matt, xii, 38-45 ;) the parable of the King's Son, (Matt, xxii, 1-14 ;) and the awful denun- 
ciation of the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew xxiii. Explanations are given in some 
places, which Jews could not require : thus, Jordan is a ' river,' (Mark i, 5 ; Matt, iii, 6 ;) 
the Pharisees, etc., 'used to fast,' (Mark ii, 18; Matt, ix, 14,) and other customs of theirs 
are described, (Mark vii, 1-4; Matt, xv, 1, 2;) 'the time of figs was not yet,' that is, at 
the season of the Passover, (Mark xi, 13; Matt, xxi, 19;) the Sadducees' worst tenet is 
mentioned (Mark xii, 18 ;) the Mount of Olives is ' over against the Temple,' (Mark xiii, 
3; Matt, xxiv, 3;) at the Passover men eat 'unleavened bread,' (Mark xiv, 1, 12; Matt, 
xxvi, 2, 17,) and explanations are given which Jews would not need, (Mark xv, 6, 16, 42 ; 
Matt, xxvii, 15, 27, 57.) Matter that might offend is omitted, as Matt, x, 5, 6 ; vi, 7, 8. 
Passages, not always peculiar to Mark, abound in his Gospel, in which the antagonism 
between the pharisaic legal spirit and the Gospel come out strongly, (i, 22; ii, 19, 22; x, 
5 ; viii, 15,) which hold out hopes to the heathen of admission to the kingdom of heaven 
even without the Jews, (xii, 9,) and which put ritual forms below the worship of the heart, 
(ii, 8; iii, 1-5 ; vii, 5-23.) Mark alone preserves those words of Jesus, 'The Sabbath was 
made for man, and not man for the Sabbath,' (ii, 27.) While he omits the invective 
against the Pharisees, he indicates by a touch of his own how Jesus condemned them 



660 INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK. 

' -with anger,' (iii, 5.) When the Lord purges the Temple of those that polluted it, He 
quotes a passage of Isaiah, (lvi, 7 ;) but Mark alone reports as part of it the words ' of all 
nations,' (xi, 17 ;) and he alone makes the scribe admit that love is better than sacrifices, 
(xii, 33.) " (Smith's Diet, of the Bible.) 

§ 5.. The Arrangement and Division op its Contents. 

Mark arranges his subject-matter neither by chronological sequence nor by a grouping 
of events on the ground of their similarity, as Matthew does, but yet he has, as we have 
shown, a distinct scope. Upon this Lange has based his division of the contents; that 
given in his £ebcn Sefll differs in some respect from that in his Commentary. We prefer 
the former, but have found cause to make some minor changes. 

The grouping of different subordinate sections under one general head, in a Gospel 
like that of Mark, which has for the most part been expounded in the preceding Gospel 
of Matthew, we think, will be found very profitable, and in order not to disturb the im- 
pression of the reader made thereby, we have judged it best to place the notes after 
the whole section. For the exegesis of the greater part of this Gospel we expect the 
reader to look to the parallel passages in Matthew, without special reference in each case, 
as, on the other hand, the reader should turn in many portions of Matthew to the paral- 
lel passages in Mark for homiletical suggestions. 

The foot-notes, giving the variations of readings, were fuller in the manuscript than 
they appear in print. A number of them were thrown out for typographical reasons, 
where the omission involved no essential detriment. In Matthew the author made it a 
rule to give various readings only when the sense was essentially affected by it. In 
Mark our object was to show the general reader, by a number of examples, of how little 
practical account is the much-talked-of variety of readings. 



CONTENTS. 



SECTION I. 

CHAP. 

The Beginning of the Gospel. John the Baptist's Pub- 
lic Appearance as the Forerunner of Christ, shortly 
afterward followed by the Appearance of Christ Him- 

seff Pages G63-665 

CHAPTER I, 1-15. 

1. John the Baptist 1 

2. Christ 1 



1- 8 
9-15 



35-39 
40-15 



SECTION II. 

The First Works by which Christ reveals his Divine 
Power at the Beginning of his Galilean Minis- 
try 666-S71 

CHAPTER I, 16-45. 

1. Jesus calls his First Four Disciples 1 16-20 

2. He heals a Demoniac by the Power of his Word. 

The People are greatly amazed 1 21-28 

3. His Miraculous Cures in the House of Peter at 

Capernaum 1 29-34 

4. He withdraws himself into a Solitary Place to 

pray. The People inquire after him 1 

5. He heals a Leper by touching him 1 

SECTION III. 

Various Conflicts of Christ with the Scribes and Phar- 
isees 671-678 

CHAPTER II, 1, TO CHAPTER HI, 5. 

1. The Paralytic and the Power of forgiving Sins.. 2 1-12 

2. Jesus dines with Publicans and Sinners in the 

House of Levi 2 13-17 

3. The Fasting of John's Disciples and of the Phar- 

isees 2 18-22 

4. The Disciples pluck Ears of Corn on the Sab- 

bath. The Son of Man is Lord also of the 

Sabbath 2 23-28 

5. A Man with a Withered Hand is healed on the 

Sabbath 3 1-5 



SECTION IV. 

The First Withdrawal of Christ from his Enemies. 
The People manifest an increasing reverence for him. 
His Sphere of Activity widens, and he selects his 

Apostles 678-680 

CHAPTER III, 6-19. 

1. The Pharisees and Herodians plot against Je- 

sus, but great Multitudes of People follow 
Him 3 

2. Jesus ordains the Twelve Apostles 3 



6-12 
13-19 



SECTION V. 

The Conflict of Jesus with the Blasphemous. Unbelief 
of his Enemies, and the Want of Faith on the Part 
of his Friends 680-682 3 

SECTION VI. 

Jesus chooses the Parabolic Form of Instruction in 
Consequence of the ^Insusceptibility of the People 
and the Increasing Hostility of their Leaders. 682-686 4 



1-34 



SECTION VII. 

CHAP. 

The Glory of Christ increasingly manifested by his 
Miraculous Power over the Elements of Nature, ^he 
World of Spirits, the Domain of Hidden Maladies, 

and over Death itself. Pages 687-695 

CHAPTER IV, 35, TO CHAPTER V, 43. 

1. He rebukes the Storm, and puts to shame the 

little Faith of his Disciples 4 

2. Christ triumphs over the Despairing Unbelief of 

a Demoniac. The Callous Worldliness of the 
Gadarcnes 5 

3. The Woman with an Issue of Blood is healed, and 

the Daughter of Jairus is raised from the Dead. 5 



35-41 



1-20 



21-43 



SECTION VIII. 

Christ can do no Miracles in his Native Place, owing to 
the Unbelief of the People, but he exhibits his Mes- 
sianic Power throughout the rest of Galilee. 696-700 
CHAPTER VI, 1-56. 

1. The Envious Unbelief of the Nazarenes 6 1-6 

2. The Mission of the Twelve Apostles 6 7-13 

3. John the Baptist is beheaded, and Herod mani- 

fests a Dangerous Interest in Christ 6 14-29 

4. Jesus retires into a Desert Place beyond the 

Lake. The Miraculous Feeding of Five Thou- 
sand Men : 6 30-44 

5. The Disciples enter a Ship to return to the other 

Side of the Sea. The Wind is contrary. Jesus 
comes to them, walking upon the Lake. He 
performs New Miracles on the West Side of 
the Lake 6 45-56 



SECTION IX. 

Scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem attack Christ 
for disregarding the Traditions of the Elders. He 
rebukes them, makes a Journey through the Border 
Countries of Phenicia, and returns to the Coasts 

of Decapolis 700-704 

CHAPTER VII, 1, TO CHAPTER VIII, 9. 

1. The Dispute of Christ with Scribes and Phar- 

isees from Jerusalem 7 

2. The Syrophenician Woman 7 

3. The Healing of the Deaf Mute 7 

4. The Miraculous Feeding of Four Thousand Per- 

sons 



1-23 
24-30 
31-37 

8 1-9 



SECTION X. 

Jesus withdraws into the Mountainous Region north- 
east of the Lake. The Preparation for the Establish- 
ment of the New Testament Church 704-710 

CHAPTER VIII, 10, TO CHAPTER IX, 29. 

1. The Leaven of the Pharisees and that of Herod. 

2. The Blind Man of Bethsaida 

3. Opinions of the People concerning Christ, and 

the Confession of Peter. The Lord predicts 
his own Passion, rebukes Peter for his Pre- 
sumption, and tells his Disciples what he re- 
quires of his Followers J 

661 



10-21 
22-26 



27 to 
1 



662 



CONTENTS. 



CHAP. VRS. 

4. Our Lord's Transfiguration on the Mount 9 2-13 

5. The Demoniac Boy at the Foot of the Mount 

of the Transfiguration 9 14-29 

SECTION XI. 

The Secret Sojourn of Jesus in Galilee, and his Re- 
turn from the Feast of Tabernacles at Jerusa- 
lem Pages 710-716 

CHAPTER IX, 30-50. 

1. Christ foretells his Disciples his Death for the 

Second Time 9 30-32 

2. The Disciples dispute about Preeminence. 

Christ reproves the Zeal of John, enjoins 
a Spirit of Toleration, and warns against 
offending his Little Ones 9 33-50 

SECTION" XII. 

The Sojourn of Jesus in Perea 716-718 

CHAPTER X, 1-31. 

1. Discussion between Christ and the Pharisees 

concerning the Law of Matrimony 10 1-12 

2. Little Children are brought to Jesus. His 

Declaration concerning their Relation to the 
Kingdom of God 10 13-16 

3. The Rich Young Man. Jesus speaks of the 

Dangers of Worldly Riches, and the Rewards 

of his Followers 10 17-31 

SECTION XIII. 

The First Departure of Jesus from Perea to Jeru- 
salem 719-721 

CHAPTER X, 32-52. 

1. Jesus announces the Third Time his Sufferings 

and Death 10 32-34 

2. The Request of the Sons of Zebedee 10 35-45 

3. The Blind Beggar Bartinieus 10 46-52 

SECTION XIV. 

Christ's Solemn Entrance into Jerusalem. The With- 
ered Fig-Tree, and the Cleansing of the Tem- 
ple 721-732 

CHAPTER XI, 1-2G. 

1. Christ's Solemn Entrance into Jerusalem 11 1-11 

2. The Withered Fig-Tree, and the Cleansing of 

the Temple 11 12-2C 

SECTION XV. 

The Last Conflicts of Jesus with his Enemies at Jeru- 
salem on Tuesday of the Passion-Week 723-730 

CHAPTER XI, 27, TO CHAPTER XII, 44. 

1. The Question of the Sanhedrim as to Christ's 

Authority, and the Counter Question of 

Christ as to John the Baptist's Mission 12 27-33 

2. The Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen 12 1-12 

3. The Treacherous Attack of the Pharisees and 

Herodians concerning Tribute to CEesar, and 

their Discomfiture 12 13-17 

4. The Attack of the Sadducees concerning the 

Resurrection of the Dead, and their Defeat.. 12 18-27 

5. The Question of the Scribe as to the First Com- 

mandment 12 28-34 

6. The Counter Question of the Lord to the Scribes 

concerning David and his Son 12 35-37 

7. Christ's Public Warning against the Scribes.... 12 38-40 

8. The Widow's Mite 12 41-44 



SECTION XVI. 

CHAP. VES. 

The Prophecy of Christ concerning the Destruction of 
the Temple and his Judicial Coming.. ..Pages 730-733 
CHAPTER XIII, 1-37. 

1. The Occasion of his Discourse 13 1-4 

2. A General Survey of what is to precede Christ's 

Judicial Coming 13 5-13 

3. The Premonitory Signs of the Approaching De- 

struction of Jerusalem, and of the Judgment 
which is to take Place when the Times of the 
Gentiles shall be fulfilled 13 14-23 

4. The Last Type and Virtual Beginning of the 

Final Judgment 13 24-27 

5. The Suddenness of our Lord's Judicial Coming, 

and the Necessity of Constant Watchfulness. 13 28-37 

SECTION XVII. 

The Last Passover 734-736 

CHAPTER XIV, 1-16. 

1. The Cowardice and Confusion of his Enemies.. 14 1, 2 

2. The Supper at Bethany. The Treachery of 

Judas 14 3-11 

3. The Preparation for the Passover 14 12-16 

SECTION XVIII. 

Jesus eats the Passover with his Disciples 736, 737 

CHAPTER XIV, 17-31. 

1. The Traitor unmasked 14 17-21 

2. The Institution of the Lord's Supper 14 22-25 

3. The Prediction of the Offense of the Disciples 

and of Peter's Denial 14 26-31 

SECTION XIX. 

Jesus in Gethsemane 738-740 

CHAPTER XIV, 32-52. 

1. The Agony of our Lord in Gethsemane 14 32-42 

2. The Seizure of Jesus, and the Flight of his 

Disciples 14 43-52 

SECTION XX. 

Jesus before the Ecclesiastical Tribunal. Peter denies 

Him 741-744 

CHAPTER XIT, 53-72. 

1. Jesus before the High-Priest 14 53-65 

2. Peter's Denial 14 66-72 

SECTION XXI. 
Jesus before the Tribunal of Pilate 744-747 15 1-18 

SECTION XXII. 

Jesus is led away to Calvary and Crucified.... 747-749 15 20-38 

SECTION XXIII. 

The Dying Hour of Christ, the Power of his Death, 
and his Burial 749-751 15 33-47 

SECTION XXIV. 

Christ's Resurrection and Ascension 752-760 

CHAPTER XVI, 1-20. 

1. An Angel announces to the Women the Res- 

urrection of our Lord 16 1-8 

2. Mary Magdalene and the Two Disciples 16 9-13 

3. The Last Instructions of our Lord to his Apos- 

tles, and his Ascension 16 14-20 



THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK. 



SECTION I. 

THE BEGINNING OF THE GOSPEL— JOHN THE BAPTIST'S PUBLIC APPEARANCE AS THE FORE- 
RUNNER OF CHRIST, SHORTLY AFTERWARD FOLLOWED BY THE 
APPEARANCE OF CHRIST HIMSELF. 

CHAPTEE I, 1-15. 

1. JOHN THE BAPTIST. 

"Verses 1—8. (Compare Matthew hi, 1-12; Luke hi, 1-18; John i, 19-28.) 

(1) The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. (2) As it is 
written in the prophets, l Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall 
prepare thy way before thee; 2 (3) the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Pre- 
pare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight: (4) John did baptize in 
the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. 
(5) And there went out unto him all the land of Judea, and they of Jerusalem, 
and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins. (6) 
And John was clothed with camel's hair, and with a girdle of a skin about his 
loins ; and he did eat locusts and wild honey ; 3 (7) and preached, saying, There 
cometh one mightier than I after me, the latch et of whose shoes I am not worthy 
to stoop down and unloose. (8) I indeed have baptized you with water : but he 
shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost. 

3. CHRIST. 
Verses 9—15. (Compare Matthew hi, 13-it, 17; Luke hi, 21, 22; it, 1-15; John i, 29-34) 

(9) And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Gal- 
lee, and was baptized of John in Jordan. (10) And straightway coming up out 
f the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending 
ipon him: (11) And there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved 



"We deem ourselves justified by the testimony of 
Imsus, and other Fathers, as well as by Codd. A, P, 
inretaining the reading 'in the prophets,' in preference 
tothe other reading, 'in Isaiah the projihet,' as sup- 
posed by Codd. B, D, L, and others, and adopted by 
Grisbach and most of the modern critics. Either the 
reaing 'in Isaiah' crept into the text, with reference 
to te second quotation, from an indistinct recollection, 



or an emendation of the text was attempted by insert- 
ing the reading 'in the prophets.' If the reading 'in 
Isaiah the prophet' is preferred, the passage from Mal- 
achi must be considered as a further development of the 
principal prophecy of Isaiah, which is emphasized as 
the first prediction of the forerunner." (Langc.) 2 " Be- 
fore thee " is wanting in many manuscripts. 3 See foot- 
note on Matthew iii, 4. 

663 



664 



MARK I, 1-15. 



Son, in whom I am well pleased. (12) And immediately the Spirit driveth him 
into the wilderness. (13) And he was there in the wilderness forty days tempted 
of Satan ; and was with the wild heasts ; and the angels ministered unto him. (14) 
Now after that John was pat in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the 
Gospel of the kingdom of God, (15) and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the 
kingdom of God is at hand : repent ye, and believe the Gospel. 



Verses 1-8. The beginning op the Gospel. 
Some commentators connect these words with 
verse 2 ; namely, "The beginning of the Gospel 
was, as it is written in the prophets;" others with 
verse 4 : " The beginning of the Gospel was, that 
John baptized." Both these connections, however, 
are improbable. The first verse is the title of the 
whole book, indicating that it contains the Gospel of 
Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The primitive Church 
considered Christ's public ministry, commencing 
with his baptism and ending with his resurrection, 
as the foundation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which 
was generally read in the Churches. (Com p. Acts 
i, 22.) — Or Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Mat- 
thew says, " the Son of David." As Mark wrote 
especially for Gentile Christians, he did not make 
the relation of Christ to the theocracy so prominent. 
He introduces "Jesus" and "John" to his readers 
as well known, indicating thereby, that he purposes 
to narrate well-known facts in an abridged form. 
Although he is silent on the miraculous birth of 
Jesus, so minutely related by Matthew, yet he indi- 
cates the great fact by calling him the " Son of God." 
— John did baptize. These words form the conclu- 
sion or apodosis to, " As it is written in the proph- 
ets," in verse 2. As it is written, so John actu- 
ally came forward in the wilderness baptizing. Ad- 
ditionally to what we have said in the introductory 
remarks to chapter iii in Matthew, we subjoin here, 
in a condensed form, what Lange says on the Bap- 
tist in his Sebeil StfU. "John the Baptist was in 
his whole personal appearance and public ministry 
like a blazing torch ; his whole being preached with 
irresistible force ; hence he may well be called the 
' voice of one crying in the wilderness.' On ex- 
amining, however, the leading traits of character in 
this imposing personage, we may clearly distinguish 
the Nazarite, the prophet, and the zealous champion 
of the theocracy, although these traits formed in 
him a perfect harmony. He grew up in the sacred 
solitude of the wilderness near his native place, 
(Luke i, 80,) and there the Spirit of God com- 
muned with his own spirit. As a Nazarite his wants 
were few and simple. He is at the same time fully 
impressed with the importance of his mission ; 
namely, to call Israel, blinded by formality, into the 
wilderness, that it might be cleansed and prepared 
for the new economy of the kingdom of God. But 
the Divine commission that constituted him a proph- 
et, was the revelation of the dawn of the promised 



kingdom of God, and of the approach of the Messiah, 
as the founder of this kingdom, for whom he (John) 
was to prepare the way. The Spirit of God, also, was 
to make known to him, by a sign from heaven, 
whom he should point out to the people as the Lord 
and founder of this kingdom. With the idea and 
presentiment of his mission he had become familiar 
in his father's house. While in the wilderness, he 
received the inward assurance that the Messiah had 
already made his appearance among the people, 
though unknown to them, and in the decisive mo- 
ment, on the banks of Jordan, the person of the 
Messiah was divinely pointed out to him. John 
seemed to be the personification of the last pro- 
phetic presentiment of the Messiah among his peo- 
ple. By his prophetic penetration he had long be- 
fore discovered, on his annual journeyings to Jeru- 
salem, the moral and religious corruption of his 
people, notwithstanding their imposing Temple wor- 
ship and boasted self-righteousness. He looked upon 
the corruption of the scribes and Pharisees with 
the indignation of a genuine Israelite. The holy 
zeal of all the prophets centered in the lofty indig- 
nation of his strong mind, and constituted him one 
of those champions, that in decisive moments ap- 
peared as the restorers of the declining theocracy; 
such as were Phinehas, (Num. xxv, 7,) and Elias, 
yea, Christ himself, at the moment he cleansed the 
Temple. In this zeal he became the Baptist. The 
whole nation appeared to him, unworthy and unpre- 
pared to enter into the holy kingdom of the new 
covenant, but, most of all, the nation's leaders and 
representatives. He was certain that a great and 
universal apostasy from true Israelitism had taken 
place, and that even the better members of the 
theocracy had first to submit to a great purification, 
before they could receive the King of Israel, who , 
would even then have to separate with his fan the/ 
wheat from the chaff. The theocratic champion! 
preached, therefore, the baptism of repentance foij 
the reception of the Messiah. It was an uncom/ 
monly-bold act of his to come before the whole cor> 
gregation of Israel with the solemn declaration, tha 
the whole camp was unclean, and that all had firj 
to submit to the act of a holy washing before th^ 
could enter into the new congregation." — Ti 
baptism of repentance; that is, a baptism whij 
not only involved the obligation of a change 
mind, but represented it also symbolically. Ije 
ministry of John was not confined to merely prea 






MARK I, 1-15. 



665 



ing "repentance," but was connected, also, with the 
observance of an outward rite. He did this, how- 
ever, not arbitrarily, but in obedience to a Divine 
command — for he had been sent to baptize with 
water, (John i, 33.) As washings constituted so im- 
portant an ingredient in the Jewish ritual, the people 
could not fail to perceive the importance and signif- 
icance of this rite. At what time the Jewish cus- 
tom of requiring of a proselyte from the heathens 
baptism, in addition to circumcision, arose, is a much 
controverted question. The two strongest reasons 
for assuming its existence prior to John's baptism 
are: 1. If there had not been such a baptism, there 
would have been no initiatory rite at all for female 
proselytes. 2. A sign is seldom chosen unless it 
already has a meaning for those to whom it is ad- 
dressed. The fitness of the sign would be in pro- 
portion to the associations already connected with it. 
It would bear witness — on the assumption of the 
previous existence of the proselyte-baptism — that the 
change from the then condition of Judaism to the 
kingdom of God was as great as that from idolatry 
to Judaism. The question of the priests and Le- 
vites, " Why baptizest thou then?" (John i, 25,) im- 
plies that they wondered, not at the thing itself, but 
at its being done for Israelites by one who disclaimed 
the name which, in their eyes, would have justified 
the introduction of a new order. In like manner 
the words of our Lord to Nicodemus, (John iii, 10,) 
imply the existence of a teaching as to baptism like 
that above referred to. He, "the teacher of Israel," 
had been familiar with "these things" — the new birth, 
the gift of the Spirit — as words and phrases applied 
to heathen proselytes. But he failed to grasp the 
deeper truth which lay beneath them, and to see that 
they had a wider, a universal application. — For the 
remission of sins. The baptism of John was not 
itself to secure the forgiveness of sins, but merely to 
prepare the way for it ; it was to set forth the truth 
significantly, that the Messiah grants the forgiveness 
of sins, but that repentance on the part of the sinner 
is an indispensable condition for it. — The proper 
place to consider fully the relation of John's baptism 
to that of the Christian Church is Acts xix, 1-4. — 
He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost. As 
Mark makes no mention of the Baptist's announce- 
ment of the Messianic judgment, he omits, also, the 
addition " and with fire." 

Verses 9-15. Mark's report of the baptism of 
Jesus is less full than that of Matthew. The view of 
Dr. A. Clarke and other English commentators, that 
Christ's baptism was his solemn induction into his 
priestly office, is not tenable. " As the priests had, 
according to the law, (Ex. xxix,) to be washed with 
water and to be anointed with oil, before ihey en- 
tered upon their office, so Christ, as the high-priest 
over the house of God, was baptized with water and 
the Holy Ghost." But in this comparison the fact 
is altogether overlooked, that Christ was to be a 
high-priest according to the order of Melchizedek, 



not according to that of Aaron, (Heb. vii, 21.) As 
our Lord did not belong to the tribe of Levi, an in- 
duction into his priestly office, as is assumed, would 
have been not a fulfillment, but a violation of the 
ceremonial law. — He was with the wild beasts. 
By wild beasts — -&>/pia— we need not understand 
beasts of prey, since this is not the usual meaning 
of -Diipiov, which rather means a brute as distin- 
guished from man. That he was with the beasts, 
implies, that he was cut off from all human society 
and ordinary sources of the supply of food. Mark 
does not expressly mention Christ's continued fast- 
ing, which Matthew and Luke represent as the occa- 
sion of the first temptation, but the ministrations of 
the angels imply it. — Jesus came into Galilee. 
The Evangelist passes on at once to the beginning 
of our Lord's public ministry in Galilee. Why the 
Synoptists do not relate the Judean ministry, has 
been fully explained in our introductory remarks to 
Matthew iv, 12-25. — Preaching 'the Gospel of 
the kingdom of God. The Lord commences his 
preaching with the same words which the Forerunner 
had already used, (Matt, iii, 2.) By his prophetic 
office he prepares himself the way to his mediatorial 
and kingly office. — The time is fulfilled. " The 
fullness of the time is come, (Gal. iv, 4.) The de- 
sign of the old covenant is accomplished; the set 
time of waiting and preparation, which was neces- 
sary for the sake of humanity at large, has expired. 
The Son is born, has grown to maturity, has be-en 
anointed and tempted. The testimony of him who 
was to bear witness has been uttered, and now he 
boars witness to himself. Now begins that last 
speaking of God by his Son, (Heb. i, 2,) the Gospel, 
which henceforth is to be preached in all the world 
till the end cometh. What a glance into the past 
and the future is this!" — Repent ye. "The last 
and greatest prophet before Christ utters at the close 
of the Old Testament this great and comprehensive 
word ; and Christ himself, as the prophet of his own 
kingdom of grace, takes it up again, for it is the 
essential word of connection between the Old and 
the New Testaments. It remains, also, the ever-re- 
curring word of preparation for faith, and the recep- 
tion of grace; for the kingdom of heaven belongs only 
to the spiritually poor and mourners in heart. All 
the apostles preach repentance and faith; and even 
from heaven the Lord cries to his Church below — 
Repent! (Rev. ii, 5-16; iii, 3, 19.) In Matthew 
the "Repent" is significantly connected with "the 
kingdom of heaven is at hand" by for. The ex- 
hortation to repentance is always made on the 
ground of promised grace ; for the law preaches no 
repentance, but only life for the righteous and death 
to all sinners ; nor can true repentance spring 
merely from the terrors of the law." (Stier. ) — And 
believe the Gospel. These words are omitted by 
Matthew. Faith is inseparably joined to true repent- 
ance ; therefore, both terms are often used as imply- 
ing one another. 



666 MARK I, 16-45. 



SECTION II. 

THE FIRST WORKS BY WHICH CHRIST REVEALS HIS DIVINE POWER AT THE BEGINNING 

OF HIS GALILEAN MINISTRY. 

CHAPTEE I, 16-45. 

1. JESUS CALLS HIS FIRST POUR DISCIPLES. 
Verses 16-20. (Compare Matthew it, 18-22; Luke v, 1-11.) 

(16) Now as he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his 
brother casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. (17) And Jesus said 
unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men. (18) 
And straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him. (19) And when he 
had gone a little further thence, he saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his 
brother, who also were in the ship mending their nets. (20) And straightway he 
called them : and they left their father Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants, 
and went after him. 

2. HE HEALS A DEMONIAC BY THE POWER OF HIS WORD. THE PEOPLE ARE 

GREATLY AMAZED. 

"Verses 31—28. (Compare Luke iv, 31-37.) 

(21) And they went into Capernaum; and straightway on the Sabbath day he 
entered into the synagogue, and taught. (22) And they were astonished at his 
doctrine: for he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes. 
(23) And there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried 
out, (24) saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Naza- 
reth ? art thou come to destroy us ? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of 
God. (25) And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. 
(26) And when the unclean spirit had torn him, and cried with a loud voice, he 
came out of him. (27) And they were all amazed, insomuch that they questioned 
among themselves, saying, "What thing is this? what new doctrine is this? for 
with authority commandeth he even the unclean spirits, and they do obey him. 
(28) And immediately his fame spread abroad throughout all the region round 
about Galilee. 

3. HIS MIRACULOUS CURES IN THE HOUSE OF PETER AT CAPERNAUM. 
"Verses 29—34. (Compare Matthew viii, 14-17; Luke IV, 38-41.) 

(29) And forthwith, when they were come out of the synagogue, they entered 
into the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. (30) But Simon's 
wife's mother lay sick of a fever ; and anon they tell him of her. (31) And he 
came and took her by the hand, and lifted her up ; and immediately the fever left 
her, and she ministered unto them. (32) And at even, when the sun did set, they 



MARK I, 16-45. 



667 



brought unto him all that were diseased, and them that were possessed with devils. 
(33) And all the city was gathered together at the door. (34) And he healed 
many that were sick of divers diseases, and cast out many devils ; and suffered not 
the devils to speak, because they knew him. 

4. HE WITHDRAWS HIMSELF INTO A SOLITARY PLACE TO PRAY. THE PEOPLE 

INQUIRE AFTER HIM. 

Verses 35—39. (Compare Luke iv, 42-44.) 

(35) And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and 
departed into a solitary place, and there prayed. (36) And Simon and they that 
were with him followed after him. (37) And when they had found him, they said 
unto him, All men seek for thee. (38) And he said unto them, Let us go into the 
next towns, that I may preach there also : for therefdre came I forth. (39) And 
he preached in their synagogues throughout all Galilee, and cast out devils. 

5. HE HEALS A LEPER BY TOUCHING HIM. 
Verses 40-45. (Compare Matthew viii, 1-4; Luke t, 12-16.) 

(40) And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to 
him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. (41) And 
Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith 
unto him, I will; be thou clean. (42) And as soon as he had spoken, immediately 
the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed. (43) And he straitly charged 
him, and forthwith sent him away ; (44) and saith unto him, See thou say nothing 
to any man : but go thy way, shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing 
those things which Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them. (45) But he 
went out, and began to publish it much, and to blaze abroad the matter, insomuch 
that Jesus could no more openly enter into the city, but was without in desert 
places : and they came to him from every quarter. 



Verses 16-20. "Two things claim our attention 
here: How the Lord's profound wisdom lays hold of 
lower and external objects to become the images of 
the higher relations in the kingdom of heaven; and, 
also, how familiarly his thought and language attach 
themselves to those Old Testament typical expressions 
in which the Spirit had already prophetically exhib- 
ited all the germs of the New Testament consumma- 
tion. It is not a casual matter, but a real, though 
secret, prelude of the Holy Ghost, that the Lord 
•named, in Jeremiah, (xvi, 16,) those who were sent 
forth for the restoration of Israel fishermen; and 
again, in Ezekiel, (xlvii, 10,) spoke of the fishers 
who should gather exceeding many fishes in the 
new waters of the living. That which there pointed 
into the most remote futurity of the kingdom of 
God, is here beginning to be manifest; and the pre- 
vious occupation of the first apostles was itself a 
pre-intimation, just as it has pleased Divine Provi- 
dence in the case of many other important persons, 



to shadow out their future calling in their earlier 
relations in life; in David's sheepfold, for instance, 
his own kingdom and that of his great antitype. — I 
will make you fishers of men. This signifies not 
merely, I appoint you to this, and will train you for 
it; but it includes the promise, Ye shall, with suc- 
cess and blessing, labor in the ministry of my Word, 
which shall catch men, even as your net the fish. 
This meaning comes out with especial prominence 
in the two prophetic draughts of fishes. (Luke v, 
and John xxi.) Whatever else grace made of these 
Galilean fishermen — themselves sinful men, who had 
been just gathered and saved — even up to their 
thrones and crowns of apostolical dignity, in the re- 
generation of the world, this one thing remains the 
climax and the crown of their honor and dignity, 
that they were made ministers and helpers of the 
grace which saved mankind." (Stier.) 

Verses 21-28. "The first miracle recorded by 
Matthew is the cure of a leper by the touch of 



668 



MARK I, 16-45. 



Jesus, his opposition to the hierarchical theocracy 
and its tradition being the main point of view to that 
Evangelist; the first miracle recorded by John is the 
change of water into wine, symbolizing the trans- 
formation of the old world into a new one. The first 
miracle recorded by Luke and Mark is the cure of a 
demoniac in the synagogue at Capernaum, spoken 
of in our text. But even these two Evangelists 
contemplate this manifestation of miraculous power 
from somewhat different stand-points. To Luke the 
healed man seems to be the main point; while 
Mark's principal object is to point out Christ's power 
over the power of Satan." (Lange.) — And there 

WAS IN THEIR SYNAGOGUE A MAN, etc. From this it 

appears that this demoniac enjoyed hours of rest, as 
he could, otherwise, not have been admitted into the 
synagogue. — With an unclean spirit — literally, 
in; that is, under the power of an unclean spirit. — 
And he cried odt, saying. The unclean spirit 
spoke through the man in his power — he used him 
as his organ. — Let us alone. The Greek word ea 
may be the imperative of the verb edoi, desist; but it 
is more probably an interjection of anguish and ter- 
ror, like our ah! woe! — What have we to do with 
thee ? Although only one unclean spirit is spoken 
of, yet this one speaks in the name of his compan- 
ions. — Jesus of Nazareth. By these words the 
Savior is generally designated, where his majesty 
and glory is left out of view. (Comp. chap, xvi, 6; 
Acts ii, 22-24; xxii, 8; John xix, 19.) — Art thou 
come to destroy us? This is the cry of abject fear 
that would fain avert the doom which with Christ's 
presence in the world appears so near. — I know 
thee, who thou art. Here, as it would seem, the 
consciousness of the demoniac flowed together with 
that of the demon, as in Matt, viii, 29, where the 
demon recognizes likewise the Messiah at once. — 
The Holy One of God. The rendering of this tes- 
timony, in so far as it came from the demon, was 
calculated to bring the truth under suspicion, be- 
cause it was rendered by the spirit of lies. — And 
Jesus rebuked him. Not as Michael the archangel, 
" The Lord rebuke thee," (Jude 9,) but in his own 
name and in his own power. — Hold thy peace ! 
Christ does not suffer himself to be praised by the 
devils. As the Master does here, so did his apostle 
afterward, (Acts xvi, 16-18,) but his followers in our 
day often fail, as Stier says, to reject, with suffi- 
cient decision, testimony given in their favor by 
ungodly men. The kingdom of God does not need, 
and ought not to admit such helps. The best testi- 
mony for God's kingdom is its own triumph over the 
powers of darkness. — And when the unclean spirit 
had torn him. Luke says: "And when the devil 
had thrown him in the midst, he came out of him, 
and hurt him not." It is worthy of note that in all 
such cures performed by the Lord, the demoniacs 
had the worst paroxysms while under the hands of 
the Savior, whereupon they were restored to perfect 
health all at once. In this way the reality and great- 



ness of both the evil and the cure became apparent 
to all, and there was no room left for cavil. There 
is an obvious practical reflection drawn from what 
accompanied the cure of the demoniacs. Satan 
vexes with temptations and with buffetings none so 
much as those who are in the act of being delivered 
from his dominion. When the devil has to yield, he 
rages fearfully. — And cried with a loud voice. 
The demon obeyed the command of the Lord, and 
spoke not another word. His cry was merely an 
inarticulate noise of rage and pain. — And they 
were all amazed, etc., both at his doctrine and the 
cure of the demoniac, very properly connecting the 
one with the other. — What new doctrine is this? 
"From the manifestation of a new redeeming power 
they infer the coming of a new revelation; for reve- 
lation and redemption, miracle and prophecy, stand 
in reciprocal relation to the Israelite." (Lange.) — 
In this section is presented to us the great contrast 
between the condition of fallen men and that of the 
fallen angels in their relation to the Lord Jesus 
Christ. The direct and indirect influences of the 
incarnation of the Son of God upon those intelligent 
beings, who remained holy as they were originally 
created, we can only conjecture, but its bearing upon 
the condition of the fallen angels we learn from the 
words of this unclean spirit. 1. He intimates that 
Jesus had come to destroy them, not to annihilate 
them, but to destroy their works, to deliver men from 
the power and slavery of Satan. This is the destruc- 
tion so much dreaded by the demons. 2. Fallen 
angels are fully convinced that not they, but men 
alone have an interest in the Savior. " What have 
we to do with thee?" Nothing at all; they know 
that he is a Savior, but not for them. His power of 
saving is the cause of their downfall — the salvation 
of mankind is their ruin. How vastly different is it 
with us! In Christ we have a Redeemer who was 
made like unto us in all things, sin alone excepted. 
He lived, died, and rose from the dead for us. We 
have the right to claim him as the Savior intended 
for us, and in his name to come with boldness to the 
mercy-seat 3. The knowledge that Jesus is the Son 
of God and Savior of mankind, fills the fallen angels 
with terror and despair; for men it is glad tidings. 
But how strange that fallen angels knew and con- 
fessed Christ, while men refused to recognize him! 
(John ix, 29.) 4. The conduct of Jesus toward 
a fallen angel forms a great contrast with that 
toward fallen man. He had no look of compassion 
for the unclean spirit, no word of encouragement, 
no open ear for his prayers. On the other hand, 
with what meekness did he endure the contradiction 
of sinning men! He never acted toward a sinner in 
distress as he did toward this- unclean spirit. Let 
us with adoring gratitude contemplate both the 
goodness and the severity of a holy God. 

Verses 29-34. The Greek particle ev&eug, trans- 
lated forthwith, anon, and immediately, occurs here 
three times in rapid succession, and is peculiar to 



MARK I, 16-45. 



669 



Mark's vivid style. But it has, nevertheless, the full 
force of its literal meaning, especially the " immedi- 
ately" in verse 3L The cure was instantaneous 
and complete. She, who had lain prostrate and 
helpless, was at once enabled to provide for them 
what was necessary for their entertainment. — We 
learn here, as well as at the wedding of Cana, how 
Jesus sympathizes with us in our family circum- 
stances, how ready he is to afford help and relief. 
He is still the same — let us ever have recourse to 
him in the hour of need; and let those who have 
been restored to spiritual health, never forget to use 
their strength in ministering to Christ and to his 
people. — And at even. In order not to break the 
Sabbath, the people waited till evening before they 
brought their sick to the Lord, thus depriving him 
of the rest of the night. — All that were diseased, 

AND THEM THAT WERE POSSESSED WITH DEVILS. How 

clearly here, as in Matt, viii, 16, are natural diseases 
distinguished from demoniaey! 

Verses 35-39. And in the morning rising up a 
great while refore day. " We can not hesitate to 
believe that this retiring of Christ to a solitary place 
for the purpose of praying was in accordance with a 
real want of his nature, since the Lord did nothing 
for mere appearance' sake. On the contrary, ac- 
cording to the Scriptures, Jesus was made like unto 
his brethren in all things, sin alone excepted, (Heb. 
ii, 17 ;) and to jcon template him in his true humanity 
is a never-failing fountain of consolation, and ena- 
bles us to set him before us as our pattern. If 
we view Jesus in his human development, his 
prayers — which, though he prayed alway, as he com- 
mands us, (Luke xviii, 1,) nevertheless had their 
culminating points in certain hours of sacred devo- 
tion — were even to him the times of heavenly refresh- 
ing and strengthening from above, amid the con- 
stant assaults of the powers of darkness from with- 
out. They were at the same time the hours which 
he especially devoted to the deepest meditations on 
the Father's counsel concerning him and the pur- 
poses of Divine mercy, to consecrate himself to the 
accomplishment of his work." (Olshausen. ) — This 
section sets before us Christ's days-work as a pat- 
tern for our labors. I. Before he enters upon the 
labors of the day, he prays, teaching us thereby: 1. 
Our need of prayer, seeing that even He prayed, 
whose relation to the Father was that of no created 
being, and who being sinless did not need prayer, as 
we do, to overcome sinful inclinations. 2. The right 
kind of earnest prayer; he prayed in a solitary place, 
and gave even a portion of his night's rest for devo- 
tion. II. He prays not only, but labors also, teach- 
ing us thereby what constitutes acceptable labor in 
the sight of God. He labors : 1. With a hearty will, 
("Let us go," v. 38.) 2. With a clear conscious- 
ness of doing the will of God, ("For therefore came 
I forth.") 3. To destroy the work of the devil by 
word and deed, (v. 39.) Our work on earth should 
have for its object the building up of the kingdom of 



God by preaching Jesus both with our lips and by 
our works. 

Verses 40-45. In addition to what has been said 
on leprosy in the notes on Matt, viii, 1-4, we here 
subjoin the following extract from Trench: "There 
is a common misapprehension that leprosy was catch- 
ing from one person to another; and that they who 
were suffering under it were so carefully secluded 
from their fellow-men, lest they might communicate 
the poison of the disease to them. All those who 
have examined into the matter the closest, are nearly 
of one consent, that the sickness was incommunica- 
ble by ordinary contact from one person to another. 
A leper might transmit it to his children, or the 
mother of a leper's children might take it from him; 
but it was by no ordinary contact transferable from 
one person to another. All the notices in the Old 
Testament, as well as in other Jewish books, confirm 
this. Thus, where the law of Moses was not ob- 
served, no such exclusion necessarily found place; 
Naaman and Gehazi talked familiarly with the king 
of apostate Israel. (2 Kings viii, 5.) And even 
where the law of Moses was in force, the stranger 
and the sojourner were expressly exempted from the 
ordinances in relation to leprosy; which could not 
have been, had the disease been contagious, and the 
motives of the leper's exclusion been not religious 
but civil, since the danger of the spreading of the 
disease would have been equal in their case and in 
that of native Israelites. How, moreover, could 
the Levitical priests, had the disease been this creep- 
ing infection, have themselves escaped the disease, 
obliged as they were by their very office to submit 
the leper to such actual handling and closest exam- 
ination? The ordinances concerning leprosy had 
quite a different and a far deeper significance, into 
which it will be needful a little to enter. It is clear 
that the same principle — which made all that had to 
do with death, as mourning, a grave, a corpse, the 
occasions of a ceremonial uncleanness, inasmuch as 
all these were signs and consequences of sin — might, 
in like manner, have made every sickness an occa- 
sion of uncleanness, each of these" being also death 
beginning. But instead of this, not pushing the prin- 
ciple to the utmost, God took but one sickness, one 
of these visible outcomings of a tainted nature, in 
which to testify that evil was not from him, and 
could not dwell with him. Leprosy, which was in- 
deed the sickness of sicknesses, was selected of God 
from the whole host of maladies and diseases which 
had broken in upon man s body; to the end that, 
bearing his testimony against it, he might bear his 
testimony against that out of which it and all other 
sicknesses grew — against sin, as not from him, as 
grievous in his sight; and the sickness itself also as 
grievous, not for itself, but because it was a visible 
manifestation, a direct consequence of the inner in- 
harmony of man's spirit, a commencement of the 
death which, through disobedience to God's perfect 
will, had found entrance into a nature made by God 



670 



MARK I, 16-45. 



for immortality. And terrible indeed, as might be 
expected, was that disease, round which this solemn 
teaching revolved. Leprosy was really nothing 
short of a living death, a poisoning of the springs, a 
corrupting of all the humors of life ; a dissolution 
little by little of the whole body, so that one limb 
after another actually decayed and fell away. Aaron 
exactly describes the appearance which the leper 
presented to the eyes of the beholders, when, plead- 
ing for Miriam, he says, ' Let her not be as one 
dead, of whom the flesh is half consumed when he 
cometh out of his mother's womb.' (Num. xii, 12.) 
The disease, moreover, was incurable by the art and 
skill of man; not that the leper might not return to 
health ; for, however rare, such cases are yet contem- 
plated in the Levitical law. But then the leprosy 
left the man, not in obedience to any outward means 
of healing which had been applied by men, but 
purely and merely through the good-will and mercy 
of God. This helplessness of man in the matter is 
recognized in the speech of the king of Israel, who, 
when Naaman is sent to him that he may heal him, 
exclaims, " Am I God, to kill and to make alive, 
that this man doth send unto me to recover a man 
of his leprosy?" (2 Kings v, 7.) The leper, thus 
fearfully bearing about in the body the outward and 
visible tokens of sin in the soul, was handled through- 
out as a sinner, as one in whom sin had reached its 
highest manifestation, that is, as one dead in tres- 
passes and sins. The leper was to bear about the 
emblems of death, (Lev. xiii, 45,) the rent garments, 
that is, mourning garments, he mourning for him- 
self as for one dead ; the head bare, as they were 
wont to have it who were in communion with the 
dead, (Num. vi, 9; Ezek. xxiv, 17;) and the lip 
covered. (Ezek. xxiv, 17.) In the restoration, too, 
of a leper, exactly the same instrument of cleansing 
were in use, the cedar-wood, the hyssop, and the 
scarlet, as were used for the cleansing of one defiled 
through a dead body, or aught pertaining to death, 
and which were never in use upon any other occa- 
sion. (Comp. Num. xix, 6, 13, 18, with Lev. xiv, 
4-7.) No doubt when David exclaims, "Purge me 
with hyssop, and I shall be clean," (Ps. li, 7,) he in 
this allusion, looking through the outward to the in- 
ward, even to the true blood of sprinkling, contem- 
plates himself as a spiritual leper, as one whose sin 
had been, while he lived in it, a sin unto death, as 
one needing, therefore, absolute and entire restora- 
tion from the very furthest degree of separation from 
God. And being this sign and token of sin, and of 
sin reaching unto and culminating in death, it natu- 
rally brought about with it a total exclusion from 
the camp, (Lev. xiii, 46; Num. v, 2-4; 2 Kings 
vii, 3,) or afterward out of the city; and we find this 
law to have been so strictly enforced, that even the 
sister of Moses might not be exempted from it, 
(Num. xii, 14, 15;) and kings Uzziah (2 Chron. 
xxvi, 21) and Azariah (2 Kings xv, 5) themselves 
must submit to it; men being by this exclusion 



taught that what here took place in a figure, should 
take place in the reality with every one who was 
found in the death of sin : he should be shut out of 
the true city of God. Thus, taking up and glorify- 
ing this and like ordinances of exclusion, St. John 
exclaims of the New Jerusalem, ' There shall in no 
wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither what- 
soever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie.' (Rev. 
xxi, 27.) It need hardly be observed, that in all 
this it was not in the least implied that he who bore 
this plague was of necessity a guiltier man than his 
fellows; though being, as it was, this symbol of sin, 
it was most often the theocratic punishment, the 
penalty for sins committed against the theocracy, as 
in the cases of Miriam, of Gehazi, of Uzziah; and 
we may compare Deut. xxiv, 8, where the warning, 
1 Take heed of the plague of leprosy,' is not that 
they diligently observe the laws about leprosy, but 
that they beware lest this plague of leprosy come 
upon them, lest by their disobedience they incur the 
theocratic penalty. The Jews themselves termed 
it ' the finger of God,' and emphatically, ' The 
stroke.' They said that it attacked first a man's 
house, and, if he did not turn, his clothing; and 
then, if he persisted in sin, himself: a fine symbol, 
whether the fact was so or not, of the manner in 
which God's judgments, if men refused to listen to 
them, reach ever nearer to the center of their life. 
So, too, they said that a man's true repentance was 
the one condition of his leprosy leaving him. See- 
ing, then, that leprosy was this outward and visible 
sign of the innermost spiritual corruption, there 
could be no fitter form of evil over which the Lord 
of life should display his power. He will prove him- 
self the conqueror of death in life, as of death com- 
pleted. This victory of his over this most terrible 
form of physical evil is fitly brought out as a tes- 
timony of his Messiahship: 'The lepers are cleansed.' 
(Matt, xi, 5.) Nor may we doubt that the terrible- 
ness of the infliction, the extreme suffering with 
which it was linked, the horror which must have 
filled the sufferer's mind, as he marked its slow but 
inevitable progress, to be arrested by no human 
hand, the ghastly hideousness of its unnatural white- 
ness, (Num. xii, 10; Exod. iv, 6; 2 Kings v, 27,) 
must all have combined to draw out his pity, who 
was not merely the mighty, but no less the loving. 
Physician and Healer of the bodies as of the souls 
of men." (Condensed from Trench.) — He forth- 
with sent him away. He would allow no lingering, 
but required him to hasten to the priests, lest the re- 
port of what had been done should outrun him, and 
the priests, in their hostility to Jesus, should deny 
that the man was really cured. — But he went out 
and began to publish it. It would seem that his 
feelings of gratitude made it impossible for him to 
be silent about the matter; but although this kind of 
disobedience is not specifically reproved, it is never- 
theless unjustifiable, and is recorded for our warning. 
It might, indeed, have been difficult for him to keep 



MARK II, 1— III, 5. 



671 



the matter by himself, but his obedience would only 
have been the more praiseworthy for it. Our duty 
is to obey the Lord, although this may do violence 
to our feelings. Obedience is better than sacrifice, 
(1 Sam. xv, 22.) Many lay great impediments in 
the way of the kingdom of God, by giving too free 
scope to their emotions. We may learn from, the re- 



peated injunctions of silence to those whom the 
Lord had healed, that there are circumstances under 
which we ought not to speak publicly of the miracles 
of Divine grace; namely, 1. If God's work would 
suffer thereby, and especially, 2. Before those who 
only abuse the truth, without deriving the least bene- 
fit from it. 



SECTION III. 

VARIOUS CONFLICTS OF CHRIST WITH THE SCRIBES AND PHARISEES. 
CHAPTER II, 1, TO CHAPTBE III, 5. 

1. THE PARALYTIC, AND THE POWER OP FORGIVING SINS. 
Verses 1—13. (Compare Matthew ix, 1-8; Luke v, 17-26.) 

(1) And again he entered into Capernaum after some days ; and it was noised 
that he was in the house. : (2) And straightway many were gathered together, 
insomuch that there was no room to receive them, no, not so much as ahout the 
door: 2 and he preached the Word unto them. (3) And they come unto him, 
bringing one sick of the palsy, which was borne of four. (4) And when they 
could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he 
was : and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of 
the palsy lay. (5) When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, 
Son, thy sins be forgiven thee. (6) But there were certain of the scribes sitting 
there, and reasoning in their hearts, (7) Why doth this man thus speak blasphe- 
mies? 3 who can forgive sins but God only? (8) And immediately, when Jesus 
perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, he said unto them, 
Why reason ye these things in your hearts ? (9) Whether is it easier to say to the 
sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee ; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, 
and walk? (10) But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth 
to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,) (11) I say unto thee, Arise, and 
take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house. (12) And immediately he 
arose, took up the bed, and went forth before them all ; insomuch that they were 
all amazed, and glorified God, saying, We never saw it on this fashion. 

3. JESUS DINES WITH PUBLICANS AND SINNERS IN THE HOUSE OP LEVI. 

Verses 13— 17. (Compare Matthew ix, 9-13; Luke t, 27-32.) 

(13) And he went forth again by the sea-side; and all the multitude resorted 
unto him, and he taught them. (14) And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son 



1 The Greek eis oTkov implies that he had gone into the 
house, that is, that he returned home ; for the house is 
evidently meant which he occupied in Capernaum. (See 



Matt, iv, 12.) 2 That is, in the square yard that was 
within every larger house. (See foot-note on Matt, 
xxvi, 58.) 3 The reading in A, B, D, adopted by Tisch- 



672 



MARK II, 1— III, 5. 



of Alpheus sitting at the receipt of custom, and said unto him, Follow me. And 
he arose and followed him. (15) And it came to pass, that, as Jesus sat at meat 
in his house, many publicans and sinners sat also together with Jesus and his dis- 
ciples; for there were many, and they followed him. (16) And when the scribes 
and Pharisees saw him eat with publicans and sinners, they said unto his disciples, 
How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners? (17) "When 
Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the 
physician, but they that&re sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to 
repentance. * 

3. THE FASTING OF JOHN'S DISCIPLES AND OF THE PHARISEES. 

"Verses 18—33. (Compare Matthew ix, 14-17; Luke t, 33-39.) 

(18) And the disciples of John and of the Pharisees used to fast: and they 
come and say unto him, "Why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, 
but thy disciples fast not? (19) And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of 
the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they 
have the bridegroom with them, they can not fast. (20) But the days will come, 
when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast 
in those days. (21) JSTo man also seweth a piece of new cloth on an old gar- 
ment; else the new piece that filled it up taketh away from the old, and the 
rent is made worse. (22) And no man putteth new wine into old bottles ; else the 
new wine doth burst the bottles, and the wine is spilled, and the bottles will be 
marred : but new wine must be put into new bottles. 



THE DISCIPLES PLUCK EARS OF CORN ON THE SABBATH DAY. 
MAN IS LORD ALSO OF THE SABBATH. 



THE SON OF 



Verses 33—38. (Compare Matthew xii, 1-8; Loke vi, 1-5.) 

(23) And it came to pass, that he went through the cornfields on the Sabbath 
day ; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn. (24) And 
the Pharisees said unto him, Behold, why do they on the Sabbath day that which 
is not lawful? (25) And he said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, 
when he had need, and was a hungered, he, and they that were with him? (26) 
How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high-priest, 5 and 
did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also 
to them which were with him ? (27) And he said unto them, The Sabbath was 
made for man, and not man for the Sabbath : (28) Therefore the Son of man is 
Lord also of the Sabbath. 



endorf, is, "Why does this man speak thus? he blas- 
phemes." * To repentance is probably an addition taken 
from Luke v, 32. It is found only in some Minuscles. 
6 Literally, During the high-priesthood of Abiathar. " In 
1 Samuel xxi, from which this account is taken, Ahime- 
lech, not Abiathar, is the high-priest. There is, how- 



ever, considerable confusion in the names about this part 
of the history. Ahimelech himself is called Ahiah in 
1 Samuel xiv, 3 ; and whereas, according to 1 Samuel 
xxii, 20, Ahimelech has a son Abiathar, in 2 Samuel viii, 
17, Ahimelech is the son of Abiathar, and in 1 Chron- 
icles xviii, 16, Abimelech. Amid this variation we can 



MARK II, 1— III, 5. 



673 



5. A MAN WITH A WITHERED HAND IS HEALED ON THE SABBATH. 

Cliapter III, 1—5. (Compare Matthew xii, 9-13; Luke vi, 6-11.) 

(1) And he entered again into the synagogue ; and there was a man there which 
had a withered hand. (2) And they watched him, whether he would heal him on 
the Sabbath day; that they might accuse him. (3) And he saith unto the man 
which had the withered hand, Stand forth. (4) And he saith unto them, Is it law- 
ful to do good on the Sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill? But 
they held their peace. (5) And when he had looked round about on them with 
anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, 
Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out : and his hand was restored 
whole as the other. 6 



Verses 1-12. They uncovered the roof. "They 
first ascended to the roof: this was not so difficult, 
because commonly there was a flight of steps on the 
outside of the house, reaching to the roof. Our 
Lord assumes the existence of such, when he says, 
' Let him that is on the house-top not come down to 
take any thing out of his house,' (Matt, xxiv, 17.) 
Some will have it, that, on the present occasion, the 
bearers having thus reached the roof, did no more 
than let down their sick through the grating or trap- 
door, (2 Kings i, 2;) or, at most, that they might 
have widened such an aperture, already existing, to 
enable them to let down the sick man's bed. Others, 
that Jesus was sitting in the open court, and that to 
this they got access by the roof, and breaking 
through the breastwork or battlement (Deut. xxii, 8) 
made of tiles, which guarded the roof, and removing 
the linen awning which was stretched over the court, 
let him down in the midst before the Lord. But 
there seems no sufficient reason for departing from 
the obvious meaning of the words. In St. Mark, at 
least, they are so plain and clear, that we can sup- 
pose nothing else than that a part of the actual 
covering of the roof was removed, so that the bed on 
which the palsied man lay might be let down before 
the Lord. The whole circumstance will be much 
more easily conceived, when we keep in mind that 
it was probably the upper chamber, where were as- 
sembled those that were drawn together to hear the 
Lord. This, as the most retired, and probably the 
largest room in the house, extending oftentimes over 
its whole area, was much used for such purposes as 
that which now drew him and his hearers together. 
(Acts i, 13; xx, 8.)" (Trench.) Let us come to 
Christ— says an old writer — through the door or 
through the roof, that is, in a regular or irregular 
way. True faith, that worketh by love, breaks 
through all impediments. Love makes every thing 



seemly and proper, even what apparently is not so. 
— Son, thy sins be forgiven. Matthew has the ad- 
ditional words: Be of good cheer. Trench remarks: 
" This is a striking example of the way in which 
the Lord gives before men ask, and better than men 
ask : for this man had not asked any thing, save, 
indeed, in the dumb asking of that earnest effort to 
come near to Jesus ; and all that he dared to ask 
even in that, or at least all that his friends and 
bearers hoped for him, was that his body might be 
healed. Yet there was, no doubt, in himself a deep 
feeling of his sickness in its innermost root; as 
growing out of sin, perhaps as the penalty of some 
especial sin whereof he was conscious; and some ex- 
pression of contrition, some exclamation of a peni- 
tent heart, may have been the immediate occasion 
of these gracious words of forgiveness, as, indeed, 
the address, ' Son, be of good cheer,' seems to im- 
ply that he was a person evidently burdened and cast 
down, and, as the Lord saw, with more than the 
weight of his bodily sicknesses and sufferings. In 
other cases the forgiveness of sins follovjs the out- 
ward healing. But here the remission of sin takes 
the precedence ; the reason no doubt being, that iu 
the sufferer's own conviction there was so close a 
connection between his sin and his plague, that the 
outer healing would have been scarcely intelligible 
to him, would have scarcely carried to his mind the 
sense of a benefit, unless his conscience had been 
also set free ; perhaps he was incapable even of re- 
ceiving it, till there had been spoken peace to his 
spirit." 

Verses 18-22. And the disciples of John and 
of the Pharisees used to fast. There is here no 
reference to a time of fasting prescribed by the law, 
since it is not likely that Jesus should not have ob- 
served it. The Greek expression, f/aav vriarebovTEc, 
were fasting, may mean either, they were, at the 



hardly undertake to explain the difficulty in the text." I best Codices. 
(Alford.) e As the other is an addition not found in the | xii, 13. 

43 



It was probably taken from Matthew 



674 



MARK II, 1— III, 5. 



time being, fasting, that is, observing a fast occa- 
sioned by the imprisonment of John or some other 
cause, or they were in the habit of fasting. It is 
very probable that John's disciples imitated their 
ascetic master, especially in fasting. And as the 
Pharisees attached likewise great importance to fast- 
ing, their joint-action in the case before us is easily 
accounted for. — No man putteth new wine into 
old bottles. We are taught in these words im- 
portant truths of general import, as has been shown 
in the comments on the parallel passage in Matthew. 
Here we will only remind the reader to note the 
course of the true followers of Christ with regard to 
old and new forms : 1. They do not, in the bondage 
of formality, cling to what is old, merely because it 
is old. 2. Nor do they prematurely adopt the new, 
simply because it is new. But, 3. Free from slavish 
conservatism and radical liberalism, they are led by 
the spirit of Christ to prepare new bottles for new 
wine. 

Verses 23-28. The Sabbath was made for man, 
and not man for the Sabbath. The end for which 
the Sabbath was ordained was to bless man; the 
end for which man was created was not — to observe 
the Sabbath. Man is the end, and the ordinances 
of the law the means; not these the end, and man 
the means. Man is, therefore, not required on ac- 
count of the Sabbath to do himself any injury. — 
Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the 
Sabbath. From the fact that the institution of the 
Sabbath is only a means to subserve man's best in- 
terest, and man is not created for the interest of the 
Sabbath, our Lord argues that he, the Son of man — 
by which mysterious term the Jews understood at 
least so much that he claimed to be a man unlike 
every other man — is Lord of the Sabbath, and what 
he permits his disciples to do is right. We, know- 
ing who this Son of man is, can understand these 
words in a fuller and higher sense. He who created 
man, and who instituted the Sabbath for his benefit, 
could not pervert his own law from its original mean- 
ing and design. This original meaning and design 
is the benefit of man, which the scribes and Phari- 
sees had entirely lost sight of and perverted. Hence 
their groundless charges against Christ and his dis- 
ciples for desecrating the Sabbath. — On the institu- 
tion of the Sabbath, its significance, and grounds, 
and permanent obligation we can present to the 
reader no argument so thorough and lucid, and at 
the same time so concise, as that of Dr. Schaff, con- 
tained in his Essay on the Anglo-American Sab- 
bath, read before the National Sabbath Convention 
at Saratoga, Aug. 11, 1863, and adopted and pub- 
lished by the New York Sabbath Committee as one 
of their tracts. Dr. Schaff first lays down the view 
generally held by Christians in England and Amer- 
ica as the true Scriptural view, in contradistinction 
to the European continental theory on the Sabbath. 
It is as follows: "The Sabbath, or weekly day of 
holy rest, is, next to the family, the oldest institution 



which God established on earth for the benefit of 
man. It dates from Paradise, from the state of in- 
nocence and bliss, before the serpent of sin had 
stung its deadly fangs into our race. The Sabbath, 
therefore, as well as the family, must have a general 
significance; it is rooted and grounded in the phys- 
ical, intellectual, and moral constitution of our na- 
ture as it came from the hands of its Creator, and 
in the necessity of periodical rest for the health and 
wellbeing of body and soul. It is to the week what 
the night is to the day — a season of repose and re- 
animation. It is, originally, not a law, but an act 
of benediction — a blessing and a comfort to man. 
The Sabbath was solemnly reaffirmed in the Mosaic 
legislation as a primitive institution, with an express 
reference to the creation and the rest of God on the 
seventh day, in completing and blessing his work, 
and at the same time with an additional reference to 
the typical redemption from the bondage of Egypt. 
(Deut. v, 15.) It was embodied, not in the ceremo- 
nial and civil, but in the moral law, which is binding 
for all times, and rises in sacred majesty and grand- 
eur far above all human systems of ethics, as Mount 
Sinai rises above the desert, and the pyramids of 
Egypt above the surrounding plain. There the Sab- 
bath law still stands on the first table, as an essential 
part of that love of God which is the soul and sum 
of all true religion and virtue, and can as little be 
spared as any other of the sacred ten — the number 
of harmony and completeness. Diminution here is 
necessarily mutilation, and a mutilation not of any 
human system of legislation or ethics, but of God's 
own perfect code of morals. Let us remember that 
the fourth, like every other of the ten command- 
ments, was immediately spoken by the great Jeho- 
vah, and that under an overwhelming and unparal- 
leled display of Divine majesty; that it was even 
written by his own finger — written not on paper, 
like the rest of the Pentateuch, but upon tables of 
stone — the symbol of durability; that it was pre- 
served in the most sacred place of the tabernacle; 
that it was emphatically 'a sign between Jehovah 
and his people,' (Ezek. xx, 12;) that it received the 
express sanction of Christ and his apostles, when 
they comprehended all the laws of God and the du- 
ties of man under the great law of love to God and 
to our neighbor, and declared that the Gospel, far 
from overthrowing the law, establishes and fulfills 
it. The Savior, according to his own solemn decla- 
ration, came not to destroy the law or the prophets, 
but to fulfill. (Matt, v, 17-19; comp. Rom. iii, 31.) 
He was neither a revolutionist nor a reactionist, but 
a reformer in the highest sense of the term; he re- 
enacted the law of Sinai from the mount of beati- 
tudes with the fullness of the Gospel blessing, as the 
fundamental charter of his heavenly kingdom; he 
explained, deepened, and spiritualized its meaning, 
satisfied its demands, delivered us from its curse, in- 
fused into it a new life, and enables us, by his Holy 
Spirit, to keep it, in imitation of his own perfect ex- 



MARK II, 1— III, 5. 



675 



ample. Finally, the Jewish Sabbath rose with the 
Savior from the grave, as a new creation, on the 
morning of the resurrection, with the fullness of the 
Gospel salvation, and descended with the Holy 
Ghost from his exalted throne of glory on the day 
of Pentecost; to be observed as the Christian Sab- 
bath, as 'the Lord's day,' in his Church to the end 
of time. Its temporary, ritual form was abolished, 
its moral substance was preserved and renewed. 
The Jewish Sabbath was baptized with fire and the 
Holy Ghost — it was Christianized and glorified. 
Henceforward it was emphatically the commemora- 
tion day of the resurrection, or of the new spiritual 
creation and the accomplished redemption, and 
hence a day of sacred joy and thanksgiving, 'the 
pearl of days,' the crown and glory of the week, and 
a foretaste and pledge of the eternal Sabbath in 
heaven. — The Sabbath, then, rests upon a threefold 
basis — the original creation, the Jewish legislation, 
and the Christian redemption. It answers the phys- 
ical, moral, and religious necessities of man. It is 
supported by the joint authority of the Old and the 
New Testament, of the law and the Gospel. It has 
still a twofold legal and evangelical aspect, and we 
must keep both in view in order to do justice to its 
character and aim. Like the law in general, the 
fourth commandment is both negative and positive, 
prohibitive and injunctive; it is to all men a mirror 
of God's holiness and our own sinfulness; to the un- 
converted a wholesome restraint, and a schoolmas- 
ter to lead them to Christ, and to the converted a 
rule of holy obedience. But the Sabbath is also a 
Gospel institution: it was originally a gift of God's 
goodness to our first parents before the fall; it 'was 
made for man,' (Mark ii, 27,) and looks to his phys- 
ical and spiritual wellbeing; it was 'a delight' to 
the pious of the old dispensation, (Isa. lviii, 23,) and 
now under the new dispensation it is fraught with 
the glorious memories and blessings of Christ's tri- 
umph over sin and death, and of the outpouring of 
the Holy Ghost; it is the connecting link of creation 
and redemption, of paradise lost and paradise re- 
gained; a reminiscence of the paradise of innocence, 
and an anticipation of the paradise in heaven that 
can never be lost. 'It is the day which the Lord 
hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.' (Ps. 
cxviii, 24.) Rest in God is the end of all creation, 
(Heb. hi, 11; iv, 1-11) — not the rest of inaction, but 
the rest of perfection and benediction, which is one 
with the highest spiritual activity and joy in unbroken 
peace and harmony. To this rest the Sabbath points 
and prepares us from week to week; it is — to borrow 
freely some expressions from an English poem of the 
seventeenth century — heaven once a week; the next 
world's gladness prepossessed in this; a day to seek 
eternity in time; a lamp that lights man through 
these dark and dreary days; the rich and full re- 
demption of the whole week's flight; the milky-way 
chalked out with suns; the pledge and cue of a full 
rest, and the outer court of glory!" — Dr. Schaffthen 



proceeds to state and answer the objections which 
are urged against the alleged perpetuity of the 
fourth commandment. "1. It is objected, first, 'that 
the fourth commandment alone required a positive 
enactment, while all the other commandments of the 
decalogue are coextensive in their obligation with 
reason and conscience.' But a law may be positive, 
and yet generally binding. So is the law of monog- 
amy, which is equally primitive with the institution 
of the Sabbath, and yet was equally disregarded by 
heathens and Mohammedans, and fell even into 
gross neglect among the Jews, till Christ restored it 
in its primitive purity and force. Where is the 
Christian who would on this account defend polyg- 
amy, which destroys the dignity of woman, and un- 
dermines the moral foundation of the family? The 
fourth commandment, however, by pointing back to 
the creation, gives the Sabbath at the same time a 
place in the order of nature. It is not so much a 
new commandment, as the solemn reenactment of 
an institution as old as man himself. It antedates 
Judaism, and therefore survives it; it combines the 
three elements of a permanent Christian institution, 
being rooted in the order of nature, enacted by pos- 
itive legislation, and confirmed by the Gospel of 
Christ. 2. The second objection is derived from the 
change of day from the seventh to the first, under 
the Christian dispensation. But this change is at 
best a mere matter of form, and does not touch the 
substance of the commandment. The law itself does 
not expressly fix on the last day of the week; it only 
requires six days for labor, and every seventh day, 
not necessarily the seventh day — dies septenus, not 
dies sepiimvs — for the rest of worship. It undoubt- 
edly establishes the week of seven days as a Divine 
order. All days, in themselves considered, are equal 
before God, (Rom. xiv, 5,) and the selection of the 
particular day of the week for holy purposes depends 
on Divine facts and commandments. In the Old 
Testament it was determined by the creation and 
the typical redemption; in the new dispensation, by 
the resurrection and full redemption of Christ. The 
Gospel only changed the ceremonial or ritual form 
of the Sabbath law, but preserved and renewed its 
moral substance. It is also worthy of remark, that 
the first Sabbath of the world, although the last day 
in the history of God's creation, was in fact the first 
day in the history of man, who was made on the 
sixth day, as the crowning work of God. 3. A third 
objection is taken from the general spirit of the 
Christian religion, which it is said abolished the 
Jewish distinction of sacred and profane times and 
places, and regards all time as sacred to God, and 
every place of the universe as his dwelling. But 
this argument closely pressed would turn every 
week-day into a Sabbath, and give us seven Sabbaths 
for one. This, for all practical purposes, proves too 
much for the anti-Sabbatists. It anticipates an ideal 
state of another and better world. There is, indeed, 
an eternal Sabbath in heaven, which remaineth for 



676 



MARK II, 1— III. 5. 



the people of God. But while we live on earth, we 
must, by the necessities of our nature, and by God's 
own express direction, labor as well as rest, and do 
all our work, with the exception of one day in the 
week, when we are permitted to rest from our work, 
in order to do the work of God, and to prepare our- 
selves for the eternal rest in heaven. Let us by all 
means give to God as much of the week as we can, 
and let us do all our secular work for the glory of 
God, and thus consecrate all our time on earth to 
his holy service; but let us not, under the vain de- 
lusion of serving him better, withhold from him even 
that day which he has reserved for his special serv- 
ice. Let us raise the week-days, as much as we can, 
to the sanctity of the Sabbath, instead of bringing 
down the Sabbath to the level of the ordinary work- 
days. Our view, far from secularizing the week- 
days, has a tendency to elevate them, by bringing 
them under the hallowed influence of the Lord's 
day; while the pseudo-evangelical theory has just 
the opposite effect in practice; it cries out, spirit, 
but with the masses it ends in flesh; it vindicates 
liberty, but it favors lawlessness, which is death to 
all true freedom. As regards intrinsic holiness, all 
times and seasons, as well as all labor and rest, are 
alike. This we fully grant. How could we other- 
wise defend the change of the day from the seventh 
to the first, or answer the obvious astronomical ob- 
jections? God undoubtedly fills all time, as he fills 
all space. But God is also a God of order; he has 
constituted man a social being, and fitted him for 
public as well as private worship, which, like every 
other act of a finite being, must be regulated by the 
laws of time and space. We all know that the om- 
nipresent Jehovah may 'be worshiped in the silent 
chamber, in the lonely desert, and the dark cata- 
comb, as well as in the Temple of Jerusalem and on 
the Mount Gerizim. But shall we on that account 
destroy our churches and chapels, or desecrate them 
by turning them into 'houses of merchandise?' The 
objection we have under consideration falsely as- 
sumes, that the consecration of particular days to 
God necessarily tends to secularize the other days, 
when just the contrary is the case. The keeping of 
the Sabbath, far from interfering with the continual 
service of God, secures, preserves, promotes, and 
regulates it. The meaning of the Sabbath law is, 
not that we should give to God the seventh part of 
our time only, but at least. So we should pray 
•without ceasing,' according to the apostle's direc- 
tion; but this, instead of annulling, only increases 
the obligation of devoting at least a certain time of 
every day to purposes of private devotion. It is not 
by neglecting, but by strictly observing, the custom 
of morning and evening prayers, that we can make 
progress teward our final destination, when our 
whole life shall be resolved into worship and praise. 
4. The last and strongest argument is professedly 
based upon what we all admit to be the highest au- 
thority, beyond which there is no appeal. Christ 



and St. Paul, it is urged, deny the perpetuity of the 
Sabbath law. (Matt, xii, 1-5, 10-12; Mark ii, 27; 
Luke xiii, 11-16; xiv, 2-5; John v, 16; ix, 14; 
Rom. xiv, 5, 6; Col. ii, 16; Gal. iv, 9, 10.) But if 
we keep in mind the general relation of the Savior 
to the law, as explained especially in the Sermon on 
the Mount, (Matt, v, 17-19,) we can not for a mo- 
ment suppose that he should have shaken the. au- 
thority of any of God's commandments, the least 
of which he declared to be more enduring than 
heaven and earth. The passages so often quoted 
are not aimed at the Sabbath which the Lord hath 
made, but at the later Jewish perversion of it. They 
in no wise oppose the proper observance of the Sab- 
bath by works of Divine worship and charity, but 
the negative, mechanical, self-righteous, and hypo- 
critical Sabbatarianism of the Pharisees, who idol- 
ized the letter and killed the spirit of the law; who 
strained at a gnat and swallowed a camel; who ex- 
acted tithe from the smallest produce of the garden, 
and neglected the weightier matters of the law, 
judgment, mercy, and faith; who, like whited sep- 
ulchers, appeared beautiful without, but within were 
full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. 
Wherever the Christian Sabbath is observed in the 
same spirit, it is an abuse of God's ordinance, and 
falls, of course, under the same condemnation as 
the Jewish Sabbatarianism of the days of Christ. 
Christ is indeed 'Lord of the Sabbath day.' (Matt, 
xii, 8; Mark ii, 28.) But in the same sense he is 
Lord of all the commandments, as the lawgiver is 
above the law. He is also Lord of life, and yet 
never weakened the commandment, ' Thou shalt not 
kill,' but sharpened and deepened it by condemning 
even the hatred of the heart against our neighbor 
as murder before God. He uniformly set an exam- 
ple of the right observance of the Sabbath by de- 
voting it to works of worship and charity. He em- 
phatically declared the Sabbath to be made for the 
benefit of man. (Mark ii, 27.) He exhorted his 
disciples, in the extremities of the last days, to pray 
that their flight be not on the Sabbath day, lest they 
might be tempted to desecrate it, (Matt, xxiv, 20.) 
And, as to St. Paul, it is certain that while he op- 
posed the Jewish Sabbath and the Judaizing mode 
of its observance, he observed the Christian Sab- 
bath by acts of worship, (Acts xx, 7,) and enjoined 
its observance by acts of charity upon his congrega- 
tions. (1 Cor. xvi, 2.) St. John, the bosom disciple 
of Christ, the apostle, Evangelist, and seer of the 
New Testament, has sufficiently defined his position 
on the Sabbath question by conferring upon the first 
day of the week the high distinction of the Lord's 
Day. (Rev. i, 9.) The apostles in retaining with- 
out dispute the divinely-established weekly cycle, 
necessarily retained also the Sabbath, which consti- 
tutes and completes the week, and which ceased no 
more than the weeks to run their ceaseless round. 
The universal religious observance of Sunday, which 
we find in the Christian Church east and west im- 



MARK II, 1— III, 5. 



677 



mediately after the apostles, would be an inexplica- 
ble historical mystery without the preceding practice 
and sanction of the apostles. We conclude, there- 
fore, that they regarded the Sabbath, as it was 
intended to be, as & perpetual sign between Jehovah 
and his people. (Ex. xxxi, 17.)" Dr. Schaff closes 
his argument by setting forth how the practical pur- 
poses of the Sabbath can only be secured and real- 
ized by the view held by the Evangelical Churches 
of England and America: "1. The Anglo-American 
view goes back to the 'primitive Sabbath of the race, 
given to man as man. It plants it deeply in the 
original constitution of man and in the order of 
nature. This is of the utmost importance as a 
basis for all the temporal benefits of the Sabbath, 
and for an appeal to utilitarian considerations which 
must be allowed to have their proper weight upon 
the world at large, especially on those who can not 
be reached by the higher moral and religious con- 
siderations. 'For godliness is profitable unto all 
things, and has a promise for this life as well as for 
that which is to come.' Experience, which speaks 
louder than ai-gument, comes to the aid of our posi- 
tion by furnishing abounding proof that the Sabbath 
rest is favorable and necessary to the body as well 
as the soul, to the preservation and promotion of 
health, wealth, and the temporal happiness and pros- 
perity of individuals and communities. It is an un- 
deniable fact that the two nations which keep the 
Sabbath most strictly — Great Britain and the United 
States — are the wealthiest and the freest on earth. 
The philosophy of this fact is plain. Sabbath rest is 
the condition of successful week-labor for man and 
beast, and successful labor is the parent of wealth. 
The proper keeping of the Sabbath, moreover, is 
one of the best schools of moral discipline and self- 
government, and self-government is the only ground 
on which rational and national freedom can rest, 
and be permanently maintained. 2. The Anglo- 
American view retains the legal basis of the Sab- 
bath by teaching the perpetuity of the fourth com- 
mandment. It thus secures to the Sabbath the 
authority of the Divine Lawgiver, which attaches to 
all other parts of the decalogue, and appeals to the 
conscience of man. It raises it far above the sphere 
of mere expediency and temporal usefulness into 
the sphere of moral duty and sacred obligation. It 
can enforce it by an irresistible, Thus saith the 
Lord. By strengthening the decalogue in one 
member we strengthen all the other members, and 
promote the general interests of morality. 3. By 
placing the fourth commandment on a level with 
the other commandments, and bringing it especially 
into close contact with the fifth, which enjoins obe- 
dience to parents, and with the seventh command- 
ment, which condemns all unchastity in thought, 
word, and deed, the Anglo-American view acknowl- 
edges the inseparable connection between the strict 
observance of the Sabbath and the moral welfare 
and happiness of the family. The Sabbath and the 



family are the two oldest institutions of God on 
earth, both date from Paradise, both look toward the 
happiness of man, both flourish and decay together. 
What God has joined together no man should dare 
to put asunder. 4. The Anglo-American view makes 
more account of the distinction between the relig- 
ious and the civil Sabbath than the Continental, and 
lays greater stress on the necessity of the latter. It 
regards the civil Sabbath as essential for public mor- 
als and the self-preservation of the State. Hence 
our Sabbath laws, throughout the land, which mili- 
tate as little against religious freedom and the sep- 
aration of Church and State as the laws upholding 
monogamy. On the contrary, they are a support to 
our civil and political freedom. For freedom with- 
out law is licentiousness and ruin to any people. 
Our separation of Church and State rests on mutual 
respect and friendship, and is by no means a separa- 
tion of the nation from Christianity. The religious 
Sabbath can not and ought not to be enforced by 
law; for all worship and true religion must be the 
free and voluntary homage of the heart. But the 
civil Sabbath can and ought to be maintained and 
protected by legislation, and a Christian community 
has a natural right to look to their government 
for the protection of their Sabbath as well as for 
the protection of their persons and property. All 
good citizens can rally around the support of the 
civil Sabbath from moral and patriotic motives, 
whatever may be their religious opinions. Such co- 
operation is not possible on the continent of Europe, 
where Church and State are inextricably mixed up. 
5. But while we hold fast to all these great charac- 
teristics and advantages, let us never lose sight of 
the fact that the Sabbath is gospel as well as law, 
and its observance a privilege as well as a duty. It 
is law to all citizens, gospel to the believers. If we 
insist exclusively or chiefly upon the legal element, 
we are in danger of relapsing into Jewish Sabbatari- 
anism, and make its observance a burden instead of a 
joy. Its advent will then not be hailed but dreaded, 
especially by the youth, and the way be prepared for a 
successful reaction, which would sweep away both the 
evangelical and the legal, the religious and the civil 
Sabbath, with all its great blessings, from our midst. 
There is a false legalism as well as a false evangelism, 
and we must keep equally clear from both extremes." 
Chapter III, verses 1-5. Is it lawful to do 
good on the Sabbath days ? " The apparent varia- 
tion in the different records of this nfiracle, that in 
St. Matthew the question proceeds from the Phari- 
sees, in Sts. Mark and Luke from the Lord, is no real 
one; the reconciliation of the two accounts is easy. 
The Pharisees first ask him, ' Is it lawful to heal on 
the Sabbath day V He answers this question, as 
was his wont, (see Matt, xxi, 24,) by another ques- 
tion. That this is such another counter-question 
comes out most plainly in St. Luke: ' I will ask you 
one thing. Is it lawful on the Sabbath days to do 
\ good or to do evil ? to save life or to destroy it f 



678 



MARK III, 6-19. 



Our Lord, with the same infinite wisdom which we 
admire in his answer to the question of the lawyer, 
'Who is my neighbor?' (Luke x, 29,) shifts the 
whole argument and lifts it altogether into a higher 
region, where at once it is seen on which side is the 
right and the truth. They had put the alternatives 
of doing or not doing; here there might be a ques- 
tion. But he shows that the alternatives are, doing 
good or failing to do good — which last he puts as 
identical with doing evil, the neglecting to save as 
equivalent with destroying. Here there could be no 
question: this under no circumstances could be 
right; it could never be good to sin. Therefore, it is 
not merely allowable, but a duty, to do some things 
on the Sabbath. You have asked me, Is it lawful 
to heal on the Sabbath ? I answer, It is lawful to do 
well on that day, and therefore to heal. They can 
answer him nothing further — they held their peace." 
— With anger, being grieved. These words are 
peculiar to Mark. He loves to dwell upon and 



graphically describes the emotions of the Savior. 
With his anger there was grief mingled, when he 
saw how these men criminally hardened their hearts. 
Anger in Jesus, the Holy One and great Friend of 
sinners, is a feeling of pain and grief on account of 
the wickedness and hardness of heart of the sinner. 
" The existence of grief and anger together in the 
same heart is no contradiction : indeed, with Him 
who was at once perfect love and perfect holiness, 
grief for the sinner must ever have gone hand in 
hand with anger against the sin; and this anger, 
which with us is ever in danger of becoming a turbid 
thing, of passing into anger against the man, who is 
God's creature, instead of being anger against the 
sin, which is the devil's corruption of God's creature, 
with him was perfectly pure; for it is not the ag- 
itation of the waters, but the sediment at the bot- 
tom, which troubles and defiles them, and where 
no sediment is, no impurity will follow on their agi- 
tation." 



SECTION IT. 

THE FIRST WITHDRAWAL OF CHRIST FROM HIS ENEMIES. THE PEOPLE MANIFEST AN 

INCREASING REVERENCE FOR HIM. HIS SPHERE OF ACTIVITY WIDENS, 

AND HE SELECTS HIS APOSTLES. 

CHAPTBE III, 6-19. 



1. THE PHARISEES AND HERODIANS PLOT AGAINST JESUS, BUT GREAT MULTI- 
TUDES OP PEOPLE FOLLOW HIM. 

Verses 6—13. (Compare Matthew xii, 14-16; Luke vi, 11, and 17-19.) 

(6) And the Pharisees went forth, and straightway took counsel with the Hero- 
dians against him, how they might destroy him. (7) But Jesus withdrew himself 
with his disciples to the sea: and a great multitude from Galilee followed him, and 
from Judea, (8) and from Jerusalem, and from Idumea, l and from beyond Jordan ; 2 
and they about Tyre and Sidon, 3 a great multitude, when they had heard what great 
things he did, came unto him. (9) And he spake to his disciples that a small ship 
should wait on him because of the multitude, lest they should throng bim. (10) For 
he had healed many; insomuch that they pressed upon him for to touch him, as 



1 Idumea, the Edom. of the Old Testament, the country 
of Esau, to whom the name Edom, which signifies red, 
was given on account of the color of the pottage for 
which he sold his birthright. (Gen. xxv, 29-34.) The 
ruddy hue of the mountain-range given to Esau may also 
have been the cause of the name. Previously that coun- 
try was called Mount Seir, which means rugged, (Oen. 
xxxii, 3 ; xxxvi, 8,) from Seir, the progenitor of the 
Horites, (Gen. xiv, 6; xxxvi, 20-22.) It lay on the 
south-east of Palestine, along the eastern side of the 
great valley, extending from the Dead Sea to the Red 
Sea. The Edomites, hereditary enemies of Israel, were 



subdued by David, but during the Babylonish captivity 
they possessed themselves of the southern part of Pales- 
tine as far as Hebron, but were again conquered and in- 
corporated with the Jew3 by John Hyrcanus, one of the 
Hasmonean princes, about one hundred and twenty-five 
years before the birth of Christ. Mark probably under- 
stands by Idumea here the southern part of Palestine, 
which was sometimes called Idumea, as having been 
wrested from the Edomites after the captivity. 2 The 
so-called Perea, that part of the land of Israel which was 
east of Jordan. 3 See footnotes 4 and 5 to Matthew 
xi, 21. 



MARK III, 6-19. 



679 



inany as had plagues. (11) And unclean spirits, when they saw him, fell down 
before him, and cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God. (12) And he straitly 
charged them that they should not make him known. 

3. JESUS ORDAINS THE TWELVE APOSTLES. 
"Verses 13—19. (Compare Matthew x, 1-8; Luke ti, 12-16.) 

(13) And he goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto him whom he would: 
and they came unto him. (14) And he ordained twelve, that they should be with 
him, and that he might send them forth to preach, (15) and to have power to heal 
sicknesses, and to cast out devils : (16) And Simon he surnamed Peter; (17) and 
James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he surnamed them 
Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder: (18) And Andrew, and Philip, and 
Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alpheus, and 
Thaddeus, and Simon the Cananite, (19) and Judas Iscariot, which also be- 
trayed him. 



Verses 6-12. With the Herodians — the court- 
iers and partisans of Herod Antipas, the ruler of 
Galilee, (see note on Matt, xxii, 16,) because they 
could do nothing without the secular arm. That the 
Pharisees made at that early period common cause 
with the Herodians, whom they hated and despised 
in their hearts, shows their growing hatred to Christ. 
— And a great multitude followed him. From 
this multitude is to be distinguished the other multi- 
tude, of which it is said, " They came unto Mm." 
Griesbach, DeWette, Meyer, and Lange commence 
a new sentence with the words, " And from Judea." 
This following Jesus, even of the Galileans, was, 
however, with many of them only transient. 

Verses 13-19. And he calleth unto him whom 
he would. No one was allowed to follow him to 
the mountain without being especially called. Those 
whom he appointed apostles had been his disciples 
before. We may learn from this, that no one should 
take upon himself the office of the evangelical min- 
istry without a Divine call, and that before receiving- 
such a call a man must be already a disciple of 
Christ. — And he ordained twelve. This setting 
apart for the apostolic office had been preceded 
by several calls extended to the men individually 
to become his followers, and even the act here 
mentioned seems to have been only a preparatory 
setting apart, (comp. Luke vi, 12,) in order to prepare 
and fit them for their future real mission, recorded 
by Matthew, (x, 5,) Mark, (vi, 7,) and Luke, (ix, 1.) 
Mark mentions the ordaining of the twelve without 
specifying the time. — The apostolic calling included 
three things: 1. That they might be eye and ear- 
witnesses of what the Lord said and did on earth; 
2. That they might preach the Gospel ; and, 3, have 
the power of performing miracles. — And Simon he 
surnamed Peter. Mark simply mentions the new, 
significant, and permanent name of the great 



apostle, without saying when it was first given him. 
— Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder. 
" As Simon was surnamed Peter at an earlier period, 
the sons of Zebedee may have received their appel- 
lations earlier or later. The new name given to 
each of them indicates two things : first, a descrip- 
tion of their natural character — as brothers — a char- 
acter full of meaning; and, secondly, their apostolic 
character. Every view which entirely disregards 
one of these is false ; especially that view which 
finds a mere expression of blame. The Lord has by 
this title designated them neither as ' boisterous ' 
nor as 'hot-headed' men; but most certainly, though 
not without a warning running side by side, he in- 
dicates a good, natural ground in them, out of which 
his grace shall afterward produce something of 
powerful efficacy. To connect the incident related 
by Luke (ix, 54, 55) with the giving of these names, 
is in so far correct, as these brothers, who generally 
spoke and acted together, were men of a strong, 
ardent spirit, and not in the least of the soft and 
effeminate character, which unfortunately, and with- 
out any reason, has been supposed to have belonged 
to John. But the idea that, at the time when they 
would have called down fire from heaven, the Lord 
gave them this name in the way of a reprimand, is 
to be rejected. There is not a single instance in 
the whole New Testament, or even within the entire 
compass of Bible history, of a reproof being given by 
affixing a name ; and surely St. Mark would not, in 
his catalogue of apostles, and along side of the name 
of Peter, have fastened upon the brethren a nick- 
name which, on this supposition, the Lord most 
assuredly did not intend should remain with them. — 
That St. Mark's translation, ' sons of thunder,' must 
be correct, is self-evident. And though we can not 
exactly restore the root of the Aramaic word, this 
much is certain, that the thunder here is used in the 



680 



MARK III, 20-35. 



sense of power to shake. On whatever occasion the 
Lord may have said, ye are or shall be called sons 
of thunder, he must thereby have conveyed to their 
minds this: 'I know that out of the depths of the 
strong feelings of your fervent heart there shall 
break forth a powerful testimony of the Word. I 
will, therefore, make you, as my apostles, thun- 
derers.' We know nothing further of St. James, 
who met an early martyrdom, but St. John's thunder- 
power is sufficiently seen in the sharp edge and the 
fearless, unimpeded march of his majestic testi- 
mony along side of that stream of abounding love 
which pervades it and sheds its halo around it." 
(Condensed from Stier.) — Judas Iscaeiot. Let us 
learn from the choice of this apostle, 1. The bound- 
less love of the Lord, which hoped all things, (1 Cor. 
xiii, 1 ;) 2. The depth of human corruption; 3. The 
dangers of the ministerial office, and of any outward 
connection with the Lord, when the heart is not 
right. —From our Lord's choice of his disciples we 
may draw the following lessons : I. That no one can 
become a minister of Christ by his innate strength 
of intellect. He must be called by the Lord ; the 
natural darkness of the mind must first be dispelled 
by the Lord, commanding his light to shine into the 



heart. II. That the Lord dispenses his gifts ac- 
cording to his good pleasure. 1. The qualification 
for preaching \_xa.pLafj.a npofyTeiac'] the Lord has 
promised to his Church to the end of this dispensa- 
tion. 2. The gift to heal sicknesses and to cast out 
demons, as the apostles received it, was an extraor- 
dinary charisma bestowed upon them in order to 
confirm the first preaching of the Gospel by miracles. 
But spiritual miracles attend the ministry of Divinely- 
called preachers to this day. III. That every per- 
sonal peculiarity can be made useful in the service 
of Christ. The courage and energy of Peter, which 
might have degenerated into rashness and arrogance 
without the sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit, 
the Lord changes or develops into that firm and un- 
shaken faith that removes mountains. The excitable 
mind of John and James, which may have been natu- 
rally prone to sinful anger, he fills with holy zeal 
and earnestness. The less gifted of his disciples he 
knows equally well how to make useful in his service. 
IV. Where this is not accomplished, it is mari s fault, 
of which we have a melancholy instance in Judas, who 
might have made himself very useful in the kingdom 
of God by his natural talent in administering its 
temporal affairs. 



SECTION V. 

THE CONFLICT OF JESUS WITH THE BLASPHEMOUS UNBELIEF OF HIS ENEMIES, AND THE 
WANT OF FAITH ON THE PART OF HIS FRIENDS. 

OHAPTEE III, 20-35. 

(Compare Matthew xii, 22-50; Luke viii, 19-21; xi, 14-26.) 

(20) And they went into a house; 1 and the multitude cometh together again, so 
that they could not so much as eat bread. (21) And when his friends heard of it, 
they went out to lay hold on him : for they said, He is beside himself. (22) And 
the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said, He hath Beelzebub, and by the 
prince of the devils casteth he out devils. (23) And he called them unto him, and 
said unto them in parables, How can Satan cast out Satan? (24) And if a king- 
dom be divided against itself, that kingdom can not stand. (25) And if a house 
be divided against itself, that house can not stand. (26) And if Satan rise up 
against himself, and be divided, he can not stand, but hath an end. (27) ISTo man 
can enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind 
the strong man; and then he will spoil his house. (28) Yerily I say unto you, 
All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever 
they shall blaspheme: (29) But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost 
hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation : 2 (30) Because they 



1 Literally, they came home, that is, to Capernaum. | 19, commences verse 20 in the best Greek editions, and 
This clause, in the English version connected with verse | in Luther's translation. 2 According to a reading ap- 



MARK III, 20-35. 



681 



said, He hath an unclean spirit. (31) There came then his brethren and his 
mother, and, standing without, sent unto him, calling him. (32) And the multi- 
tude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren 3 
without seek for thee. (33) And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, 
or my brethren ? (34) And he looked round about on them which sat about him, 
and said, Behold my mother and my brethren ! (35) For whosoever shall do the 
will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother. 



Verse 20. On chronological order, compare 
notes on Matthew. Mark evidently does- not nar- 
rate events according to chronological sequence. 

Verse 21. By "his friends," [the Greek, ol 
Trap' avrov, means those from him, that is, those be- 
longing to him,] we have not to undei-stand the dis- 
ciples, but the relatives of Jesus. — Went out from 
the place where they then were; that is, either from 
the house in which Jesus made his home, and which 
he had left again, or from Nazareth; the latter sup- 
position seems improbable. — He is beside him- 
self. The expression is used in the same sense as 
in 2 Cor. v, 13. Strong as it is, it does not necessa- 
rily imply that they regarded him insane, but simply 
means that they thought he was overtasking him- 
self; he was doing too much, exposing both his 
health and his personal safety. If we bear in mind 
that in a certain sense these his relatives did not 
yet believe in him, (John vii, 5,) we can easily ac- 
count for their conduct; they could not understand 
his zeal, and may have even apprehended that his 
mind might have given way under the too great ex- 
ertion. — How often is the charge of mental de- 
rangement brought against serious and zealous 
Christians! When a person, thoroughly convicted 
of his sins, prays much, and turns his back to his 
usual pleasures, or turns away from the general 
course of the world — or when a Christian conse- 
crates himself without any reserve to the service of 
God, looking at every thing in the light of the reali- 
ties of eternity — or when a minister manifests unus- 
ual zeal and self-denial in the cause of his Master — 
the world is at once ready to cry out that they are 
deranged or beside themselves. It is something 
quite common for impious and unbelieving relatives, 
self-righteous Pharisees, or merely nominal Chris- 
tians, to start and to believe such charges. On the 
other hand, a man may traverse land and sea in 
order to acquire wealth, he may plunge headlong 
into the vortex of pleasures and vices, he may neg- 
lect the duties toward his family and his own call- 
ing — and the world will not only not question the 
soundness of his mind, but call him a smart and 
clever man, provided he is successful in gaining 
wealth, honor, and position! — Even Schleirmacher 



remarks, on this passage : " So those have always 
been judged, whom God had selected to be his par- 
ticular instruments; the same has been the case in 
the times of the great reformation of the Church, and 
the same will be the case whenever times of darkness 
require reformers of unreserved devotion and zeal." 

Verse 22. The scribes had come from Jerusa- 
lem to watch him closely, to destroy his influence 
with the people, and to collect materials for a formal 
charge against him. While his relatives repaired to 
the spot where the Lord was, the miraculous cure 
(Matt, xii, 22, 23) took place, and the people ask, in 
astonishment, whether he was not the Messiah. En- 
raged at this exhibition of admiration on the part 
of the people, the scribes charge him with being in 
league with Satan. This malicious slander and hor- 
rible blasphemy the Lord meets with a firmness, a 
consciousness of innocence, and a freedom from 
every feeling of resentment, that could not fail to 
convince every unprejudiced person of his spotless 
purity and holiness. — There have been, alas! at all 
times enemies of the truth, who have attempted to 
decry the converting and sanctifying influences upon 
the human heart, in the same way as was done here 
by the scribes. 

Verses 23-27. The Savior lays down the im- 
portant proposition, that whoever is instrumental in 
pulling down the kingdom of Satan, is not the serv- 
ant of Satan, but of God. 1. The kingdom of Satan, 
though it has its internal discord and contention, is 
a unit so far as its opposition to the kingdom of God 
is concerned. 2. He that blasphemes those that 
are successful in destroying Satan's kingdom, is an 
ally of Satan, however he may pretend to do God a 
service. 

Verses 28, 29. Mark does not mention the blas- 
phemy against the Son of man, but makes the same 
distinction between pardonable and unpardonable 
blasphemies, as Matthew and Luke, by restricting 
the unpardonableness of wicked resistance to the 
Divine Being to those cases where a person blas- 
phemes in spite of the highest degree of inward 
conviction by the illumination of the Holy Ghost. 
Terrifying as our Lord's declaration concerning the 
unpardonable sin is, it is at the same time a rich 



proved by Griesbaeh, Lachman, and Teschendorf, of an I man, Griesbaeh, and Teschendorf, have the addition, 
eternal sin. 3 Several manuscripts approved by Lach- I " and thy sisters." 



682 



MARK IV, 1-34 



source of consolation for him, that is deeply con- 
victed of his sins and feels the need of God's par- 
doning grace. But let those that flatter themselves 
with the notion that it is impossible for the God of 
love to inflict endless punishment upon any of his 
creatures bear in mind, that the sinner can attain 
to such a degree of hardness of heart, that he him- 
self has no more desire for salvation. 

Verse 31. There came then his brethren and 
his mother. "The Greek particle ovv, translated 
then, is not to be taken for an adverb denoting time, 
but as a logical connective, in the sense of so then, 
when an interrupted narrative or argument is re- 



sumed and continued. It connects the incident 
that follows with the statement in verse 21, that his 
own friends or relatives came out to secure his per- 
son, thinking him beside himself. Having been led 
to give some account of the effect produced by 
Christ's increasing popularity upon his most malig- 
nant enemies, (verses 22-30,) the writer now returns 
to the effect upon his friends." (A condensed re- 
mark of Dr. Alexander.) — Standing without. If 
we assume that these friends came out of the house 
which Jesus had left, we must understand by with- 
out, outside of or beyond the crowd, by which the 
Savior was surrounded in the open air. 



SECTION VI. 

JESUS CHOOSES THE PARABOLIC FORM OF INSTRUCTION IN CONSEQUENCE OF THE UNSUS- 
CEPTIBILITY OF THE PEOPLE AND THE INCREASING HOSTILITY OF THEIR LEADERS. 

CHAPTBE IV, 1-34. 

(Compare Matthew xiii, 1-23, 31-35; Luke viii, 4-18.) 

(1) And he began again to teach by the seaside : and there was gathered unto 
him a great multitude, so that he entered into a ship, and sat in the sea; and the 
whole multitude was by the sea on the land. (2) And he taught them many 
things by parables, and said unto them in his doctrine, (3) Hearken; Behold, there 
went out a sower to sow: (4) And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the 
wayside, and the fowls of the air 1 came and devoured it up. (5) And some fell on 
stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because 
it had no depth of earth : (6) But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and be- 
cause it had no root, it withered away. (7) And some fell among thorns, and the 
thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. (8) And other fell on good 
ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased, and brought forth, some 
thirty, and some sixty, and some a hundred. (9) And he said unto them, He that 
hath ears to hear, let him hear. (10) And when he was alone, they that were 
about him with the twelve asked of him the parable. 2 (11) And he said unto 
them, Unto you it is given to know 3 the mystery of the kingdom of God : but 
unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables : (12) That seeing 
they may see, and not perceive ; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; 
lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them. 
(13) And he said unto them, Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye 
know all parables? (14) The sower soweth the "Word. (15) And these are they 
by the wayside, where the "Word is sown ; but when they have heard, Satan cometh 



1 " Of the air" is wanting in some of the manuscripts. I " the parables." The parable in question induced them 
It was probably inserted from Luke. 2 Tischendorf has to consult him on the tendency and object of the para- 
adopted, according to Codd. B, C, L, A, the reading, | bolic method of instruction in general. 3 "To know" is 



MARK IV, 1-34. 



683 



immediately, and taketh away the Word that was sown in their hearts. (16) And 
these are they likewise which are sown on stony ground ; who, when they have 
heard the Word, immediately receive it with gladness; (17) and have no root in 
themselves, and so endure but for a time: afterward, when affliction or persecution 
ariseth for the Word's sake, immediately they are offended. (18) And these 4 are 
they which are sown among thorns ; such as hear the Word, (19) and the cares of 
this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering 
in, choke the Word, and it becometh unfruitful. (20) And these are they which 
are sown on good ground ; such as hear the Word, and receive it, and bring forth 
fruit, some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred. (21) And he said unto 
them, Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel, 5 or under a bed? 6 and not to 
be set on a candlestick ? (22) For there is nothing hid, which shall not be mani- 
fested ; neither was any thing kept secret, but that it should come abroad. (23) If 
any man have ears to hear, let him hear. (24) And he said unto them, Take heed 
what ye hear. With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you; and unto 
you that hear 7 shall more be given. (25) For he that hath, to him shall be given ; 
and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath. (26) And 
he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground ; 
(27) and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow 
up, he knoweth not how. (28) For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first 
the blade, then the eaf, after that the full corn in the ear. (29) But when the fruit 
is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come. 
(30) And he said, Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God ? or with what 
comparison shall we compare it ? (31) It is like a grain of mustard-seed, which, 
when it is sown in the earth, is less than all the seeds that be in the earth : (32) 
But when it is sown, it groweth up, and becometh greater than all herbs, and 
shooteth out great branches; so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the 
shadow of it. (33) And with many such parables spake he the Word unto them, 
as they were able to hear it. (34) But without a parable spake he not unto them: 
and when they were alone, he expounded all things to his disciples. 



Verse 2. Matthew records seven parables as de- 
livered in immediate succession, Mark only three ; 
but these three, like those recorded by Matthew, treat 
of the kingdom of God. The first describes the 
kingdom of God in its incipiency and the diffi- 
culties connected with it; the second in its safe and 
natural development; the third in its wonderful and 
glorious spread and completion. Mark seems to 
introduce the parables here, in order to show how 
the parabolical mode of instruction became neces- 



sary, in consequence of the unsusceptibility of the 
people and the increasing hostility of their leaders. 

Verses 11, 12. Those that are without, form 
the natural contrast to those that were with Christ, 
his disciples who had addressed the question to him. 
In 1 Cor. v, 12, and Rev. xxii, 15, it is the designa- 
tion for unbelievers, for all that are not Christians. 
— That seeing they mat see, and not perceive. 
The words quoted from Isaiah have been explained 
in Matthew xiii, 14, 15. The Greek conjunction 



wanting in A, B, C, and elsewhere. Teschendorf and 
Lachman have left it out of the text. * According to 
the reading adopted by Lachman and Tischendorf: 
" and others are they which are," etc. 5 See foot-note 3 to 
Matthew v, 15. 6 A couch. It is best to understand by 



it here not a bed, but the triclinium, (Matt, xxiii, 6,) on 
which the meals were taken. The idea to be conveyed 
is, that a light is placed on, not under the table. ' " That 
hear" is omitted by Lachman and Tischendorf, accord- 
ing to B, C, D, G, L. 



684 



MARK IV, 1-34. 



lva f that, must be taken in its proper acceptation: 
"in order that," For the leading idea is, that 
parabolic instruction is made use of, in order that 
those who are determined to harden their hearts 
may remain in blindness. To see and not to per- 
ceive, to hear and not to understand, can evidently 
only take place in consequence of a determination 
on the part of men not to perceive or to understand. 
They are bent on preventing their conversion, and 
avoid for this very purpose every contact with truth. 
On such men God does not force his truth, but 
leaves their choice perfectly free, presenting the 
truth to them in parables, which only the sincere in- 
quirer after truth can understand. — We subjoin an 
abridged sketch from the Homilist, though we do by 
no means agree with all its propositions : " The 
subject which the present section presents is, The re- 
vealment of the Gospel ; and we shall notice, I. The 
evidekt necessity of its revealment. The mys- 
teries of the kingdom may be regarded as meaning 
the elements of the Gospel — its cardinal truths and 
provisions : these, till they are revealed, are secrets, 
or mysteries. It is important to remark, that there 
is a distinction between the Gospel and its revela- 
tion. The Gospel is something existing independent 
of revelation. As astronomy is something inde- 
pendent of all astronomical books, so the Gospel ex- 
isted before a revelation. But apart from the revela- 
tion, the Gospel would be a secret — a mystery. The 
necessity of its revelation will appear from these three 
facts: First, That the Gospel can only benefit us as 
it is believed. Faith in its ' mysteries ' or secrets is 
the necessary condition of spiritual salvation. It is 
no arbitrary arrangement which leaves our destiny 
dependent on faith. ' He that believeth shall be 
saved, he that believeth not shall be damned.' 
Secondly, That there can be no belief without 
knowledge. We have no faith, we can have no 
faith, in any thing that has not come within the 
range of our consciousness. ' How can they believe 
in Him of whom they have not heard ?' Thirdly, 
That without a revealment the realities of the Gos- 
pel could never have been known. The truths of 
the Gospel are not, like the truths of science, written 
on the pages of nature for men to decipher and to 
interpret. They transcend human discovery. II. 
The parabolical method of its revealment. 
Christ, in order to reveal the 'mysteries,' the cardi- 
nal elements of the Gospel, dealt largely in parables. 
The reason is, the spiritual obtuseness of sinners ; 
but he did not teach in parables in order to conceal 
his meaning from his ungodly hearers. We can not 
entertain this thought for the following reasons : 
First, The language does not necessarily imply this 
idea. Jesus does not say, I speak to them in parables 
because I want to hide from them my meaning — 
want to render more dense the atmosphere, more 
impenetrable the vail of their hearts. No, he says 
that it is because they are already so blind that he 
thus teaches. He gives parables, not to produce 



moral obliquity, but because moral obliquity existed. 
Secondly, This idea is essentially inconsistent iviih 
the r.atur". of parabolical teaching. The very na- 
ture and design of a parable are to make an obscure 
truth clear — to illustrate. Had he spoken in intri- 
cate allegories and enigmas, or in scholastic techni- 
calities, there might be some show of reason in 
supposing that Christ spoke in order to conceal. 
Thirdly, This idea is incompatible with the char- 
acter and mission of Christ. Does it comport with 
his kindness to suppose that he sought to intensify 
the darkness of the human spirit? An attempt on 
Christ's part to do this would have been superfluous, 
and inconsistent with all our notions of his character 
and purpose. We hold, therefore, to the principle 
that he taught in parables because of the existing 
spiritual obtuseness of his hearers. Had their spirit- 
ual intuitions been clear they would have caught his 
meaning by a simple sentence, and they would not 
have required such time spent in illustrations. Be- 
sides making Divine truth clear to the ignorant, 
parables serve other subordinate and auxiliary pur- 
poses. (1.) They serve to reflect the manners and 
customs of the ancients. Christ's parables are pic- 
tures taken from olden times. (2.) They serve to show 
the mercy of Jesus in thus condescending to meet 
the benighted condition of our minds. (3.) They 
serve to invest the Bible with all the charms of 
variety and life. Christ's teachings being parabol- 
ical, are full of nature and human life. (4.) They 
seem to show the importance of adapting our 
methods of teaching to the conditions and capaci- 
ties of our hearers. III. The different spiritual 
results of its revealment. Man has a threefold 
vision ; the sensuous, the intellectual, and the spir- 
itual. The- last is that which makes the object real, 
brings it home to the heart, and makes it part of 
our nature. Unless a man has a spiritual vision of 
the Gospel he is injured by it; he seeing sees not. 
But in these two opposite results it is important to 
remember three things : 1. The Gospel benefits by 
design — it does not injure by design. 2. The Gos- 
pel benefits by adaptation — it does not injure by 
adaptation. It has no aptitude for this. 3. The 
Gospel benefits by Divine influence — it does not in- 
jure by Divine influence." 

Verses 21-23. Mark and Luke introduce here 
words which our Lord had spoken before in the 
Sermon on the Mount, (Matt, v, 15,) and in the in- 
struction given to the apostles. (Matt, x, 26.) 
There is no reason whatever to doubt that our Lord 
repeated such sayings. Their connection with the 
preceding is obvious. The Lord had drawn a dis- 
tinction between his disciples and the people with- 
out, and told them that by speaking in parables the 
truth should be withheld from the latter. Lest the 
disciples should draw erroneous conclusions from 
this, he tells them that what they learn of him 
they are not to keep to themselves, as a privileged 
class, but to publish it wide and far. ''As the sower 



MARK IV, 1-34 



685 



seeds the seed that it may shoot forth, so a lamp 
is brought into a room that it may give light. Think 
not that the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, of 
which I spoke, are committed to you to be kept se- 
cret; you twelve know and should remember that I 
send you to speak publicly that which you now re- 
ceive alone, to preach afterward on the house-tops 
what you now hear in the ear!" (Stier.) 

Verses 24, 25. Take heed what tot; hear. 
"This is to be taken as another application of the 
general exhortation, He who has ears let him hear I 
But it is sharpened in its form with special reference 
to the disciples who have eyes and ears; their seeing 
is to be a more careful looking to themselves after 
hearing, while the people have not even the first see- 
ing in order to hearing." (Stier.) — With what 
measure te mete, etc. Here we have again words 
that occur in the Sermon on the Mount, (Matt, vii, 
2; Luke vi, 37;) in the latter connection they are 
used with special reference to harsh and rash judg- 
ments; here they refer to what precedes, that is, 
Christ's instruction and its proper improvement. 
"The essential meaning of the maxim in both cases 
is, that giving and receiving are reciprocal, like ac- 
tion and reaction as a law of physics. The specific 
application here is, that he who would receive in- 
struction must give something in return, to wit, in- 
telligent attention, a desire to be instructed, and a 
proper use of what he knows already. This specific 
application is distinctly intimated in the next clause: 
unto you that hear shall more be given!' (Alexan- 
der.) The sense of the passage is accordingly: "If 
ye receive carefully into your hearts what you hear, 
you will thereby fit yourselves for receiving still 
more. But if you come to me with but a faint de- 
sire, with a divided heart, with a distracted mind, 
the Divine truth will be meted to you according to 
your measure of receiving it." Lange, however, 
thinks that the mere hearing and receiving does not 
exhaust the idea of meting, and he finds accordingly 
the additional meaning in the words, "According to 
your zeal in instructing others, your Master shall in- 
crease your own knowledge." The proverb of the 
following verse is here likewise used with special 
reference to the amount of zeal displayed in the 
Gospel ministry. — Faithful pastors and attentive 
hearers receive from day to day an increasing meas- 
ure of light and grace; but an indifferent soul be- 
comes poorer from day to day, till it loses finally 
every thing. 0, how much more rapid would be our 
progress in the work of grace, if we would make a 
more faithful use of all the means of grace! 

Verses 26-29. This is the only parable which is 
peculiar to Mark. Like that of the leaven, it de- 
clares the secret, invisible energy of the Divine 
"Word — that it has life in itself, and will unfold itself 
according to the law of its own being; but besides 
that which it has in common with that parable, it 
teaches us that the further growth of the seed, after 
it is sown, proceeds, 1, secretly, without the knowl- 



edge of man ; 2, independently of human care and 
effort; 3, at certain fixed times, in a natural prog- 
ress from one step of advancement to another. — 

As IF A MAN SHOULD CAST SEED INTO THE GROUND. 

Whom shall we understand by the man casting seed 
into the ground? Is it the Son of man himself, or 
his servants, the ministers of the Gospel? Stier 
takes the ground that only the latter can be meant. 
"It can not be said of the Lord, that he knows not 
how the seed sown in the hearts of his people springs 
and grows up; since it is only his continual presence 
by his Spirit in their hearts which causes it to grow 
at all. Neither can he fitly be compared to a sower 
who, having scattered his seed, goes his way and oc- 
cupies himself in other business, feeling that it lies 
henceforth beyond the sphere of his power to further 
the prosperity of the seed, but that it must be left to 
itself and its own indwelling powers. This is no fit 
description of Him who is not merely the author and 
finisher of our faith, but who also conducts it through 
all its intermediate stages, and without whose bless- 
ing and active cooperation it would be totally unable 
to make any, even the slightest, progress. But there 
is, on the other hand," says Trench, "another and 
not slighter difficulty; for at verse 29 it is said, 
'when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he 
putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.' 
Of whom can it be said, save of the Lord of the 
harvest, that he putteth in the sickle — that he gath- 
ereth his people, when they are ripe for glory — when 
they have finished their course — when the work of 
faith has been accomplished in their hearts — into 
everlasting habitations?" Trench, therefore, as we 
shall see, endeavors to apply the parable both to the 
Lord himself and to his servants. How Stier avoids 
the difficulty presented by verse 29, we shall also 
presently see. — And should sleep, and rise night 
and day. "He lets day and night succeed each 
other according to the ordinary course of nature; he 
leaves the God of heaven to bring day and night 
over the earth, an operation beyond the reach of man, 
and remains quietly within his own sphere, the sphere 
allotted to man; he sleeps during the night, and is 
awake during the day. Indolent sleep during the 
day, of course, is not permitted; on the contrary, 
the daily new awaking or rising expressly includes 
all diligence, carefulness, and attention on the part 
of the laboring husbandman, (2 Tim. ii, 6,) rendered 
necessary by the place he occupies. Not to concern 
himself at all about the seed, after he has once cast 
it, were assuredly culpable neglect. But our Savior 
means to say this: that no one need be in painful 
anxiety about it. Eccles. xi, 6, and Ps. exxvii, 1, 
teach us the due medium between useless, torment- 
ing anxiety and ruinous, thoughtless indolence. 
This much is certain; all that man can do in pro- 
tecting and helping is a mere trifle; the great busi- 
ness of springing up and growing goes on without 
us. The expression night and day signifies, more- 
over, the necessary amount of the time intervening 



686 



MARK IV, 1-34. 



between sowing and harvest; so many days and 
nights must elapse ere the blade, the ear, and the full 
corn in the ear appear in succession. — And the 

SEED SHOULD SPRING AND GROW UP, HE KNOWETH NOT 

how. " Those who under Christ are teachers in his 
Church, are here instructed to rest satisfied that the 
seed should grow and spring up without their know- 
ing exactly how; let them not be searching at its 
roots to see how they have stricken into the soil, nor 
seek prematurely to anticipate the shooting of the 
blade, or the forming of the corn in the ear; for 
the mystery of the life of God in any and in every 
heart is unfathomable — any attempt to determine 
that its course shall be this way, or that way, is only 
mischievous." So says Trench, in harmony with 
Stier, but continues then: "But let us also consider 
in what sense that which is said of leaving the seed 
to itself can be affirmed of Christ. It is true that 
the inner spiritual life of men is never in any stage 
of its development without the care and watchful- 
ness of the Lord who first communicated that life; 
yet are there two moments when he may be said 
especially to visit the soul; at the beginning of the 
spiritual life, which is the seed-time, and again when 
he takes his people to himself, which is their time of 
harvest. Between these times lies a period in which 
the work of the Lord is going forward without any 
such manifest interpositions on his part — not indeed 
without the daily supply of his Spirit, and the daily 
ordering of his Providence, but so as that he does 
not put to his hand so plainly and immediately as at 
those two cardinal moments. And the difficulty will 
be slighter when we make application of the para- 
ble — as undoubtedly we are bound to do — to the 
growth and progress of the universal Church, and 
not only to that of the individual soul. The Lord 
at his first coming in the flesh sowed the word of the 
kingdom in the world, planted a Church therein, 
which having done he withdrew himself; the heavens 
received him till the time of the consummation of 
all things. Many and many a time since then the 
cry has ascended in his ears, ' that thou wouldst 
rend the heavens, that thou wouldst come down!' — 
often it has seemed to man as though the hour of in- 
terference had arrived, as though his Church were at 
its last gasp, at the point to die, as though its ene- 
mies were about to prevail against it, and to extin- 
guish it forever, unless he appeared for its deliver- 
ance. Yet he has not come forth, he has left it 
to surmount its obstacles, not indeed without his 
mighty help, but without his visible interference. 
He has left the Divine seed, to grow on by night 
and by day, through storm and through sunshine, 
increasing secretly with the increase of God; and 
will let it so continue till it has borne and brought 
to maturity all its appointed fruit. And only then, 
when the harvest of the world is ripe, when the 
number of his elect people is accomplished, will he 



again the second time appear unto salvation, thrust- 
ing in his sickle, and reaping the earth, and gather- 
ing the wheat into his barns." — For the earth 
bringeth forth PRUiT of herself, "because God has 
originally endowed it with the fertility which meets 
the seed, and which he continually renews and fertil- 
izes by influences from above. These words imply 
only that there is a vitality for the seed independent 
of man, but they include the energy of God. (Com- 
pare 1 Cor. iii, 6, 7.) The seed has now been sown, 
it has its own part to act; you may now be quiet and 
act yours; see that you procure good seed, do your 
day's work in sowing it, then wait, (James ii, 7.)" 
(Stier.) — First the blade, then the ear, after 
that the full corn in the ear. "We have here the 
natural progress of the plant from stage to stage, 
between seed-time and harvest. The three stages 
correspond to the little children, young men, and 
fathers in 1 John ii, 12, 13. Our Lord gives every 
thing here in a figure drawn from nature, simple yet 
full of meaning, that we may meditate upon the 
kingdom of God; teaching us not to despise quiet per- 
ennial growth, not to lose heart because of small be- 
ginnings, but to wait, without any precipitate miscon- 
ceptions, for the right termination." (Stier.) — But 
when the fruit is brought forth — literally, offers 
itself. " To the eye of the husbandman the fruit 
presents itself with sufficient distinctness at the 
proper time, as ripe. This idea, in contrast to the 
concealed condition of the plant at its origin, and to 
its uncertain appearance at the intermediate stages, 
is expressed emphatically by the Greek verb here 
used. The fruit visibly invites to the harvest. It is 
only in its most general application that this harvest 
can be regarded as denoting also the last great har- 
vest of the whole world before God; the parable 
speaks of the manifold human sowings and reapings 
which intervene between God's seed-time and God's 
harvest. The harvest, therefore, is the human har- 
vest, with a view to a sowing to be again immedi- 
ately commenced. Do not come back with the har- 
vest wagons immediately after thou hast sown a 
little, but let the earth and the seed get time; dost 
thou see, however, the fruit, then immediately put in 
the sickle. (Joel iv, 13.) The Lord does not speak 
here of reapers, as in Matthew xiii, 30, for here it is 
the people connected with the farm that are sickle- 
bearers; there is no need for angels. The man must 
now appropriate to himself the corn that has grown 
up, he reaps it, that he may again sow it out to ad- 
vantage. (John iv, 36.) His design is not to store 
up in granaries, that he may rest and enjoy himself 
before the time. Thus the parable returns to its begin- 
ning; thus the growth of the kingdom advances be- 
fore men upon the earth." (Stier.) We think Slier 
has thus satisfactorily removed the difficulty which 
Trench sees in applying this part of the parable to 
human sowers alone. 



MARK IV, 35— V, 43. 687 



SECTION" Til. 

THE GLORY OF CHRIST INCREASINGLY MANIFESTED BY HIS MIRACULOUS POWER OVER THE 

ELEMENTS OF NATURE, THE WORLD OF SPIRITS, THE DOMAIN OF HIDDEN 

MALADIES, AND OVER DEATH ITSELF. 

CHAPTEE IY, 35, TO CHAPTEE V, 43. 

1. HE REBUKES THE STORM AND PUTS TO SHAME THE LITTLE FAITH OF HIS 

DISCIPLES. 

Chapter IV, 33—41. (Compare Matthew tiii, 23-27; Luke viii, 22-25.) 

(35) And the same day, when the even was come, he saith unto them, Let us 
pass over unto the other side. (36) And when they had sent away the multitude, 
they took him even as he was in the ship. And there were also with him other 
little ships. (37) And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into 
the ship, so that it was now full. (38) And he was in the hinder part of the ship, 
asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, earest thou not 
that we perish ? (39) And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, 
Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. (40) And he 
said unto them, Why are ye so fearful ? how is it that ye have no faith? (41) And 
they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of man is this, 
that even the wind and the sea obey him? 

3. CHRIST TRIUMPHS OVER THE DESPAIRING UNBELIEF OF A DEMONIAC. THE 
CALLOUS WORLDLINESS OF THE GADARENES. 

Chapter V, 1— 30. (Compare Matthew viii, 28-34; Luke tiii, 26-39.) 

(1) And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the 
Gadarenes. (2) And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met 
him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, (3) who had his dwelling 
among the tombs ; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains : (4) Because 
that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been 
plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces : neither could any man 
tame him. (5) And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the 
tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones. (6) But when he saw Jesus afar 
off, he ran and worshiped him, (7) and cried with a loud voice, and said, What 
have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God ? I adjure thee by 
God, that thou torment me not. (8) (For he said unto him, Come out of the man, 
thou unclean spirit.) (9) And he asked him, What is thy name? And he an- 
swered, 3aying, My name is Legion : for we are many. (10) And he besought him 
much that he would not send them away out of the country. (11) Now there was 
there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding. (12) And all the 



688 MARK IV, 35— V, 43. 



devils ] besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them. 
(13) And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and 
entered into the swine ; and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, 
(they were about two thousand,) and were choked in the sea. (14) And they that 
fed the swine fled, and told it in the city, and in the country. And they went out 
to see what it was that was done. (15) And they come to Jesus, and see him that 
was possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sitting, and clothed, and in his 
right mind ; and they were afraid. (16) And they that saw it told them how it be- 
fell to him that was possessed with the devil, and also concerning the swine. (17) 
And they began to pray him to depart out of their coasts. (18) And when he was 
come into the ship, he that had been possessed with the devil prayed him that he 
might be with him. (19) Howbeit Jesus suffered him not, but saith unto him, Q-o 
home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, 
and hath had compassion on thee. (20) And he departed, and began to publish in 
Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and all men did marvel. 

3. THE WOMAN WITH AN ISSUE OP BLOOD IS HEALED, AND THE DAUGHTER OP 
JAIRUS IS RAISED FROM THE DEAD. 

"Verses 21—43. (Compare Matthew ix, 1, 18-26; Luke viii, 40-56.) 

(21) And when Jesus was passed over again by ship unto the other side, much 
people gathered unto him ; and he was nigh unto the sea. (22) And, behold, there 
cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name ; and when he saw 
him, he fell at his feet, (23) and besought 2 him greatly, saying, My little daughter 
lieth at the point of death : I j)ray thee, come and lay thy hands on her, that she may 
be healed; and she shall live. (24) And Jesus went with him; and much people 
followed him, and thronged him. (25) And a certain woman, which had an issue 
of blood twelve years, (26) and had suffered many things of many physicians, and 
had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, 
(27) when she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his gar- 
ment. (28) For she said, 3 If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole. (29) 
And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up ; and she felt in her body 
that she was healed of that plague. (30) And Jesus, immediately knowing in him- 
self that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, "Who 
touched my clothes ? (31) And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multi- 
tude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me ? (32) And he looked 
round about to see her that had done this thing. (33) But the woman fearing and 
trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and 
told him all the truth. (34) And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made 
thee whole ; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague. (35) While he yet spake, 
there came from the ruler of the synagogue's house certain which said, Thy daugh- 
ter is dead ; i why troublest thou the Master any further ? (36) As soon as Jesus 

1 All the devils is wanting in many manuscripts. 2 Tis- | A, C, L. 3 Namely, within herself. * Literally, died, 
chendorf had adopted the present tense, according to I without any reference to the present; not is dead. 



MARK IV, 35— V, 43. 



689 



heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not 
afraid, only believe. (37) And he suffered no man to follow him, save Peter, and 
James, and John the brother of James. (38) And he cometh to the house of the 
ruler of the synagogue, and seeth the tumult, and them that wept and wailed 
greatly. (39) And when he was come in, he saith unto them, Why make ye this 
ado, and weep ? the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth. (40) And they laughed him 
to scorn. But when he had put them all out, he taketh the father and the mother 
of the damsel, and them that were with him, and entereth in where the damsel 
was lying. (41) And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha 
cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, (I say unto thee,) arise. (42) And 
straightway the damsel arose, and walked ; for she was of the age of twelve years. 
And they were astonished with a great astonishment. (43) And he charged them 
straitly that no man should know it ; and commanded that something should be 
given her to eat. 



Verses 35-41. And the same day, when the 
even was come. The three Evangelists who relate 
this event agree in placing it immediately before the 
healing of the possessed in the country of the Gada- 
renes. Mark tells us expressly that it was on the 
evening of the day, when he had concluded a series 
of parables. — Let us pass over unto the other 
side. On these words Stier remarks, " that the 
Lord who so often is under the necessity of opposing 
his majestic I to all other men, condescendingly 
speaks of the we and us in the external things of or- 
dinary life." — Even as he was — without further prep- 
aration for the voyage ; that is, without delay. — 
And there arose a great storm of wind. The 
Lake of Tiberias, surrounded with mountain gorges, 
is known to be especially exposed to very sudden 
and violent squalls ; this must have been one of un- 
usual vehemence, else the disciples, who were expe- 
rienced fishermen and familiar with all the changes 
of the lake, would not have been so greatly terrified. 
— And he was in the hinder part of the ship, 
asleep on A pillow, laying his weary head upon the 
wooden railing of the ship, and sleeping so soundly 
and tranquilly that he was not roused by the storm 
and uproar around him. — And they awake him 
saying. Matthew gives the words of the disciples in 
their simplest expression ; Luke indicates the urg- 
ency of their feeling by the twice-uttered Master ! 
Master I Mark adds the appeal, Carest thou not 
that we perish ? almost reproaching him for being 
unmindful of their safety, though they no doubt in- 
cluded in this "we" their beloved Master as well as 
themselves. — And he arose, "in the same majestic 
tranquillity with which he had sunk to sleep, in the 
most perfect self-possession and power of his spirit. 
Let any man reflect how one suddenly roused with 
outcries of distress and danger of death around him 
would, in the weakness of humanity, comport him- 
self; and it will help him to perceive and estimate 



44 



the unapproachable dignity of this Being, even while 
one with us he is paying his tribute to the infirmity 
of our flesh." (Stier.) — And rebuked the wind, 
and said unto the sej, Peace, be still. The 
Lord addresses the excited elements, as we speak to 
living and conscious beings. The older commentators 
see in these words " a distinct recognition of Satan 
and the powers of evil as the authors of the dishar- 
mony in the outward world, a tracing of all these 
disorders up to their source." There is no reason to 
doubt that, as Gerlach remarks, " the destructive 
powers of creation are, in consequence of man's 
apostasy from God, in the service of evil spirits," or, 
as Trench expresses it, that " nature, who should 
always have been man's willing handmaid, being 
held in thrall by evil powers, often becomes the in- 
strument of his harm and ruin." — The authority 
which Jesus here exerts over nature, strikingly cor- 
responds to the sublime description of the power of 
God over the elements of nature in Proverbs xxx, 4: 
" Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended ? 
who hath gathered the wind in his fists ? who hath 
bound the waters in a garment ? who has established 
all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and 
what is Ms sons name, if thou canst tell?" The 
answer to the mysterious question concerning his 
Son's name is here given us. — And he said unto 
them. According to Matthew, the Lord first spoke 
the word of admonition to the disciples before he 
turned to the winds and the waves. In Mark and 
Luke the admonition follows the pacifying of the 
storm. Probably, he spoke first to them, quieting 
with a word the tempest in their bosoms; and then, 
having allayed the tumult of the outward elements, 
he again turned to them and reproved them for their 
lack of faith. — Why are ye so fearful? How is 
it that ye have no faith ? Perfect faith in God 
expels all fear. Fearing and believing are opposites. 
Yet they were not wholly without faith ; for, believ- 



690 



MARK IV, 35— V, 43. 



ing in the midst of their unbelief, they turned to 
Christ in their need. They had faith, but it was not 
quick and lively, it was not at hand as it should 
have been. Luke expresses this by the question, 
u Where is your faith f The imperfection of their 
faith consisted not in this, that they appealed unto 
the Lord for help, for herein was faith; but in the 
excess of their terror, imagining it to be possible 
that the ship which bore their Master could ever 
perish. — The Church has always ascribed a sym- 
bolical and prophetical significance to this miracu- 
lous event. Stier remarks : " The whole human life 
of the Son of God is in all its circumstances and de- 
tails altogether symbolical, because he — -who is the 
image of the invisible God in the flesh — appears in 
commerce with the world, with nature and with men; 
and this symbolical, typical, prophetical character 
meets us with special significance on some most 
striking occasions. This passage over the lake is 
human life generally, disciple-life in particular : the 
ship in which he protectingly and savingly voyages 
with them, as it is the heart of his disciple, so it is 
also his Church, the antitype of the Ark." Trench 
carries out this thought further by remarking : " As 
the kernel of the old humanity, Noah and his family, 
was once contained in the Ark which was tossed 
upon the waves of the Deluge, so the kernel of the 
new humanity, of the new creation, Christ and his 
apostles, in this little ship. And the Church of 
Christ has evermore resembled this tempested bark, 
in that the waves of the world rage horribly around 
it, in that it has evermore been delivered out of the 
perils which seemed ready to overwhelm it, and this 
because Christ is in it ; who, being roused by the 
cry of his servants, rebukes these winds and these 
waters, before they utterly overwhelm this ship. In 
the Old Testament Ezekiel gives us a magnificent 
picture of a worldly kingdom under the image of a 
stately and gorgeous galley, which he describes with 
every circumstance that could highten its glory and 
its beauty, (xxvii, 4—9;) but that ship, with all its 
outward bravery and magnificence, utterly perishes; 
'thy rowers have brought thee into great waters; 
the east wind hath broken thee in the midst of the 
seas,' and they that have hoped in it and embarked 
in it their treasures, wail over its wreck with a bitter 
wailing, (vs. 26-36;) this kingdom of God meanwhile, 
which seems by comparison but as the slight and 
unhonored fishing-boat that every wave would in- 
gulf, rides triumphantly over all, and comes safely 
into haven at the last." 

Chapter V, verses 1-20. And they came over. 
There is something very striking in the connection in 
which this miracle stands with that other which went 
immediately before. Our Lord has just shown himself 
as the pacifier of the tumults and the discords in the 
outward world ; he has spoken peace to the winds 
and to the waves, and hushed with a word the 
elemental war. But there is something wilder and 
more fearful than the winds and the waves in their 



fiercest moods — even the spirit of man, when it 
has broken loose from all restraints and yielded 
itself to be the organ, not of God, but of him who 
brings uttermost confusion wheresoever his dominion 
reaches. And Christ will do here a yet mightier 
work than that which he accomplished there ; he 
will prove himself here also the Prince of Peace, the 
bringer back of the lost harmony ; he will speak, 
and at his potent word this madder strife, this 
blinder rage which is in the heart of man, will allay 
itself; and here also there shall be a great calm. — 
Into the country of the Gadarenes. Matthew 
calls it the country of the Gergesenes. The manu- 
scripts greatly vary; some have in Mark and Luke 
Gerasenes, and even Gergesenes, and some have in 
Matthew Gadarenes. The correct reading can only 
be settled by topographical researches, and the latest 
results of these by Dr. Thomson, (in his The Land 
and the Book, Vol. II, pp. 34-38,) make it more 
than probable that the correct reading is Gergesenes. 
The miracle could not have occurred at Gadara, a 
city mentioned by Josephus as the capital of Perea, 
whose site is generally admitted to be the present 
Umlceis, for it is too far from the lake shore to agree 
with the place described by the Evangelists; nor 
could it have been the country of the Gadarenes. 
because the territory of Gadara did not reach to the 
south end of the lake; besides, there is no mountain 
there adapted to the topography described, and the 
miracle is expressly said to have been wrought in sight 
of the city. Nor could it have been at Gerasa, for 
that city was situated still further from the lake 
shore. But Origen mentions a Gergesa, as a town 
lying upon the lake of Tiberias, and near the shore, 
and adds, that the precipice was still pointed out 
from which the swine rushed into the lake. The 
site of this town Dr. Thomson identifies with some 
ruins, which bear the name of Kerza or Gersa, 
and says : " It is a small place, but the walls can be 
traced all round, and there seem to have been con- 
siderable suburbs. In this Gersa or Chersa we have 
a position which fulfills every requirement of the 
narrative, and with a name so near that in Matthew 
as to be in itself a strong corroboration of the truth 
of this identification. It is within a few rods of the 
shore, and an immense mountain rises directly above 
it, in which are ancient tombs, out of some of which 
the two men possessed of the devils may have issued 
to meet Jesus. The lake is so near the base of the 
mountain that the swine, rushing madly down it, 
could not stop, but would be hurried on into the . 
water and drown. It is moreover a singular fact, 
that the locality still abounds with hogs, that seem 
to be as wild and fierce as though they were still 
possessed. The place is one which our Lord would 
be likely to visit, having Capernaum in full view to 
the north, and Galilee ' over against it,' as Luke 
says it was." The different readings Dr. Thomson 
accounts for in this way: "I have an abiding con- 
viction that Matthew wrote the name correctly. He 



MARK IV. 35— V, 43. 



691 



was from this region, and personally knew the local- 
ities. His Gospel, also, was written first of all, and 
mainly circulated, in the beginning, in these Ori- 
ental regions. John does not mention the miracle, 
and Mark and Luke were strangers to this part of 
the country, and may possibly have intended, by 
mentioning the country of the Gadarenes, to point 
out to their distant Greek and Roman readers the 
mere vicinity of the place where the miracle was 
wrought. Gergesa, or Gerasa, or Chersa, however 
pronounced, was small and unknown, while Gadara 
was a Greek city celebrated for its temples and 
theaters, and for the warm baths on the Hieromax 
just below it. They may, therefore, have written 
country of the Gadarenes;' but I think it far more 
probable that intermeddling scholiasts made the 
change from Gergesa to Gadara, in order to indi- 
cate to the unlearned the spot where the wonder 
took place. There is a certain resemblance between 
the names, and, when once introduced into a leading 
manuscript, the basis for the controversy would be 
fairly laid down. Learned annotators would be mis- 
led by the very extent of their geographical knowl- 
edge, which, however, would not be sufficiently ex- 
act to prove to them that the miracle could not have 
taken place at Gadara." — A man with an unclean 
spirit. Mark and Luke speak only of one, while 
Matthew mentions two. Of the condition of the 
miserable man Mark gives the most detailed, graphic 
account. " The man had his dwelling among the 
tombs; that is, in unclean places, unclean because 
of the dead men's bones which were there. To 
those who did not on this account shun them, these 
tombs of the Jews would afford ample shelter, being 
either natural caves, or recesses hewn by art out of 
the rock, often so large as to be supported with 
columns, and with cells upon their sides for the re- 
ception of the dead. Being, too, without the cities, 
and oftentimes in remote and solitary places, they 
would attract those who sought to flee from all fel- 
lowship of their kind. This man was possessed of 
that extraordinary muscular strength which maniacs 
so often put forth, and thus all efforts to bind and 
restrain him had proved ineffectual. St. Luke alone 
relates that he was without clothing, although this is 
involved in St. Mark's account, who tells us that after 
he was healed he was found '■clothed, and in his 
right mind,' sitting at Jesus' feet. Yet with all this, 
he was not so utterly lost, but that there evermore 
woke up in him a sense of his misery, and of the 
terrible bondage under which he had come, although 
this could express itself only in his cries, and in a 
blind rage against himself, out of which he wounded 
and cut himself with stones." —But when he saw 
Jesus he ran and worshiped him. This is men- 
tioned by the three Evangelists. In the very' mo- 
ment the demoniac got sight of Jesus, he cried 
aloud — according to Luke — and rushed wildly to- 
ward him. This sets forth strongly the effect which 
the appearance of Jesus had upon the demoniac. 



He may have heard of Jesus before ; at any rate, it 
is a psychological fact, that the power of presenti- 
ment manifests itself especially in those cases where 
the human organism is impaired or deranged; and 
thus the demoniac's immediate recognition of Jesus 
may be accounted for. However that may be, the 
running to and worshiping Jesus, indicative of a 
glimmering hope that he might be healed, was the act 
of the man without the cooperation of the demons, 
who would much rather have driven him away from 
the Savior. Jesus commanded the demon to come 
out of him, and all at once he was seized by a vio- 
lent paroxysm, and his own self-consciousness being 
drowned by the action of the demons upon him, he 
cried out, identifying himself with the demons, 
"What have I to do with thee?" although he had 
come to Jesus, while enjoying for a few moments 
the light of his own consciousness, to find help and re- 
lief at his hands. Gerlach remarks: "As some pe- 
culiar operations of the Holy Ghost, in the supernatu- 
ral charismata, can, and sometimes do, produce 
states, wherein the self-consciousness of the believer 
is, for the time being, suspended, (2 Cor. xii, 2,) so 
the self-consciousness of a demoniac was at times 
so completely overwhelmed by foreign influences 
that the demon occupied the place of the human 
consciousness. Yet Jesus has come to destroy also 
these works of the devil." — And cried with a loud 
voice, and said. Here the demon himself, making 
use of the possessed man's organ of speech, speaks. 
— I adjure thee by God. On these words Dr. 
Alexander remarks : " A much stronger expression 
than those used by Luke (viii, 28) and Matthew 
(viii, 29.) To adjure is properly to make swear or 
administer an oath, that is, to exhort one in the 
name of God to tell the truth ; and by a wider appli- 
cation the verb denotes any solemn charge or ex- 
hortation in the name of God, (as in 1 Thess. v, 27,) 
particularly such a call addressed to evil spirits, and 
requiring them to leave their victim, (as in Acts 
xix, 13,) whence the verb exorcise and its cognate 
terms, exorcism and exorcist, found their way 
through the later ecclesiastical Greek and Latin 
writers into our own and other modern lan- 
guages. The simple verb, as here used, denotes 
urgent entreaty in the name of God, or with ex- 
press appeal to his authority as sanctioning the 
prayer. It is equivalent to saying, 'I implore thee 
to do that which God himself approves or would ap- 
prove in this case.' This appeal to God was not a 
mere audacious blasphemy, but a plausible deduction 
from his having really deferred the full infliction of 
their sentence, so that Christ's interference with 
them might be speciously described as an anticipa- 
tion of their final doom, or tormenting them before 
the time. (Matt, viii, 29.)" — For he said unto him. 
The imperfect tense is here to be taken in the sense 
of the pluperfect; Luke says, "For he had com- 
manded the unclean spirit to come out of the man." 
It is evident that the adjuration of the demon was 



692 



MARK IV, 35— V, 43. 



caused by a preceding command of the Savior. 
That the demon did not at once obey the command 
of the Lord, had its cause not in his power to make 
a successful resistance, but in the permission of the 
Lord for wise purposes, the state of the man making 
such a gradual preparation for his final cure neces- 
sary. —And he asked him. The question, though 
answered by the demon himself, was not directed to 
him, but to the man possessed, for the purpose of 
bringing him to the consciousness of his own person- 
ality, of which a man's name is the outward expres- 
sion, and thus to enable him to distinguish himself 
from the evil spirits, who had control of him, to re- 
mind him of what he was, before he fell under the 
dominion of these alien powers. But the unhappy 
man was still so completely under their control that 
the evil spirits do not suffer him to speak in his own 
name, but in their name. This is far more probable 
than to suppose that the question was directed to 
the evil spirit, for the Lord needed no such infor- 
mation, nor would it have been of any use to others ; 
the question, moreover, presupposes a single demon, 
while there were more than one, as appears from the 
sequel. — My name is Legion, foe we are many. 
The demon speaks of himself in the singular and yet 
of many, because being, as it were, the commander 
of these many; this idea is indicated by the name 
legion, which implies an organized whole. Lange 
finds in this answer a blending of the sufferer's own 
consciousness with the defiant language of the 
demons that possessed him. — That he would not 
send them away out of the country. This re- 
quest is a repetition of their prayer that they should 
not be tormented before the time, but has, at the 
same time, reference to circumstances connected 
with the spiritual world, with which we are not ac- 
quainted. — Send us into the swine. Matthew and 
Luke express the sense of "send us" by saying, 
" Suffer us to go." The devil has no power over 
the brute creation without Divine permission. " These 
evil spirits had their prayers heard ; but only to their 
ruin. They are allowed to enter into the swine, but 
the destruction of the whole herd follows ; and that 
which they dreaded would seem to have come upon 
them ; no longer finding organs in which and 
through which to work, they are driven perforce to 
the abysmal deep, which they fain would have shun- 
ned." (Trench.) — And forthwith Jesus gave 
them leave. The cavils brought against this per- 
mission of our Savior have been noticed in our com- 
ments on Matthew — perhaps, too, fully according to 
Stier, who exclaims : " Silly expositors, orthodox 
and heterodox of every shade, come forward, and 
think they have a right to ask whether the Lord 
Jesus could have given this permission. Many fly 
from this narrative, as if the spirits had entered into 
them and driven them into the sea of unbelief; they 
enter upon all kinds of uncalled-for apologies for 
the swine and their owners, forgetting, or seeming to 
forget, what the apologies of ages have testified on 



behalf of Jesus. Others, with better views, adduce 
many ingenious reasons for the act. We have no 
need whatever of any of these remarks, true or other- 
wise, concerning this sublime transaction ; for we 
fix our eyes upon the plain fact, that the deed itself 
is its own justification." — Concerning the suscepti- 
bility of animals to demoniac influence Trench, re- 
ferring to Sicfcc'S SeHurissimia and ^nffaoant'S llnter- 
fuchungcit itbei' ba$ ^etlfchen, remarks: "How re- 
markable in this respect are well-authenticated cases 
of clairvoyance, in wliich the horse is evidently, by its 
terror and extreme agitation and utter refusal to 
advance, a partaker of the vision of its rider ! And 
indeed in our common life the horse, and the dog no 
less, are eminently receptive of the spiritual condi- 
tions of their appointed lord and master, man. 
With what electric swiftness does the courage or 
fear of the rider pass into the horse ; and so the 
gladness or depression of its master is almost instant- 
aneously reflected and reproduced in his faithful 
dog. It is true that we should expect, as we should 
find, far less of this in the grosser nature of the 
swine than in those creatures of nobler races. Yet 
the very fierceness and grossness of these animals 
may have been exactly that which best fitted them 
for receiving such impulses from the lower world as 
those under which they perished." — And they 
were afraid — " terrified, not merely filled with 
dread of further loss, or bodily damage to them- 
selves, but awe-struck, seized with that religious 
terror which arises even in the irreligious, upon any 
striking indication of a superhuman power or the 
presence of superior beings." (Alexander.) — And 
they began to pray him to depart out of their 
coasts. In the impenitent the manifestations of 
Divine power create only dread, while the enmity of 
the carnal mind is not overcome by the plainest and 
greatest manifestations of Divine goodness. Many, 
like these Gadarenes and Pharaoh of old, recognize 
the hand of God, yet they do not submit to him. An 
old German Bible has on this verse the marginal 
note : " The course of this wicked world is to love 
hogs more than Jesus." But even where Jesus is 
not rejected for hogs, how many keep away from 
him in the midst of powerful revivals of religion, 
simply from fear of some worldly disadvantage ! 
They do not consider that a rejection of Jesus is in- 
variably followed by temporal as well as by eternal 
ruin. — He prayed him that he might be with 
him. "Was it that he feared, as Theophylact sup- 
poses, lest in the absence of his deliverer the powers 
of hell should regain their dominion over him, and 
only felt safe in immediate nearness to him ? or 
merely that out of the depth of his gratitude he de- 
sired henceforth to be a follower of Him to whom he 
owed this mighty benefit? But whatever was his 
motive the Lord had other purposes with him ; 
though he was himself leaving them who were as 
yet unfitted to welcome him, he would not leave 
himself without a witness among them. This healed 



MARK IV, 35— V, 43. 



693 



man should be a standing monument of his grace 
and power — that he would have healed them, and 
was willing to heal them still, of all the diseases of 
their souls.'' — Go home to thy friends, from whom 
thou hast been so long estranged. Our testimony 
of Divine grace should begin in the domestic circles. 
They should first be convinced of the reality of our 
conversion. — He began to publish in Decapolis. 
In Galilee and Judea our Lord forbade often to 
speak publicly of his miracles, because there was 
danger to arouse the carnal Messianic expectations 
of the people. In Perea, which Jesus left forthwith 
again, this danger did not exist; it was, on the con- 
trary, necessary to call the attention of the people to 
the person of Jesus. In this section let us note, 1. 
The power of darkness, as it manifested itself in the 
demoniacs and still does in all sinners, causing them 
to break through all restraints, and resulting in tor- 
tures to themselves. 2. The power of Christ over 
all moral evil, punitive and destructive to the powers 
of darkness, saving the sinner. 3. The bearing of 
the world to the victories of Divine grace. 

Verses 21-43. And when Jesus was passed over 
against, etc.; that is, to Capernaum. (Matt, ix, 1.) 
Matthew's statement of the locality is not at vari- 
ance with what Mark here says, that Jesus was nigh 
unto the sea, when the ruler came unto him; for 
Matthew does not say that Jesus was teaching in his 
own house, or that of Levi, when the ruler came to 
him. The discussion after the feast very probably 
took place in an open place. — And behold, there 
cometh . . . Jairus. This is the old Hebrew name 
Jair, (Num. xxxii, 41; Deut. iii, 14; Judg. x, 3; 1 
Chron. ii, 22; Esth. ii, 5,) with a Greek or Latin 
ending. — My little daughter; tender expression 
of an anxious father. Luke says that this was his 
only child. — Come and lay thy hands on her. 
The faith of Jairus is less bold and decided than 
that of the centurion, who said, " speak but one 
word." He thinks that the Lord must come in per- 
son in order to effect the cure of his child. This 
his weak faith is now subjected to a severe trial by 
the delay which the woman caused to the Lord on 
his way to the ruler's house. — And much people 
followed him. This accounts for what Peter says 
in verse 31. — And a certain woman which had an 
issue of blood. Her complaint made her legally 
unclean. (Lev. xv, 25.) The malady of this woman 
was great: 1. On account of the nature of her dis- 
ease — she could not mention it without doing vio- 
lence to her womanly feelings. 2. Her disease was 
of an obdurate character, having lasted for twelve 
years, and having been only aggravated by the pain- 
fulness of the many remedies prescribed for that dis- 
order, of which we find a full account in Jewish 
writings. 3. The expenses that had attended her 
long sickness had brought her to poverty. "It is 
important, though it may be difficult to realize the 
situation of this woman, once possessed of health 
and wealth, and, no doubt, moving in respectable 



society, now beggared and diseased, without a hope 
of human help, and secretly believing in the power 
of Christ, and him alone, to heal her, yet deterred 
by some natural misgiving and by shame from com- 
ing with the rest to be publicly recognized and then 
relieved. However commonplace the case may 
seem to many, there are some in whose experience, 
when clearly seen and seriously attended to, it 
touches a mysterious chord of painful sympathy." 
(Alexander.) — And touched his garment; that is, 
the hem of his garment, as Matthew says, by which 
we may understand not only the extremest part, as 
that which she could most easily reach, but that blue 
fringe which was put on the borders of the garment 
by Divine command, and was to remind the Jews 
that they were God's people. (Num. xv, 37-40; 
Deut. xxii, 12.) As it had acquired a religious sig- 
nificance, she may have attributed to it a peculiar 
virtue. This is, however, only conjectural; yet it is 
evident that she attributed to the person of Jesus a 
certain magical influence, with which if she could 
put herself in contact, she would obtain that which 
she desired. But her faith, though mingled with 
error in regard to the manner in which the healing 
power of Christ presented itself to her mind, was 
true in essence, and manifested itself in just such a 
manner as we would expect from a woman in her 
peculiar condition. — And Jesus, immediately know- 
ing IN HIMSELF THAT VIRTUE HAD GONE OUT OF HIM. 

"We must infer from these words, as well as from 
Luke v, 17, and vi, 19, that there was a healing 
power inherent in the God-man, which might be im- 
parted through touching him ; but this did not occur 
in a physical way without or against the intervention 
of his conscious will. And it is just to refute this 
very error of the woman, which would otherwise 
have been confirmed and propagated, that he speaks 
and will not keep silence; and that he is constrained 
in all kindness to abash still more the ashamed wo- 
man by bringing her into prominence. The physical 
virtue, which passes over, does not go from him with- 
out his will; that will is always disposed, stands, as 
it were, always open and prepared for approaching 
faith, and this is the reason why that which occurred 
could take place. Further, not without his knowl- 
edge, as is immediately shown; the touch which de- 
rived the virtue from him was assuredly unexpected, 
but he marks it immediately, knowing it within him- 
self, rejoicing over the faith by which he is well 
pleased to allow himself even thus to be touched. 
We can apprehend this spiritual-physical virtue only 
by taking into account this spiritual relation; the 
people generally throng and press him vnthout that 
relation, but the timid touch, which scarcely laid 
hold of his garment, brings healing to the sick wo- 
man, because she has faith to be healed. A striking 
figure for the preacher, often used to distinguish the 
crowds from the few around Jesus!" (Stier.) They 
crowded upon Christ, but did not touch him in any 
way that he took note of. And thus it is ever in the 



694 



MARK IV, 35— V, 43. 



Church: many press upon Christ; his in name; near 
to him and to his sacraments outwardly; yet not 
touching him, because not drawing near in faith — 
not. looking for, and therefore not obtaining life from 
him, through the appointed means of grace. — Who 
touched my clothes? "This might be construed 
as implying that he was ignorant of the person who 
had done it, and only uncertainly apprehended that 
something had taken place. If he knew, it might 
be argued, to what purpose the question? But, as 
the sequel of the history will abundantly prove, there 
was a purpose; since if she had been allowed to 
carry away her blessing in secret as she proposed, it 
would not have been at all the blessing to her, and 
to her whole after spiritual life, that it now was, when 
she was obliged, by this repeated question of the 
Lord, to own that she had come to seek, and had 
found health from him. And the other objection is 
easily dissolved; namely, that it would not have been 
perfectly consistent with truth to have asked as not 
knowing, when indeed he knew all the while, who 
had done that, concerning which he inquired. But 
a father when he comes among his children, and 
says, Who committed this fault? himself conscious, 
even while he asks, but at the same time willing to 
bring the culprit to a free confession, and so to put 
him in a pardonable state, can he be said in any way 
to violate the laws of the highest truth? The same 
offense might be found in Elisha's 'Whence comest 
thou, Gehazi?' (2 Kings v, 25,) when his heart went 
with him all the way that he had gone; and even in 
the question of God himself to Adam, 'Where art 
thou ?' In each of those cases, as here, there is a 
moral purpose in the question — an opportunity given 
even at the latest moment for undoing at least a 
part of the fault by its unreserved confession, an 
opportunity which they whose examples have been 
here adduced suffered to escape; but which she, 
who it needs not to say had a fault of infinitely a 
slighter nature to acknowledge, had ultimately grace 
given her to use." (Trench.) Stier, controverting 
the view expressed by Trench and held by most 
commentators, as not recognizing what was essen- 
tially human in the Son of man, and as inconsistent 
with the most distinct words of the Evangelists, 
says: "The indefinite masculine, & aipi/aevog, who is 
the one having touched me? does not favor this 
view. Mark further reports that the Lord turned 
round to find him who had done, or, as he speaks in 
relation to the known fact, her, who had done this 
thing; yea, that the woman came and told him all 
the truth. Consequently he did not yet fully know 
her from the beginning; he knew only that which his 
genuine question expresses, that somebody, as Luke 
says, had touched him with such longing of faith as 
had drawn from him his healing virtue." — But the 
woman fearing and trembling. The woman's agi- 
tation of mind arose not only from her womanly 
bashfulness on account of her peculiar disease, but 
also, as we may suppose, from a fear that she might 



be censured for having in her legal uncleanness 
mixed with the people, and even touched the sacred 
person of the renowned Teacher. Olshausen brings 
out here, with much beauty, how in all this the lov- 
ing and gracious dealings of the Son of man, who 
always sought to make through the healing of the 
body a way for the healing of the soul, are to be 
traced. She had borne away a maimed blessing, 
hardly a blessing at all, had she been suffered to bear 
it away in secret and unacknowledged. She desired 
to remain in concealment out of a shame, which, 
however natural, was untimely here in this crisis of 
her spiritual life; and this her loving Savior would 
not suffer her to do; by a gracious force he drew her 
from it; yet even here he spared her as far as he 
could. For not before, but after she is healed, does 
he require the open confession from her lips. She 
had found it perhaps altogether too hard, had he de- 
manded it of her before; therefore does he graciously 
wait till the cure is accomplished, and thus helps her 
through the narrow way. Altogether spare her this 
painful passage he could not, for it pertained to her 
birth into the new life. — That the Lord, who so ten- 
derly regards every genuine emotion of the human 
heart, exacted of this woman a confession so repug- 
nant to her feelings, teaches us the absolute neces- 
sity of making a public confession of religion. Who- 
ever has experienced the healing power of Je-sus 
Christ ought to confess the work of grace openly, 
however difficult he may find it. It is an inviolable 
law in the kingdom of Christ, which commands us 
not only to believe in him with the heart unto right- 
eousness, but also to confess him with the mouth unto 
salvation. — Daughter, tht faith has made thee 
whole. "Thy faith, thy touch in faith has saved 
thee, not merely thy touch or my garment! It was, 
indeed, with all its improper admixture, a strong 
faith which trusted that the hem of his garment 
could do more to heal her than the instrumentality 
of all physicians. The Lord now, as ever, praises 
such faith, and compensates her for all the pain and 
shame which his testimony for truth had required 
that he should not spare her, by his gracious 'Daugh- 
ter.' 0, how his love rejoices over such faith, in 
whatsoever form he finds it! Alford very properly 
refers to this 'as being a miracle full of the highest 
encouragement to all who might be disposed to 
think despondingly of the ignorance or superstition 
of much of the Christian world — as a token that he 
who accepted this woman for her faith even in error 
and weakness, may also accept them.' " — Be not 
afraid, only belieye. " Be not disconcerted by this 
message of death. Thou hast summoned me to be 
thy Helper, and I will assuredly help. That the 
man had from the beginning been aware of his 
daughter's death, and had attributed to Jesus the 
power even to awaken the dead, is inconceivable in 
itself, and would be unexampled in the whole evan- 
gelical history, though the rapid, condensing brevity 
of Matthew, at the commencement of his narrative 



MARK IV, 35— V, 43. 



695 



might lead the unwary reader to think so. Matthew 
passes oveF the intermediate message, which was 
certainly not unknown to him, and in his brief and 
comprehensive reference to it throws back upon the 
former part of the transaction the impression and 
feeling of the latter. This is his manner: his first 
Gospel delivers its narrative in this unstudied style, 
because he can presuppose a living tradition of the 
more minute details of important occurrences be- 
fore the subsequent Evangelists had rendered them 
permanent. But with all this he ever writes the 
truth; for strictly considered, the apri ireXtvrriatv — 
translated, my daughter is even now dead — means 
no more than Mark's 'she lieth at the point of 
death.' There is the greatest danger; all haste 
is needful; probably she may be, while I am call- 
ing thee, already dead. Nothing else is obviously 
meant — and this is decisive — by Luke's ank-&v7iaKev — 
she lay a dying — from which he himself in verse 49 
distinguished actual death by ri-dv-qKEv. The words, 
'she shall live,' in the first request of the father, 
(Matt, ix, 18,) therefore, means not she shall again 
return to life, but she shall continue to live, survive 
the immediate peril of death, as explained in Mark, 
'that she maybe healed; and she shall live.' But 
that our Lord did not doubt the correctness of the 
subsequent intelligence that the daughter was now 
actually dead, is self-evident. If he had hoped, as 
rationalists explain, that the maid was not dead, he 
would, to preserve the truth, have contradicted the 
intelligence at once before the people." — Save 
Peter, and James, and John the brother of 
James. This seems to be the first occasion on 
which our Lord selected these three from the rest 
of the disciples. — The damsel is not dead but 
sleepeth. That .our Lord by these words did not 
mean to call in question her actual death, has been 
shown in the note on Matthew ix, 24. " But why 
did the Lord use this expression ? His word has a 
sublime, universal meaning, as it regards all who are 
by us termed ' the dead,' and specifically with a two- 
fold design, as it regards those who then heard him. 
To the tumultuous people without it is vailed; to 
have said, ' She is dead, but I will raise her up 
again,' would not have suited his holy humility, and 
would have been repulsive to that crowd of turbulent 
mourners. And to strengthen the faith of the de- 
sponding father, he substitutes for the word of fear 
and dismay, she is dead, the cheering word, she 
sleepeth I One whom it is his will to awake imme- 
diately as in this instance, sleeps indeed only a short 
sleep of death. Even we have no other way of 
speaking of it than to call it a reawakening. The 
Lord, however, does not speak now with reference 
only to the present occasion. There rises before 
him, in one great, comprehensive view, the death 
and resurrection of all the children of men, and he 
speaks in language of sublime and majestic su- 
periority over the narrow thoughts of mortals." 



(Stier.) — And when he had put them all out. 
"Their presence was evidently inappropriate and 
superfluous there; they were mourners for the dead, 
and she was not dead; or, at least, her death was so 
soon to give place to returning life, that it did not 
deserve the name; it was but as a sleep and an 
awakening, though they, indeed, who heard this as- 
sertion of the Lord, so little understood it, that they 
met it with laughter and with scorn, 'knowing that 
she was dead,' that they were mourners for the dead. 
This would have been reason enough for silencing 
and putting out those mourners. But in addition to 
this, the boisterous and turbulent grief of some, the 
hired lamentations, it may be, of others, gave no 
promise of the true tone and temper, which became 
the witnesses of so holy and awful a mystery, a mys- 
tery from which even apostles themselves were ex- 
cluded — not to speak of the profane and scornful 
spirit with which they had received the Lord's as- 
surance that the child should presently awake. The 
scorners were not to witness the holy act." — And 
he took the damsel by the hand, to awake "her up 
as one would take a sleeping child. He addresses 
her as one already living — all the dead shall hear 
the voice of the Son of God — in Aramaic, probably 
for the sake of her parents, and to add to the solem- 
nity of his words. — -Talitha cumi. Peter, as an 
eye and ear-witness, had in all probability com- 
municated to Mark the identical words our Lord 
used, as also in vii, 34 ; xiv, 36. We learn from 
this that our Lord sometimes spoke Aramaic; but it 
does by no means decide the question of the lan- 
guage he used generally in his public discourses. 
— And he charged them straitly that no man 
should know it. Though the miracle itself could 
not be kept a secret, our Lord forbade all mere vain- 
glorious rumor of it, to prevent a premature agita- 
tion of the public mind, which would only have led 
to efforts to proclaim him a Messiah according to 
the carnal, Jewish expectations.- — And commanded 

THAT SOMETHING SHOULD BE GIVEN HER TO EAT. 

"This command is not so much a confirming assur- 
ance that she now truly lived and was quite re- 
stored — although that might be necessary for the 
astonished people who were unable to realize it— -as, 
if we mistake not, an indication of an affectionate 
care, which even in the midst of the greatest things 
forgets not the least, and which would provide for 
the necessities of the exhausted child on her return 
to life. He has given back life and health, and thus 
imparted help beyond the father's prayer or thought. 
But at this period he restrains that miracle-working 
power; it had restored a life physically healthy, of 
which the surest mark was the ordinary ability to 
eat and drink; and he now points them to the re- 
stored functions and ordinances of nature." (Stier.) 
Wesley remarks, "When natural or spiritual life is 
restored, even by immediate miracle, all proper 
means are to be used to preserve it." 



696 MARK VI, 1-56. 



SECTION Till. 

CHRIST CAN DO NO MIRACLES IN HIS NATIVE PLACE, OWING TO THE UNBELIEF OF THE 

PEOPLE, BUT HE EXHIBITS HIS MESSIANIC POWER THROUGHOUT 

THE REST OF GALILEE. 

CHAPTEB VI, 1-56. 

X. THE ENVIOUS UNBELIEF OP THE NAZARENES. 
Verses 1—6. (Compare Matthew xiii, 54-58.) 

(1) And he went out from thence, and came into his own country ; and his dis- 
ciples follow him. (2) And when the Sabbath day was come, he began to teach in 
the synagogue : and many hearing him were astonished, saying, From whence hath 
this man these things ? and what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that 
even such mighty works are wrought by his hands ? (3) Is not this the carpenter, 
the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon ? and 
are not his sisters here with us ? And they were offended at him. (4) But Jesus 
said unto them, A prophet is not without honor, but in his own country, and 
among his own kin, and in his own house. (5) And he could there do no mighty 
work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. (6) And 
he marveled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, 
teaching. 

2. THE MISSION OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES. 

"Verses V— 13. (Compare Matthew x, 1, 7-11; Luke ix, 1-6.) 

(7) And he called unto him the twelve, and began to send them forth by two 
and two ; and gave them power over unclean spirits ; (8) and commanded them 
that they should take nothing for their journey, save a staff only; no scrip, no 
bread, no money in their purse : (9) But be shod with sandals; and not put on two 
coats. 1 (10) And he said unto them, In what place soever ye enter into a house, 
there abide till ye depart from that place. (11) And whosoever shall not receive 
you, nor hear you, 2 when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for 
a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for 
Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city. (12) And they 
went out, and preached that men should repent. (13) And they cast out many 
devils, and anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them. 

1 According to the best authenticated reading, " Do I historical style into oratio directa gives greater emphasis 
not put on two coats." The sudden transition from the I to the command. 2 According to a reading adopted by 



MARK VI, 1-56. 697 



3. JOHN THE BAPTIST IS BEHEADED, AND HEROD MANIFESTS A DANGEROUS 

INTEREST IN CHRIST. 

"Verses 14—39. (Compare Matthew xiv, 1-12; Luke ix, 7-9.) 

(14) And King Herod heard of him ; (for his name was spread abroad ;) and he 
said, That John the Baptist was risen from the dead, and therefore mighty works 
do shew forth themselves in him. (15) Others said, That it is Elias. And others 
said, That it is a prophet, or as one of the prophets. (16) But when Herod heard 
thereof, he said, It is John, whom I beheaded : he is risen from the dead. (17) For 
Herod himself had sent forth and laid hold upon John, and bound him in prison 
for Herodias' sake, his brother Philip's wife; for he had married her. (18) For 
John had said unto Herod, It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife. 
(19) Therefore Herodias liad a quarrel against him, and would have killed him ; 
but she could not : (20) For Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just man 
and a holy, and observed 3 him ; and when he heard him, he did many things, and 
heard him gladly. (21) And when a convenient day was come, that Herod on his 
birthday made a supper to his lords, high captains, and chief estates of Galilee ; 
(22) and when the daughter of the said Herodias came in, and danced, and pleased 
Herod and them that sat with him, the King said unto the damsel, Ask of me 
whatsoever thou wilt, and I will give it thee. (23) And he sware unto her, What- 
soever thou shalt ask of me, I will give it thee, unto the half of my kingdom. 
(24) And she went forth, and said unto her mother, What shall I ask? And she 
said, The head of John the Baptist. (25) And she came in straightway with haste 
unto the king, and asked, saying, I will that thou give me by and by in a charger 
the head of John the Baptist. (26) And the king was exceeding sorry ; yet for his 
oath's sake, and for their sakes which sat with him, he would not reject her. 
(27) And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to 
be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison, (28) and brought his 
head in a charger, and gave it to the damsel ; and the damsel gave it to her mother. 
(29) And when his disciples heard of it, they came and took up his corpse, and 
laid it in a tomb. 

4. JESUS RETIRES INTO A DESERT PLACE BEYOND THE LAKE. THE MIRACULOUS 

FEEDING OF FIVE THOUSAND MEN. 

Verses 30— 44. (Compare Matthew xiv, 13-21; Luke ix, 10-17; John n, 1-15.) 

(30) And the apostles gathered themselves together unto Jesus, and told him all 
things, both what they had done, and what they had taught. (31) And he said 
unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest awhile : for 
there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat. 
(32) And they departed into a desert place by ship privately. (33) And the peo- 
ple* saw them departing, and many knew him, and ran afoot thither out of all 

Tischendorf, " Nor they hear you." 3 Observed — liter- I A, B, D, and seems to have been taken from Matthew, 
ally, watched him closely. i The people is wanting in I The other variations are equally unimportant. 



698 MARK VI, 1-56. 



cities, and outwent them, and came together unto him. (34) And Jesus, when he 
came out, saw much people, and was moved with compassion toward them, be- 
cause they were as sheep not having a shepherd : and he began to teach them 
many things. (35) And when the day was now far spent, his disciples came unto 
him, and said, This is a desert place, and now the time is far passed : (36) Send 
them away, that they may go into the country round about, and into the villages, 
and buy themselves bread : for they have nothing to eat. (37) He answered and 
said unto them, Give ye them to eat. And they say unto him, Shall we go and 
buy two hundred pennyworth of bread, and give them to eat ? (38) He saith uuto 
them, How many loaves have ye ? go and see. And when they knew, they say, 
Five, and two fishes. (39) And he commanded them to make all sit down by 
companies upon the green grass. (40) And they sat down in ranks, by hundreds, 
and by fifties. (41) And when he had taken the five loaves and the two fishes, he 
looked up to heaven, and blessed, and brake the loaves, and gave them to his disci- 
ples to set before them ; and the two fishes divided he among them all. (42) And 
they did all eat, and were filled. (43) And they took up twelve baskets full of 
the fragments, and of the fishes. (44) And they that did eat of the loaves were 
about five thousand men. 

5. THE DISCIPLES ENTER A SHIP TO RETURN TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SEA. 

THE WIND IS CONTRARY. JESUS COMES TO THEM, WALKING UPON 

THE LAKE. HE PERFORMS NEW MIRACLES ON THE 

WEST SIDE OF THE LAKE. 

"Verses 45-56. (Compare Matthew xiv, 22-36; John vi, 15-21.) 

(45) And straightway he constrained his disciples to get into the ship, and to 
go to the other side before unto Bethsaida, while he sent away the people. (46) 
And when he had sent them away, he departed into a mountain to pray. (47) And 
when even was come, the ship was in the midst of the sea, and he alone on the 
land. (48) And he saw them toiling in rowing; for the wind was contrary unto 
them : and about the fourth watch of the night he cometh unto them, walking 
upon the sea, and would have passed by them. (49) But when they saw him 
walking upon the sea, they supposed it had been a spirit, and cried out: (50) For 
they all saw him, and were troubled. And immediately he talked with them, and 
saith unto them, Be of good cheer : it is I ; be not afraid. (51) And he went up 
unto them into the ship ; and the wind ceased : and they were sore amazed in 
themselves beyond measure, and wondered. (52) For they considered not the mir- 
acle of the loaves ; for their heart was hardened. (53) And when they had passed 
over, they came into the land of Gennesaret, and drew to the shore. (54) And 
when they were come out of the ship, straightway they knew him, (55) and ran 
through that whole region round about, and began to carry about in beds those 
that were sick, where they heard he was. (56) And whithersoever he entered, 
into villages, or cities, or country, they laid the sick in the streets, and besought 
him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment : and as many 
as touched him were made whole. 



MARK VI, 1-56. 



699 



Verses 1-6. And came into his own country; 
that is, his native town, Nazareth. Elsewhere Gal- 
ilee is called his native country in the same sense in 
which Nazareth was his native town; for, although 
he had been born in Bethlehem in Judea, yet his 
parents had lived in Nazareth prior to his birth, and 
he had been brought up there, so that he passed 
generally for a Nazarene and Galilean. —That this 
■was a second visit to Nazareth has been shown in 
Matthew xiii, 54-58. — From whence has this 
man these things? "The son of Mary must have 
walked till his thirtieth year like the son of no other 
Nazarene, of no other Israelite, of no other man, 
so as to call up in those who had right eyes and 
right hearts the presentiment that he is something- 
higher than he appeared to be. But the beggarly- 
village pride of the Nazarenes can not at all com- 
prehend the humility of the Great One; they are 
ready to say, ' Who is this that won't keep quiet, but 
brings himself into public notice?' Thus the hu- 
manity of the Divine Savior is incredible at first to 
all of us. 'Whence has this man this wisdom and 
these deeds?' From his father and mother he has 
got no education, as his brothers and sisters show; 
he has not studied any where else, (John vii, 15;) 
consequently, as we do not know whence he has got 
learning, he has got nothing that we can acknowl- 
edge. Thus Nazareth very naively confirms what 
other people say of it. (John i, 46.)" (Stier.) — 
The son of Mary. It is strange that Joseph, his 
reputed father, is not mentioned here, and this omis- 
sion can, perhaps, be satisfactorily accounted for only 
on the supposition that he had died years before. — 
And they were offended at him. "Their offense 
had its roots in an unbelief common with people of 
narrow minds and contracted views, which can not 
comprehend as divinely great what is near at hand 
and ordinarily human. The experience which Jesus 
made with regard to this kind of unbelief, namely, that 
a prophet is no where less honored than in his own 
country and among his own kin, may serve as the 
fit heading of a whole chapter of the history of the 
world and of the Church. The prejudice of this 
vulgar notion, that from one's neighborhood or 
home, yea, consistently, out of all mankind, nothing 
really good can come, has given rise to all those 
systems which make the God-man either a mere 
man or a doketie phantom." (Lange.) — And he 
could there do no mighty work. The miracles of 
Christ are not of a magical character, but presup- 
pose on the part of their recipients faith, or at least 
a certain susceptibility, a sincerity of purpose which 
will save a man from hardened unbelief. — And he 
marveled because of their unbelief. With great 
propriety attention has been called to the marvel of 
Christ at the unbelief of his countrymen, that had 
beheld his Divine life so long to no purpose, and at 
the faith of the heathen centurion at Capernaum. 
The expression of astonishment or marvel and 
other emotions, which the Evangelists ascribe to 



our Savior, shows us the reality of our Lord's hu- 
manity. 

Verses 7-13. We have remarked in chapter iii, 
13-19, that the Evangelist distinguishes between the 
setting apart of the twelve and their first mission in 
the same way as Luke does, while Matthew compre- 
hends the two events in one. This mission of the 
apostles did not include their later and full calling 
as apostles, but was only transient and preparatory, 
to spread the tidings that the Messiah had come, 
and to this Mark confines himself in giving their in- 
struction, while Matthew records what our Lord, at 
the same time, had spoken prophetically of their 
subsequent and general mission. — By two and two, 
that they might counsel and assist each other, in 
keeping with the principle laid down in Ecclesiastes 
iv, 9. This trait is peculiar to Mark. ■ — And gave 
them power over unclean spirits. Here, as else- 
where, Mark places the casting out of demons at the 
head of the miraculous cures. — Save a staff only. 
According to Matthew and Luke, the apostles were 
forbidden to take even a staff along ; according to 
Mark, this privilege was granted them. The same 
idea, namely, that they should, not burden them- 
selves with things unnec2ssary, is contained in the 
two statements, which are but in appearance contra- 
dictory. The staff is the extreme limit of what they 
are allowed to carry with themselves. They may 
take their staff along, if they have it at hand, but 
must not first anxiously seek it as if they could not 
go without it. The same is the case with the 
sandals allowed them according to Mark, and the 
shoes forbidden them according to Matthew. The 
fundamental idea is, they should set out on their 
journey with the least possible preparation, fully 
trusting in Providence, which would amply furnish 
them with means to satisfy all their necessary wants. 
— For a testimony against them; that is, as a 
symbolical act, well understood by the Jews, signify- 
ing that they were excommunicated, and like pub- 
licans and heathen. — And they went out and 
preached, that men should repent. The final 
conjunction "iva — -in order that — has here its primary 
meaning. They preached not so much along with 
other doctrines the necessity of repentance, as they 
made repentance, its nature and necessity, the main, 
if not the sole object, of their preaching. The 
Baptist, the Lord himself, and the disciples on their 
missionary tour, insist upon repentance, a change 
of heart, as the indispensable condition of entering 
into the Messianic kingdom, which they proclaim as 
near at hand. To the penitent alone promises of 
blessedness are given. The doctrine of repentance 
is an essential part of evangelical preaching now as it 
was then, and will be so to the end of time. The first 
aim of the preacher of the Gospel must be to con- 
vince men of their guilt and danger; before this end 
is reached, the promise of pardon and blessedness is 
entirely out of place. — And anointed with oil 
many that were sick. As physicians in the Ori- 



700 



MARK VII, 1— VIII, 9. 



ent were in the habit of using oil on account of its 
medicinal qualities, the apostles made use of it also 
in their miraculous cures, not, however, as if these 
were effected by the oil, but the oil was merely an 
outward sign, just as the imposition of his hands 
upon the sick by Christ was. For as the sick were 
restored to health all at once, and not gradually, it 
was self-evident that the cure was not the effect of 
the oil. The anointing with oil, on the other hand, 
which St. James recommends to the elders of the 
Church, (v, 14,) seems to have been the use of a 
natural remedy connected with the efficacious power 
of prayer. The practice recommended by James has 
nothing in common with, but is diametrically op- 
posed to, the idea of the extreme unction as practiced 
by the Roman Catholic Church. Quite to the point 
is the remark of Lange : "The extreme unction 
of the Roman Catholic Church is an involuntary 
acknowledgment on the part of that Church, that 
she has failed to impart to the dying member the 
Holy Ghost, the imparting of which, they say, ex- 
treme unction typifies." 

Verses 14-29. On this section Lange makes the 
following interesting general remarks : " 1. The 
workings of a spiritual, moral power, such as the 
mission of the apostles, have always been suspected 
and dreaded by despots, who are for the most part 
superstitious and cowardly. 2. Herod was a fore- 
runner and companion of Pilate in this, that he 
recognized the innocence and dignity of John with- 
out having the moral courage to release him. 3. 
The judgment passed by the attendants of Herod 
bear a remarkably strong resemblance to the judg- 
ment passed in our days by the would-be higher 
classes on the Christian religion. 4. Herodias, the 
intriguing prostitute at the court, the woman in the 
demon-like greatness of malice — a world-historical 
character; so likewise the dancer. 5. The satanic 



power of evil manifests itself here in a fearful con- 
trast — the head of the greatest preacher of repent- 
ance is given by a Jewish prince to a Jewess, as a 
reward for dancing at a Jewish court in the Greek 
fashion." — We add: In Herod we see an illustra- 
tion both of the power and of the impotence of con- 
science. I. Of its power. 1. It reminds man faith- 
fully of his evil deeds; 2. Condemns them; 3. Tor- 
tures the sinner with evil forebodings of every kind. 
II. Of its impotence. It is unable, 1. To undo what 
is done ; 2. To enable man to conquer what he has 
recognized as evil ; 3. To guard him against new, 
still more heinous offenses. 

Verses 40-44. As the news of John's imprison- 
ment induced Jesus to retire from Judea into Gali- 
lee, and to continue his public ministry there, (chap, 
i, 14,) so he retired on receiving the news of his 
death from Galilee into a desert place. The time of 
the miraculous feeding appears most plainly from 
John's account. It is the time shortly before the 
Passover, with which agrees the green grass of Mark, 
(v. 39,) the verdant Spring. See more in the notes 
on Matthew xiv, 14-21. 

Verses 45-56. On this section Lange has the 
following homiletic sketch: " The miraculous walk-' 
ing of Christ upon the sea according to its holy 
motives. I. Jesus retires alone to the mountain, 
owing to the revolutionary pressure of the people: 
1. As the only Free One supreme; 2. As the omnis- 
cient and omnipotent Lord of Nature. II. He con- 
strains his disciples to commit themselves to the sea : 
1. In order to separate them from the people ; 2. 
In order to make them feel how much they stood 
in need of his presence; 3. In order to convince 
them that though bodily absent from them, yet he 
succors them in every time of need. The phantoms 
and specters of vain fear vanish before the personal 
appearance of Christ. 



SECTION IX. 

SCRIBES AND PHARISEES FROM JERUSALEM ATTACK CHRIST FOR DISREGARDING THE TRA- 
DITIONS OF THE ELDERS. HE REBUKES THEM, MAKES A JOURNEY THROUGH 
THE BORDER COUNTRIES OF PHENICIA, AND RETURNS TO 
THE COASTS OF DECAPOLIS. 



CHAPTBE VII, 1, TO CHAPTER VIII, 9. 

1. THE DISPUTE OF CHRIST WITH SCRIBES AND PHARISEES PROM JERUSALEM. 

"Verses 1—33. (Compare Matthew xv, 1-20.) 

(1) Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, 
which came from Jerusalem. (2) And when they saw some of his disciples eat 
bread with defiled, that is to say, with unwashen hands, they found fault. (3) For 



MARK VII, 1— VIII, 9. 



701 



the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, 1 eat not, holding 
the tradition of the elders. (4) And when they come from the market, except they 
wash, they eat not. And many other things there he, which they have received 
to hold, as the washing 2 of cups, and pots, brazen vessels, and of tables. (5) Then 
the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the 
tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands ? (6) He answered and 
said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, 
This people honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. (7) How- 
beit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. 
(8) For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as 
the washing of pots and cups : and many other such like things ye do. (9) And 
he said unto them, Pull well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep 
your own tradition. (10) For Moses said, Honor thy father and thy mother ; and, 
Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death : (11) But ye say, If a man 
shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever 
thou mightest be profited by me ; he shall be free. (12) And ye suffer him no more 
to do aught for his father or his mother; (13) making the word of God of none effect 
through your tradition, which ye have delivered : and many such like things do ye. 
(14) And when he had called all the people unto him, he said unto them, Hearken 
unto me every one of you, and understand : (15) There is nothing from without a 
man, that entering into him can defile him : but the things which come out of him, 
those are they that defile the mail. (16) If any man have ears to hear, let him 
hear. (17) And when he was entered into the house from the people, his disciples 
asked him concerning the parable. (18) And he saith unto them, Are ye so with- 
out understanding also ? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without 
entereth into the man, it can not defile him ; (19) because it entereth not into his 
heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats? 

(20) And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. 

(21) For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, 
fornications, murders, (22) thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, 
an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness : (23) All these evil things come from 
within, and defile the man. 

2. THE SYROPHENICIAN WOMAN. 

Verses 24-30. (Compare Matthew xt, 21-29.) 

(24) And from thence he arose, and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon, 3 
and entered into a house, and would have no man know it: but he could not be 
hid. (25) For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, 
heard of him, and came and fell at his feet : (26) The woman was a Greek, a Syro- 



1 The Greek word Trvy^ij, translated oft, has been ren- 
dered variously. Alford translates it diligently; but 
there is no reason to give up its literal rendering, with 
fiat. Tradition may have prescribed that one hand 
ought to be washed with the other clinched, for some 



foolish or superstitious reasons, which we find so often 
lying at the bottom of traditionary precepts. 2 The 
original, here rendered wanning, is fSa.mLaij.ol, which, ac- 
cording to the Baptist interpretation, means only im- 
mersion. 3 And Sidon is wanting in D, L, A, and other 



70~2 



MARK VII, 1— VIII, 9. 



phenician by nation ; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out 
of her daughter. (27) But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled : for 
it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the dogs. (28) And 
she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord : yet the dogs under the table eat of 
the children's crumbs. (29) And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way ; 
the devil is gone out of thy daughter. (30) And when she was come to her house, 
she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed. 

3. THE HEALING OF THE DEAF MUTE. 
Verses 31— 37. 

(31) And again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came unto 
the Sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis. (32) And they 
bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech ; and they 
beseech him to put his hand upon him. (33) And he took him aside from the 
multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue ; 
(34) and looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, 
Be opened. (35) And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his 
tongue was loosed, and he spake plain. (36) And he charged them that they 
should tell no man : but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal 
they published it ; (37) and were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done 
all things well : he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak. 

4. THE MIRACULOUS FEEDING OF FOUR THOUSAND PERSONS. 
Chapter "VIII, 1—9. (Compare Matthew XV, 32-39.) 

(1) In those days the multitude being very great, i and having nothing to eat, 
Jesus 5 called his disciples unto him, and saith unto them, (2) I have compassion on 
the multitude, because they have now been with me three days, and have nothing 
to eat : (3) And if I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint 
by the way : for divers of them came from far. (4) And his disciples answered 
him, From whence can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness? 
(5) And he asked them, How many loaves have ye ? And they said, Seven. (6) 
And he commanded the people to sit down on the ground : and he took the seven 
loaves, and gave thanks, and brake, and gave to his disciples to set before them ; 
and they did set them before the people. (7) And they had a few small fishes : 
and he blessed, and commanded to set them also before them. (8) So they did eat, 
and were filled : and they took up of the broken meat that was left seven baskets. 
(9) And they that had eaten were about four thousand : and he sent them away. 



Verses 31-37. And again, departing from the 
coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came unto the Sea 
of Galilee. Meyer, Lange, and Alford, according 
to the reading adopted by Tischendorf, translate, 



" Departing from the coasts of Tyre, he came through 
Sidon to the Sea of Galilee." If this is the correct 
reading, " he went northward from Tyre, and, pass- 
ing through Sidon, probably proceeded along the 



manuscripts. Tischendorf has omitted it. 4 Chap, viii, I and other Codices read, Being great again. 
verse 1; instead of being very great, B, D, G, S, M, A, | probably inserted as an explanation. 



6 Jesus is 



MARK VII, 1— VIII, 9. 



703 



Phenician border line to the Jordan, near Dan, 
(Laish,) and journeying along its eastern bank came 
to tbe region of Decapolis, south-east of the lake." 
(Andrews.) — And they bring unto him one that 

WAS DEAF, AND HAD AN IMPEDIMENT IN HIS SPEECH. 

It was the case of a man, whose malady is clearly 
distinguished from possession, such as we find in 
Matthew ix, 32; Luke xi, 14. — And they beseech 
him to pot his hand upon him. " It is not, how- 
ever, exactly in this way that he is willing to heal 
him. There is no doubt a deep meaning in all the 
variations which mark the different healings of dif- 
ferent sick and afflicted, Divine Wisdom ordering 
all the circumstances of each particular cure. Were 
we acquainted as accurately as he who knew what 
was in man, with the spiritual condition of each who 
was brought within the circle of his grace, we should 
then perfectly understand why one was healed in the 
crowd, another led out of the city ere the work of 
restoration was commenced ; why for one a word 
effected a cure, for another a touch, while a third 
was sent to wash in the pool of Siloam ere he came 
seeing ; why for these the process of restoration was 
instantaneous, while again another saw at first ' men 
as trees walking.' At all events, we are not for an 
instant to suppose in these gradually-accomplished 
cures any restraint on the power of the Lord, save 
such as was willingly imposed by himself — and this, 
doubtless, in each case having reference to, and be- 
ing explicable by, the moral and spiritual state of 
the person who was passing under his hands ; though 
our ignorance of this prevents us from at once see- 
ing the manifold wisdom which ordered each of his 
proceedings, and how it was conducted so as best to 
make the bodily healing a passage to the spiritual, 
which the Lord had ever in his eye." — And he took 
him aside from the multitude. " His purpose in 
this was, that apart from the din, and tumult, and 
interruptions of the crowd, in solitude and silence, 
the man might be more recipient of deep and last- 
ing impressions ; even as the same Lord does now 
oftentimes lead a soul apart when he would speak 
with it, or heal it; sets it in the solitude of a sick 
chamber, or takes away from it earthly companions 
and friends. The putting his finger into the ears 
of the man, the spitting and touching the man's 
tongue therewith, are easily recognized as symbolic 
actions. Nor is it hard to perceive why he should 
specially have used these in the case of one afflicted 
as this man was — -almost all other avenues of com- 
munication, save by sight and feeling, were of neces- 
sity precluded. Christ by these signs would awaken 
his faith, and stir up in him the lively expectation of 
a blessing. The fingers are put into the ears as to 
bore them, to pierce through the obstacles which 
hindered sounds from reaching them. This was the 
fountain evil; he did not speak plainly because he 
did not hear; this defect, therefore, is mentioned as 
being first removed. Then, as it is often through 
excessive drought that the tongue cleaves to the roof 



of the mouth, so the Lord gives here, in the second 
thing which he does, the sign of the removal of this 
evil, of the unloosing of the tongue. And, at the 
same time, all the healing virtue he shows to reside 
in his own body ; he looks not for it from any other 
quarter; he takes nothing from any one else; but 
with the moisture of his own mouth upon his finger 
touched the tongue which he would set free from the 
bands which held it fast. It is not made use of for 
its medicinal virtue, but as the suitable symbol of 
a power residing in and going forth from his body." 
(Trench.) — And looking up to heaven, he sighed. 
The looking up to heaven we are to regard as in- 
tended to indicate that he did no other things save 
those which he saw the Father do. (John xi, 41, 42.) 
Lange thinks that our Lord by this act wished to 
impress on the people of this half-heathenish coun- 
try — who were so much inclined to a belief in demi- 
gods and magicians- — that he acted in concert and 
was dependent upon the only true and living God. 
" It is very significant," he says, " how carefully 
Jesus used his miraculous powers in districts that 
were more or less infected with heathenish elements, 
as in this instance and in the case of the Syrophe- 
nician woman, and that of the blind man of Beth- 
saida." His sighing Stier expounds thus: "The 
holy sigh was an utterance characteristic of his 
office as high-priest — an expression of his sympathy 
with this and every malady of sinful humanity, 
bodily and spiritual, all in one. In contrast to those 
fools who fancy they have discovered in the narra- 
tives of healings peculiar to St. Mark, something 
which will enable them to account for miracles on 
rationalistic principles, the simple wisdom of Luther 
may teach us what the exposition of a spirit of faith 
brings up at the right place. 'It was not drawn 
from him on account of the single tongue and ears 
of this poor man; but it is a common sigh over all 
tongues and ears, yea, ■ over all hearts, bodies, and 
souls, and over all men, from Adam to his last de- 
scendants. This Gospel thus paints Christ that he 
who was man took such an interest in thee and in 
me, and in all of us, as we ought to take in our- 
selves.' Luther, who on other occasions is hostile to 
all playing with allegory, also points out admirably 
that this sympathetic sigh breaks out especially over 
the deaf and dumb, at least, why it is on such an 
occasion that the Holy Ghost has recorded it. We 
hold, likewise, that there is good reason for suppos- 
ing that it was exactly under this bodily emblem 
that there came up before the thoughts of the heart 
of the Savior of men, on the one hand, compassion 
for spiritual blindness, from which proceeds also, as 
in the case before us, the incapacity of the tongue to 
speak and to praise God, and, on the other hand, 
the lamentable evils of tongue-sins all over the 
world. Luther renders prominent this latter point. 
' Our beloved Lord saw well what an amount of suf- 
ferings and sorr*ws would be occasioned by tongues 
and ears. For the greatest mischief which has been 



704 



MARK VIII, 10— IX, 29. 



inflicted on Christianity has not arisen from tyrants, 
but from that little piece of flesh between the jaws: 
it is it that inflicts the greatest injury upon the king- 
dom of God.' We really believe that these and 
similar thoughts made up the hidden substance of 
this Ephphatha uttered in a sigh," — And he charged 

THEM, THAT THEY SHOULD TELL NO MAN. "Among 



the ' them ' is undoubtedly comprehended the man 
who was healed. Thus the gift of speech was 
scarcely given him, when silence was enjoined upon 
him, in order that he, or at least we, might learn 
that right hearing consists in obeying ; the right use 
of the unbound tongue consists in its willing bond- 
age with a view to obedience." (Stier.) 



SECTION X 



JESUS WITHDRAWS INTO THE MOUNTAINOUS REGION NORTH-EAST OF THE LAKE. 
PREPARATION FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH. 



THE 



CHAPTEE VIII, 10, TO OHAPTBE IX, 29. 

1. THE LEAVEN OP THE PHARISEES AND THAT OF HEROD. 
"Verses lO— 31. (Compare Matthew xvi, 1-12.) 

(10) And straightway he entered into a ship with his disciples, and came into 
the parts of Dalmanutha. 1 (11) And the Pharisees came forth, and began to 
question with him, seeking of him a sign from heaven, tempting him. (12) And 
he sighed deeply in his spirit, and saith, "Why doth this generation seek after a 
sign? verily I say unto you, There shall no sign be given unto this generation. 

(13) And he left them, and entering into the ship again departed to the other side. 

(14) Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread, neither had they in the ship 
with them more than one loaf. (15) And he charged them, saying, Take heed, 
beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod. (16) And 
they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have no bread. (17) And 
when Jesus knew it, he saith unto them, Why reason ye, because ye have no bread ? 
perceive ye not yet, neither understand? have ye your heart yet hardened? (18) 
Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember? 
(19) When I brake the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets full of 
fragments took ye up? They say unto him, Twelve. (20) And when the seven 
among four thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? And they 
said, Seven. (21) And he said unto them, How is it that ye do not understand ? 

3. THE BLIND MAN IN BETHSAIDA. 
"Verses S3— 36. 

(22) And he cometh 2 to Bethsaida; 3 and they bring a blind man unto him, and 
besought him to touch him. (23) And he took the blind man by the hand, and 
led him out of the town ; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands 
upon him, he asked him if he saw aught. (24) And he looked up, and said, I see 
men as trees, walking. 4 (25) After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and 

1 See foot-note to Matt, xv, 39. 2 According to a j come. 3 See Matt, xiv, 22. * According to a reading 
reading adopted by Laehman and Tischendorf, They ' adopted by all modern critics, " I see men, for as trees 



MARK VIII, 10— IX, 29. 



705 



made him look up; and he was restored, and saw every man clearly. (26) And he 
sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in 
the town. 5 

3. OPINIONS OF THE PEOPLE CONCERNING CHRIST, AND THE CONFESSION OF 

PETER. THE LORD PREDICTS HIS OWN PASSION, REBUKES PETER FOR 

HIS PRESUMPTION, AND TELLS HIS DISCIPLES WHAT HE 

REQUIRES OF HIS FOLLOWERS. 

Chapter VIII, 27 — IX, l. (Compare Matthew xvi, 13-28; Luke ix, 18-27.) 

(27) And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of Cesarea Philippi : 
and hy the way he asked his disciples, saying unto them, Whom do men say that I 
am? (28) And they answered, John the Baptist : but some say, Elias; and others, 
One of the prophets. (29) And he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am ? 
And Peter answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the Christ. (30) And he 
charged them that they should tell no man of him. (81) And he began to teach 
them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, 
and of the chief-priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 
(32) And he spake that saying openly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke 
him. (33) But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked 
Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan : for thou savorest not the things that 
be of God, but the things that be of men. (34) And when he had called the people 
unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, 
let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. (35) For whosoever 
will save his life shall lose it ; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the 
Gospel's, the same shall save it. (36) For what shall it profit a man, if he shall 
gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (37) Or what shall a man give 
in exchange for his soul ? (38) Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and 
of my words, in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him also shall the Son of 
man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. 
Chapter IX. (1) And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be 
some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the 
kingdom of God come with power. 

4. OUR LORD'S TRANSFIGURATION ON THE MOUNT. 

"Verses 3—13. (Compare Matthew xvii, 1-13; Luke ix, 28-36.) 

(2) And after six days Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John, and 
leadeth them up into a high mountain apart by themselves : and he was trans- 
figured before them. (3) And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as 
snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them. (4) And there appeared unto 
them Elias with Moses: and they were talking with Jesus. (5) And Peter an^ 
swered and said to Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be here : and let us make 
three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. (6) For he 

I see them 'walking. " 5 The words in the town are want- | ing in several Codices. Tischendorf omits the whole 

45 



706 



MARK VIII, 10— IX, 29. 



wist not what to say ; for they were sore afraid. (7) And there was a cloud that 
overshadowed them : and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved 
Son : hear him. (8) And suddenly, when they had looked round about, they saw 
no man any more, save Jesus only with themselves. (9) And as they came down 
from the mountain, he charged them that they should tell no man what things 
they had seen, till the Son of man were risen from the dead. (10) And they kept 
that saying with themselves, questioning one with another what the rising from 
the dead should mean. (11) And they asked him, saying, Why say the scribes 
that Elias must first come? (12) And he answered and told them, Elias verily 
cometh first, and restoreth all things ; and how it is written of the Son of man, 
that he must suffer many things, and be set at naught. (13) But I say unto you, 
That Elias is indeed come, and they have done unto him whatsoever they listed, 
as it is written of him. 

5. THE DEMONIAC BOY AT THE FOOT OP THE MOUNT OP TRANSFIGURATION. 
Verses 14t— 29. (Compare Matthew xvii, 14-21; Luke ix, 37-43.) 

(14) And when he came to his disciples, he saw a great multitude about them, 
and the scribes questioning with them. (15) And straightway all the people, when 
they beheld him, were greatly amazed, and running to him saluted him. (16) And 
he asked the scribes, "What question ye with them ? (17) And one of the multi- 
tude answered and said, Master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath a 
dumb spirit ; (18) and wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him ; and he foam- 
eth, and gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth away : and I spake to thy disciples 
that they should cast him out ; and they could not. (19) He answereth him, and 
saith, faithless generation, how long shall I be with you ? how long shall I suffer 
you ? bring him unto me. (20) And they brought him unto him : and when he 
saw him, straightway the spirit tare him ; and he fell on the ground, and wallowed 
foaming. (21) And he asked his father, How long is it ago since this came unto 
him? And he said, Of a child. (22) And ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire, and 
into the waters, to destroy him : but if thou canst do any thing, have compassion 
on us, and help us. (23) Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, 6 all things are 
possible to him that believeth. (24) And straightway the father of the child cried 
out, and said with tears, 7 Lord, I believe ; help thou mine unbelief. (25) When 
Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying 
unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no 



sentence, " Nor tell it to any in the town." 6 In the 
original, to el 6vrjj 7r«rTe0o-ai. The definite article in the 
neuter gender, to, {the,) prefixed to the words, " If thou 
canst," is difficult to translate, and is, therefore, omitted 
in most translations. Its genuineness is not doubted. 
It has been explained in various ways. Alford renders 
it the saying ; namely, " Jesus said to him the saying, If 
thou canst believe," etc. Others translate, " This if thou 
canst believe [and supply the words] is the point at 
issue. " Others again consider it a quotation referring to 
the father's "if thou canst," and render, "As to the if 



thou canst, [taking mo-revo-ai as an imperative,] believe;" 
but the grammatical usage does not justify this con- 
struction. As the word believe is omitted in several 
manuscripts, and in the Arabic and Coptic versions, oth- 
ers translate, " As to the if thou canst, [and supply the 
words,] know, All things are," etc. The simplest solu- 
tion of the difficulty is perhaps to accept the common 
reading, and take it as a question : " Canst thou be- 
lieve ?" Inasmuch as to is sometimes used before indi- 
rect questions, so it may here have been placed before a 
direct question. ' With tears is wanting in A, B, C, L, D. 



MARK VIII, 10— IX, 29. 



707 



more into him. (26) And the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him : 
and he was as one dead; insomuch that many said, He is dead. (27) But Jesus 
took him by the hand, and lifted him up ; and he arose. (28) And when he was 
come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, Why could not we cast him 
out ? (29) And he said unto them, This kind can come forth by nothing, but by 
prayer and fasting. 



Verses 10-21. Seeking of him a sign from 
heaven. To what has been said on this point in 
the parallel passage of Matthew, we add the follow- 
ing remarks of Lange : " 1. In seeking a sign from 
heaven, they sought the decisive and fully-accredit- 
ing sign from heaven. 2. If Jesus had complied 
with this their request, the logical consequence would 
have been that he was to assume the Messianic posi- 
tion they desired. For which reason it is added, 
'Tempting him.' This demand of a sign from 
heaven was like the first and third temptations in 
the wilderness. A refusal to comply with it could 
but secure his death. 3. The demand was, therefore, 
not absolutely hostile, since the parties concerned 
were willing to receive Christ, if he would consent 
to act according to their notions and desires. 4 The 
sign from heaven, which Christ denied to them, bore, 
therefore, an intimate relation to the sign of Jonas. 
The denial of the one was the announcement of the 
other. 5. What the Lord denied to the Pharisees 
he soon afterward prepared for his select disciples 
on the mount — the heavenly sign, of his. transfigura- 
tion." — And he sighed deeply in his spirit. This 
expression of deep sorrow is peculiar to Mark, as 
well as most of the notices of the Savior's looks and 
gestures. (Comp. chap, vii, 31; hi, 5.) The word 
spirit is used here, not in contradistinction to soul, 
but in the sense of heart, the seat of the emotions 
and passions. He sighed deeply, not only on ac- 
count of the hardened unbelief of these men, but 
also from the full knowledge that the decisive mo- 
ment of his rejection by the Jewish nation was at 
hand. At the same time the sighing may indicate 
his abstaining from the exercise of his judicial 
power, and the firm resolution to submit to suffering 
and death 

Verses 22-26. And they bring a blind man unto 
him. From his saying, when his eyes were first 
opened, "I see men as trees, walking," we must infer 
that he had not been blind from his birth, but lost 
his sight afterward. " We have here a second nar- 
rative of healing by St. Mark, containing a descrip- 
tion of a particularly-circumstantial procedure on 
the part of the Lord; not certainly as if something 
like it had happened on other occasions, though not 
recorded by the Evangelists, but because the inci- 
dents were peculiar to this case. We see how each 
Evangelist brings forward his peculiar gifts, supple- 
menting and completing the scenes described by the 
others. Our Lord treats this man with a condescen- 



sion similar to what he had shown to the deaf man 
on a former occasion, entering into his necessities 
and circumstances, of which, however, we know 
nothing more than what is here recorded. He also 
acts in the exercise of his wisdom differently from 
what he had been asked to do, and what would have 
been more convenient for himself; he not only 
touches his eyes, as he had done on another occa- 
sion, (Matt, ix, 29,) but kindly takes pains to lead 
him away out of the crowd." (Stier.) Various rea- 
sons for this have been assigned, but they are all 
conjectural. So much only seems clear, that the 
leading him aside was intimately connected with the 
slow, gradual process of healing, which the Savior 
judged best for him. Chrysostom and others find a 
reason for this in the imperfect faith of the blind 
man, which they infer from the circumstance that 
this man did not, like others, cry to Jesus for the 
opening of his eyes, but was brought to him by others, 
himself, perhaps, scarcely expecting a benefit. The 
gracious Lord, then, who would not reject him, but 
who could not cure him so long as there was on his 
part a lack of earnest desire and of faith, gave a 
glimpse of the blessing, that he might kindle in him 
a longing and hope for the fullness of it and show 
him that he was an opener of blind eyes. Whatever 
the peculiar condition of that blind man may have 
been, the manner in which the Lord healed him is 
an apt symbol of the long-suffering wisdom and 
gracious condescension with which the Savior must 
deal with by far the greater part of those who are spir- 
itually blind. — And he sent him away to his house, 
which was not in the town, as appears from the 
appended prohibition. — Neither go into the town, 
nor tell it to any in town. There is no inconsist- 
ency in this twofold injunction. The man is told to 
go directly home, without going into the town, or 
telling it to any of the town people whom he might 
meet out of town. The reason of this prohibition is 
not important for us to know, else it would have 
been indicated to us. 

Verse 27 to Chapter IX, 1. Peter's confession 
is related by the Synoptists with but slight varia- 
tions. Luke remarks that it was made while the 
Lord was alone with his disciples, and prayed. He, 
as well as Mark, omits to mention the blessing pro- 
nounced on Peter. It is of great significance, that 
the Gospel that was written under Peter's superin- 
tendence does not even mention the distinction con- 
ferred upon him in the apostolic college; conse- 



708 



MARK VIII, 10— IX, 29. 



quently fully ignores his pretended primacy. It is 
also worthy of note, how intimately connected the 
confession of Christ is, according to Mark, with the 
prediction of his sufferings and with the solemn 
declaration of Christ, that all that desire to follow 
him must follow him in suffering, and bearing the 
cross. — The full exposition of this whole section 
has already been given in Matthew. On verses 36 
and 37, we will only add a word from Stier: "If, in 
a general fire raging around thee, thou wert to save 
and preserve thy great and well-filled palace, and 
yet be destroyed thyself by the fire, what wouldst 
thou have gained in comparison with him who, while 
his goods were burned, has yet escaped with his 
life ? Therefore, also, conversely, What shall it 
damage a man though he should give up the whole 
world— which will at one time pass away and be 
consumed— if only his soul be saved? The true, 
eternal salvation of one human soul is of infinitely 
more value than the whole world ; thus must we set 
profit and loss against each other ; and he who has 
not so reckoned will, in the end, find to his eternal 
loss how terribly he has miscalculated ! Then will 
the bankrupt be forced to cry out, What shall a 
man give in exchange, or for an equivalents To 
which the Psalmist has long ago answered, It must 
cease forever. (Ps. xlix, 8.) God alone has found 
the ransom for man's soul. (Matt, xx, 28.) He 
who despises this, who makes its power and suffi- 
ciency of none effect for himself, has lost all for- 
ever; but his personality remains to all eternity to 
rue his loss." 

Chapter IX, verses 2-13. To what we have 
said on the transfiguration in our introductory re- 
marks to section 38 in Matthew, we add the follow- 
ing remarks of Van Oosterzee : " If philosophy is 
disposed to question the ability of mortals to 
discern disembodied spirits, we simply answer, that 
it is altogether unqualified to pronounce judgment 
upon an order of things, which it does not know 
either intuitively or by logical inferences. — The 
christological importance of this event for all com- 
ing times is self-evident. A new light is shed from 
heaven on the person of the Redeemer, both as to 
the reality of his humanity, which needs new strength 
from on high, and as to his Divine-human glory 
which is made known to inhabitants of earth and 
heaven. There is also- a symbolical truth in this, 
that the appearance of the prophets is represented 
as transient, while Christ's stay with his disciples is 
permanent. Their brightness disappears like that 
of stars ; his sun shines perpetually. Not less light 
is shed here on the work of the Lord. The internal 
oneness of the old and new covenant plainly ap- 
pears from this event, and it becomes manifest, that 
in Christ the highest expectations of the law and of 
the prophets are fulfilled. His death, far from be- 
ing something accidental, appears here as the carry- 
ing out of the eternal purposes of God, and is of such 
importance, that embassadors come from heaven in 



order to discuss it on earth. The weight of suffer- 
ing he is to undergo in making propitiation for the 
sin of the world we may also infer from this, that he 
is strengthened in an extraordinary way for this 
struggle. And the grand object of his suffering, the 
reconciliation of heaven and earth, (Col. i, 20,) how 
vividly is it here presented to our view, when we 
see on that Mount, although but for a few moments, 
heaven come down to earth and inhabitants of the 
earth in intercourse with heavenly visitors ! More- 
over, the Mount of Transfiguration gives us a glimpse 
of disembodied spirits in glory. We see here, that 
the spirits of the saints, although they had died many 
centuries ago, live unto God, and we find them act- 
ively engaged in the affairs of the kingdom of God 
on earth. Although Moses and Elias had been far 
removed from each other by time and space in their 
earthly lives, yet they met and recognized each 
other in the higher regions of the world of spirits. 
The center of their communion is the suffering and 
glorified Jesus, and their state is so full of bliss, that 
even their transient apparition sends forth the light 
of heavenly joy into the hearts of the inhabitants of 
this sublunary world. The Canaan, which Moses 
could not enter in his lifetime, is now thrown open 
to him many centuries after his death. Thus they 
appear before us as types of what the sainted dead 
are now already, and as prophets of what the re- 
deemed shall be in a still higher degree at the coming 
of the Lord. In the last place, we have presented 
to our view the intimate connection between the 
suffering and the glory not only of the Lord, but 
also of his disciples. Tabor is the consecration for 
Golgotha. There are still in the Christian's life 
hours like those spent by Peter and his fellow-dis- 
ciples." ■ — The destructive criticism of Strauss and 
others, taking every thing supernatural for a non- 
entity, arrives at the conclusion, that two strangers 
appeared unto Jesus, out of whom the symbolizing 
spirit of the Evangelists afterward made Moses and 
Elias! There is no need of repeating the proofs of 
the historical character of this event. Apart from 
every other consideration, the Gospel account of 
the transfiguration can not be fictitious for psycho- 
logical reasons, since such a fiction by the Evangel- 
ists would demonstrate simple and unlettered fisher- 
men to have been poetical geniuses of the highest 
order. This would be a change of their individ- 
uality, far more mysterious and incomprehensible 
than the change which, according to their report, 
took place in their Master ! " Whoever ascribes 
this wonderful event to the subjectivity of the apos- 
tles," says Van Oosterzee, " will find it impossible to 
explain how the simple and earthly-minded disciples, 
by their own exertion, could have elevated them- 
selves into an ecstasy, that made them believe 
that they saw the heavens opened over the head of 
the Messiah. On the contrary, the records of the 
three Evangelists show conclusively that the three 
disciples perceived with their senses, their eyes, and 



MARK VIII, 10— IX, 29. 



709 



ears, an objective phenomenon in full self-conscious- 
ness. For, although Peter did not know what he 
should say, yet he knew perfectly well what he saw ; 
if he and his companions had been led astray by 
their overwrought imagination, and had expressed 
themselves accordingly to the nine other disciples, 
the Lord would certainly not have failed to set them 
right on the subject. At the same time, it is readily 
admitted that they were entranced by what they saw 
with their outward eyes, and were thus enabled to 
hear the heavenly voice. For he that finds, like 
Peter, not only nothing frightful in the intercourse 
with inhabitants of the spirit-world, but rather 
wishes that it may be of longer duration, thereby 
shows that he is raised beyond himself." — And his 
raiment became shining. " Mark confines his 
formal description to the garments, without ex- 
pressly mentioning the change in his countenance 
spoken of by Matthew and Luke, which, however, is 
included in the general idea of effulgence over- 
spreading and surrounding the whole person. It is 
very remarkable, indeed, that these descriptions 
should be all so strong, so various, yet so harmo- 
nious, as if each of the eye-witnesses had furnished 
an account of his own impressions of the same 
glorious object at the same eventful moment. Shin- 
ing is a term in the original, applied by Homer to 
the glistening of polished surfaces and to the glitter- 
ing of arms, by Aristotle to the twinkling of the 
stars, and by Euripides to the flashing of lightning. 
The word translated white, means originally clear 
and bright, as applied by Homer to pure water. 
Here it no doubt expresses more than the mere neu- 
tral sense of whiteness ; namely, that of an effulgent 
white light without shade or spot, such a whiteness 
as no fuller can produce. The addition on earth 
may either be a strong expression, meaning in the 
whole world, or contain a more specific reference to 
the heavenly source from which alone such bright- 
ness could proceed." (Condensed from Alexander.) 
— "Why say the scribes that Elias must first 
come ? The appearing of Elias, which the disciples 
had just witnessed, reminded them of Malachi' s 
prophecy concerning the forerunner of the Messiah, 
which was to be Elias in his personal identity ac- 
cording to the interpretation of the scribes. But as 
Christ had entered upon his public ministry long be- 
fore this appearing of Elias, the disciples could not 
understand the connection of these two events. — 
Elias verily cometh first and restoreth all 
things. In these words the Lord confirms and ex- 
plains the prophecy of Malachi. By this restoring 
must be understood what the angel had announced 
to Zacharias concerning his son John : " He shall be 
great in the sight of the Lord, and many of the 
children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their 
God; and he shall go before him in the spirit and 
power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to 
the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of 
the just; to make ready a people prepared for the 



Lord." (Luke i, 15-17.) Elias was the reformer 
of the Old Testament Church, and was, therefore, 
the fittest type of John the Baptist. — And how is it 
written of the Son of man ? This sentence is not 
without its difficulties, and is differently construed. 
Meyer, Lange, and others put an interrogation point 
after " the Son of man," others at the end of the 
verse. The difference of meaning is but slight. To 
the question of the disciples how it was with Elijah's 
coming before the Messiah, the Lord returns first a 
direct answer ; namely, that such a forerunner, as 
Malachi had prophesied, must precede the Messiah, 
and then asks the counter-question : " And how is it 
written about the Son of man, that he must suffer 
many things and be set at naught?" To this fol- 
lows in verse 13 the partial answer: Elias is in- 
deed come, [before the Messiah,] and they have 
done unto him whatsoever they listed. The 
legitimate inference, which, however, is not ex- 
pressed, is : inasmuch as the prophecy concerning 
the forerunner has been fulfilled, the fulfillment of 
that concerning the Messiah's suffering and death is at 
hand. — As it is written of him. What the Scrip- 
ture says about the fate of Elijah, (1 Kings xviii, xix,) 
was a type of John's fate, although Elijah did not 
die a violent death. The rejection of the Baptist 
was also hinted at in the concluding words of 
Malachi, which imply that the mission of the fore- 
runner would prove " a curse " to some. 

Verses 14-29. Mark's statement of this mem- 
orable cure, which was performed, according to the 
three Synoptists, immediately after Christ's coming 
down from the Mount of Transfiguration, is by far 
the fullest. He gives us in his account a number 
of features peculiar to himself. Of great import- 
ance is, especially, the discussion between the Lord 
and the father of the sick boy, (vs. 21-25.) — And 

WHEN HE SAW HIM, STRAIGHTWAY THE SPIRIT TARE HIM. 

" The moment when the boy beholds Jesus, the evil 
spirit that possesses him raises a fearful paroxysm. 
But without any trace or tincture of that horror 
which, as it seems, had restrained the faith of the 
disciples, with a calmness which is at the same time 
a feeling of deep sympathy with the wretchedness 
before him, Christ looks on the tearing, rolling, and 
foaming, wisely delays the help in order that all who 
were agitated might be tranquilized and prepared 
for the salutary impression, and kindly asks the 
father how long it is since this happened to the 
poor boy. The father begins anew to describe the 
case in stronger terms than before, and as he before 
complained that the disciples could not help him, so 
now, in his anguish, he speaks very unbelievingly 
the bold word : ' Bid if thou canst do any thing, 
[more than the disciples in thy name,] have compas- 
sion on us, and help us !' This us, proceeding from 
paternal love, this cry for pity would, in ordinary 
cases, notwithstanding all the boldness of the if, 
have moved Christ immediately to say, Be whole. 
Now, however, his mind is so full of thoughts about 



710 



MARK IX, 30-50. 



faith and unbelief, that the bodily malady, bad as it 
is, falls into the background ; he delays still the help 
which will certainly come, and must first speak and 
testify of faith. The poor father's faith could and 
must, first of all, do the most, as the son appears 
almost passively incapable ; his unbelief, next to the 
power of the malady, had been to the disciples the 
obstacle that had put out their little spark of faith." 
(Stier.) — If thou canst believe. The difficulty in 
the Greek text has been noticed in foot-note 5. It 
does not affect the sense, which is plainly this : 
" That ' if of thine, that uncertainty whether this 
can be done or not, is to be solved by thee and not by 
me. Thou hast said, If I cam do any thing; but the 
question is, l If thou canst believe; this is the hinge 
upon which all must turn." (Trench.) — All things 

ARE POSSIBLE TO HIM THAT BELIEVETH. Thus the 

father's faith is here made the condition of the heal- 
ing of his child, as in the ease of the Syrophenician 
mother. On the vast, general import of these 
words, see the comment on Matthew xvii, 20. — 

AND STRAIGHTWAY THE FATHER OP THE CHILD CRIED 

out. The poor father is drawn out into a sense of 
the unworthiness of his distrust, and the little spark 
of faith which is kindled in his soul reveals to him 
the abysmal deeps of unbelief which are there. 
" We deeply pity any one," says Stier, " who does 
not feel constrained to acknowledge that such nar- 
ratives and sayings as Mark here gives, can not be 
rationally accounted for on any other ground but 
that they were facts in the living conflict of the Son 
of God with the children of men. Where do we 
read the like ? Where has the like been done ? 
Into whose mind could such things come if they did 
not actually take place?" — Lord, I believe, help 
thou mine unbelief. Only a thorough conviction 



of our unbelief gives birth to true, living faith. 
What a vast difference is there between a mere 
prayer for help and the firm conviction that our 
prayer will be answered! Our praying is in vain till 
we are convinced that we must pray for faith. The 
father knows by this time, that his boy is safe as 
soon as his own unbelief is cured. Hence he en- 
treats the Lord to assist his feeble faith. Through 
the aid of Christ the power of faith is born in the 
faintly-believing, struggling soul, and thus help 
comes within the believer's reach. Let every one, 
whose faith is weak, do as this father did, let him 
humble himself before God and he will receive 
strength to believe. — Thou dumb and deaf spirit; 
thus the demon was called from the effects which he 
produced. An old writer makes the following ap- 
plication: "Those who like neither to speak of God 
nor to hear others speak of him, are likewise pos- 
sessed of a deaf and dumb spirit, but Christ can cast 
out also the spirit of gloomy, melancholy taciturnity, 
and of rebellious, grumbling grief. He compels him 
to cry out aloud, and thus he is cast out." — I 
charge thee, come out of him. This sets Christ's 
power in open contrast with the weakness of the dis- 
ciples, who had failed in their attempt to cast out 
the demon; and in order to give the most perfect 
assurance to the father, and son, and all the hearers, 
he adds the command, which occurs only here, that 
it should depart, never again to enter into him. — 
He was as one dead. The evil spirit having vented 
his rage for the last time, left the boy in utter ex- 
haustion, so that it required, as it seems, another 
miraculous exertion on the part of Jesus to restore 
him to health and strength. This feature is also 
very significant and symbolical of that which often 
occurs in the ordinary conversion of men. 



SECTION XI. 

THE SECRET SOJOURN OF JESUS IN GALILEE, AND HIS RETURN FROM THE FEAST OF TAB- 
ERNACLES AT JERUSALEM. 

CHAPTEE IX, 30-50. 

1. CHRIST FORETELLS HIS DISCIPLES HIS DEATH FOR THE SECOND TIME. 

"Verses 30-32. (Compare Matthew xvii, 22, 23; Luke ix, 43-45.) 

(30) And they departed thence, 1 and passed 2 through Galilee; and he would not 
that any man should know it. (31) For he taught his disciples, and said unto 
them, The Son of man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; 
and after that he is killed, he shall rise the third day. (32) But they understood 
not that saying, and were afraid to ask him. 



1 That is, from the place where he had healed the [ 2 Lange translates, " They passed on by-ways," which 
possessed child, from the region of Cesarea Philippi. | is the exact meaning of irapanopevea-SaL. 



MARK IX, 30-50. 



711 



3. THE DISCIPLES' DISPUTE ABOUT PREEMINENCE. CHRIST REPROVES THE ZEAL 

OP JOHN, ENJOINS A SPIRIT OP TOLERATION, AND WARNS 

AGAINST OFFENDING HIS LITTLE ONES. 

"Verses 33— 50. (Compare Matthew xviii, 1-9; Luke ix, 46-50.) 

(33) And he came to Capernaum: and being in the house he asked them, What 
was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way ? (34) But they held their 
peace : for by the way they had disputed among themselves, who should be the 
greatest. (35) And he sat down, and called the twelve, and saith unto them, If 
any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all. (36) 
And he took a child, and set him in the midst of them : and when he had taken 
him in his arms, he said unto them, (37) Whosoever shall receive one of such chil- 
dren in my name, receiveth me; and whosoever shall receive me, receiveth not me, 
but him that sent me. (38) And John answered him, saying, Master, we saw one 
casting out devils in thy name, and he followeth not us ; and we forbade him, 
because he followeth not us. (39) But Jesus said, Forbid him not: for there is no 
man which shall do a miracle in 1 my name, that can lightly speak evil of me. (40) 
For he that is not against us 2 is on our part. (41) For whosoever shall give you a 
cup of water to drink in my 3 name, because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto 
you, he shall not lose his reward. (42) And whosoever shall offend one of these 
little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged 
about his neck, and he were cast into the sea. (43) And if thy hand offend thee, 
cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to 
go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched : (44) Where their worm 
dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. (45) And if thy foot offend thee, cut it ofl': 
it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, 
into the fire that never shall be quenched: (46) Where their worm dieth not, and 
the fire is not quenched. (47) And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out : it is bet- 
ter for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two 
eyes to be cast into hell fire : (48) Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not 
quenched. (49) For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall 
be salted with salt. (50) Salt is good : but if the salt have lost his saltness, where- 
with will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another. 



Verses 33-50. And he came to Capernaum. 
Lange places this sojourn of the Lord at Capernaum 
not immediately after the events in the preceding- 
section, but after the Lord's return from the Feast 
of Tabernacles at Jerusalem. He thinks that the 
dispute of the disciples concerning preeminence is 
much better accounted for by this supposition, inas- 
much as our Lord's authoritative procedure there, 
recorded by John, (chap, vii, 1-10, 21,) and the fa- 
vorable impression made upon many Jews, had most 



probably revived the hopes of the disciples that he 
would now forthwith proceed to establish his king- 
dom, and the Lord's sayings concerning his suffering 
and death were thus obliterated from their minds. 
The difference between the chronological position 
assigned to this section in our Synoptic Table 
(98—107) and Lange's view is not essential, as we 
agree with him in assuming that our Lord returned 
once more to Galilee between the Feast of Taber- 
nacles and that of dedication. (See note on Matt. 



1 Several Codices omit the preposition iv. Lange con- 
siders this the better reading, and translates, " By " or 
" through thy name." 2 The best readings have "you " 



and "your" for "u«"and "our." s Most manuscripts 
omit "my," and read, "in the name ;•" that is, " for the 
reason that." 



712 



MARK IX, 30-50. 



xix, 1.) — And John answered him. The discourse 
of our Lord preceding the case which John now 
brings before him, has been fully considered in Mat- 
thew. We need only point out the connection of 
that which Mark and Luke record, with the immedi- 
ately-preceding words of our Savior, which Matthew 
also has recorded. John replies to the saying : 
"Whosoever shall receive one of such children in 
my name, receiveth me : and whosoever shall re- 
ceive me, receiveth not me, but him that sent me." 
John, quickly apprehending the import of this saying, 
and remembering a case in which he, with his fellow- 
disciples, might have acted contrary to the principle 
just now inculcated by his Master, honestly asks for 
information. — We saw one casting out devils in 
thy name. It was not a person that merely made 
the attempt to do so, as the sons of Sceva, (Acts 
xix, 13,) but one who actually did it; and he did it 
in the name of Christ, consequently by faith, a faith 
stronger than the disciples had shown at the foot of 
the Mount. — And we forbade him, because hefolr 
loioeth not us, or, as Luke expresses it more mildly, 
because he followeth not with us, namely, thee. The 
disciples were, evidently, under the impression that 
they alone had been commissioned to cast out devils, 
but the Lord had no where told them so. " We have 
here," says Dr. Alexander, " an instance of the 
natural but erroneous disposition to infer from the 
existence of a divinely-instituted order, that its 
author can or will do nothing to promote the same 
end independently of it." The same assumption is 
to this day the fruitful source of all sectarianism. 
Whether the man had or had not received authority 
from the Lord, of this they, to say the least, were 
not the competent judges. — Forbid him not. The 
answer of our Lord is positive, and involves a prin- 
ciple of general application, but one which, alas ! 
has been most grossly violated by professed followers 
of Christ in every age and country. " The answer 
of our Lord to John's inquiry," says Van Oosterzee, 
"breathes the same spirit as the words of Moses on 
the prophecy of Eldad and Medad, (Num. xi, 26-29,) 
and furnishes us with a safe criterion for the philan- 
thropic and Christian efforts of those whose personal 
relation to the Lord we do not know with certainty. 
The Lord had, indeed, declared in his Sermon on 
the Mount, (Matt, vii, 22, 23,) that a man might 
cast out demons in his name and yet be finally lost, 
but though this may prove to be the case with some, 
his disciples were not to decide this beforehand. 
Their duty was to hope for the best, and this the 
more, as none could succeed in an attempt of 
exorcism in his name, from hostile motives and with- 
out faith. If their acts were attended with success, 
it was a presumptive evidence, that the agent, for 
the time being at least, was not an enemy of Christ." 
It is, however, also worthy of note that while the 
Lord directs his disciples not to interfere with the 
man's course, he does not tell them to unite with 
him outwardly, and to make him a member of their 



body; for it would have been, on their part, fully 
as rash to receive him into their midst, before they 
knew more about him or before he expressed a de- 
sire to that effect, as it was to forbid him to do aught 
in Jesus' name. The casting out demons in Jesus' 
name was in itself- — it must be admitted — no in- 
fallible proof, that he was a genuine disciple -of the 
Lord, (Matt, vii, 22; 1 Cor. xiii, 2.) — We may, at 
least, learn from this, that the unity of the Church 
or of the kingdom of God does not depend on the 
oneness of the outward organization. The unity of 
the members of Christ's mystical body does not con- 
sist in this, that they are members of the same de- 
nomination, but in this, that they are governed by 
one spirit, and have one and the same end in view. 
The true unity of the Christian Church is best pro- 
moted by all Christians vying with each other in be- 
coming more and more like Christ and doing his 
will. — For there is no man which shall do a 
miracle in my name, that can lightly [raxv, 
quickly or hastily'] speak evil of me. The Lord 
kindly assigns a reason for his injunction, and 
extends the special case of casting out devils to 
the working a miracle, which involves the general 
idea of effecting or performing a good work in his 
name. " Anticipating a case which might occur, he 
says: Whoever uses my name for a good work, will 
not be able forthwith, shortly afterward, to revile me. 
Compare the expression of the apostles in 1 Corin- 
thians xii, 3, which may be understood as meaning : 
to confess Jesus as Lord with the powerful convic- 
tion wrought by the Spirit, and to curse him, can not 
coexist in the same individual. But how? Are 
there really none who call Jesus Lord, and have not 
the power of the Holy Ghost ? Were there really no 
hypocritical miscreants who nevertheless cast out 
devils and removed mountains? (Matt, vii, 22, 23; 
1 Cor. xiii, 2.) Is there really no one who may un- 
warrantably perform deeds in the name of the Lord? 
Certainly; but to know such is reserved for the 
Searcher of hearts, and for us after successive, mani- 
fest evidences of hostility toward the Lord. The 
Lord, therefore, can by his general statement only 
mean : ' It becomes you in every case, in the first 
instance, lovingly and humbly to assume it to be so, 
so long as you see in the confession and conduct of 
any one nothing else than, what you tell me, a good 
effect resulting from the use of my name against 
the kingdom of the wicked one. That this is the 
proper sense is confirmed by what the Lord imme- 
diately adds in the next verse; for the following 
statement is not to be taken as unconditionally true 
in all cases, no more than what the Lord says here. 
Many a one may take the name of Christ into his 
lips, may preach his Gospel 'of contention, not sin- 
cerely,' (Phil, i, 16-18;) but the great apostle, by 
putting kindly into the background the ' whether in 
pretense or in truth' in a very clear case, and by not 
suffering his joy over the preaching of Christ to be 
disturbed by the hostility manifested against him- 



MARK IX, 30-50. 



713 



self, speaks and acts in the spirit of the Lord's decla- 
ration, which dictates to us nothing else than that 
modest presumption with which it is proper for us to 
act." (Stier. ) Dr. Alexander remarks on this pas- 
sage : " Although the age of miracles is past, and 
therefore no such case can now arise, the principle 
involved is evidently pertinent to many other cases, 
and especially to that of spiritual influences visibly 
attending certain ministrations, and affording a 
more certain test of their validity than any mere 
ecclesiastical connection or commission. It is no 
objection to this application or extension of the 
principle here laid down, that apparent spiritual 
attestations may be spurious, for so might the 
miraculous appearances of old; and as the rule orig- 
inally laid down was to be applied to none but 
genuine performances of that kind, so the rule as 
here extended is to be applied to none but genuine 
and valid proofs of the Divine approval, to determine 
which is no part of our present task, though easily 
[in most cases, but not infallibly in all cases — and 
this is the point against which the Savior cautions] 
• deducible from Scripture and experience." Lange 
includes, in the case supposed by the Savior, 
such as are not yet decided followers of Christ, 
though performing great deeds in his name, and 
says : " Christ, therefore, desires his disciples to ap- 
preciate, esteem, and leave untrammeled all indi- 
vidual beginnings or germs of faith beyond the pale 
of the Church. Men of this class must not be im- 
portuned to join this or that denomination.'" This 
is very true, but it can not be legitimately deduced 
from the text. — For he that is not against us is 
on our part; according to the correct reading: he 
that is not against you is for you. This saying of 
our Lord is by no means at variance with that 
former one in Matthew xii, 30: "He that is not 
with me is against me;" on the contrary, the one 
serves to explain the other. As to being personally 
and internally united with Christ and working with 
him, there is an absolute "either or." He, the 
Searcher of hearts, can not say of any man's rela- 
tion to himself: he who is not against me is for me. 
Precisely in opposition to this mischievous error, 
which would be an impossibility, is the declaration 
of Christ: he that is not with me is against me. 
But the internal relation of every man to Christ is 
not perfectly cognizable to human eye and judgment. 
This the disciples did not consider properly, making 
their " us " equivalent to the me of Christ : " he 
follows [thee] not with us, he followeth not us f 
He, therefore, does not declare of them what he de- 
clares of himself: he who is not with you, is against 
you. This Christ will affirm of no visible Church 
of his believing followers whatever; he has not even 
granted it to the apostles, as we see from the case 
before us. The lack of outwardly visible fellowship 
of him who cast out devils in his name did not 
justify their conclusion that he was not with Christ; 
humility and love should induce us to reckon every 



one a friend who does not declare himself an enemy, 
according to the principle in law that a man should 
be considered innocent till he is proved to be guilty. 
The "you" in the passage before us forms the great 
contrast to the "me" in the passage of Matthew, 
and sets both passages in the clearest light. If, 
then, Christ would not and could not so bind him- 
self up even with his apostles as to allow them to 
say, no communion with Christ without outward 
fellowship with us, much less has any Christian com- 
munion or branch of the visible Church any right to 
say, there is no salvation out of our pale ! Stier, 
whose thoughts we have given in a free, condensed 
form, continues his comment thus : " The faithful, 
wise Teacher lays hold of this individual case in its 
deep, general significance and symbolical import, 
sees here in its kernel all Popery in the widest sense 
of the word, rising in the assuming us of his be- 
loved apostles, and therefore he decidedly rejects 
and condemns it for all time to come. His word 
strikes at the smallest beginnings of assumption, as 
well as against its full development in the ' Church, 
which alone confers salvation, 1 against all restrain- 
ing and quenching of the Spirit with rules, forms, 
and pretensions based upon ' ms,' against all binding 
of the gifts of grace to any communion or succes- 
sion, against all narrow-mindedness of creed, sys- 
tem, and method. Our Lord is most assuredly a 
God of order in his Church, and inculcates upon his 
people, as the rule, fellowship with each other, and, 
as far as possible, exact uniformity. But, inasmuch 
as his people are very much inclined to misunder- 
stand this order, and to substitute, first, the best 
form, and then by and by some other form, instead 
of the internal reality; for this very reason, his 
Spii-it makes exceptions, and he himself gives us in 
this passage the rule for real exceptions in peculiar 
circumstances, as well as for a whole field of human 
assumption, which will quickly see unjustifiable ex- 
ceptions. how far and deeply does his brief 
master-saying penetrate, if only the hearts of his 
people were willing to receive it! Bind no man so 
to your doctrine as that you shall say : he speaks 
not as we speak, therefore we regard it not though 
he also, as well as we, confesses and serves our 
Lord. Bind not the people to your ways, so as to 
say : whoever does not as we do does not right. 
Finally, never, in this or in any other sense bind 
any one to your communion unconditionally, as to 
say : whoever does not adhere to us we can not re- 
gard as a follower of Christ. Our Lord speaks on 
this subject in the spirit of kind concession, because 
he has the apostles before him, and with regard to 
their official character it could be said : whoever is 
really against you is also against me, (Luke x, 16;) 
but in our case there may be very good reason for a 
man being against us and yet no opponent of the 
Lord; it may, indeed, be in obedience to the Lord's 
will that he is opposing what is faulty in us." — For 

WHOSOEVER SHALL GIVE YOU A CUP OF W.»TER. The 



714 



MAEK IX, 30-50. 



conjunction for introduces a new reason why the 
apostles should not interfere with any one that casts 
out devils in the name of Christ. If the least service 
rendered to any one that bears the name of Christ 
will meet with a reward, with how much more con- 
sideration should we treat a man, who not only 
bears the name of Christ, but also performs a great 
and good work in his name! — And whosoever 

SHALL OFFEND ONE OF THESE LITTLE ONES. "With 

these words Mark turns again into the train of 
thought in Matthew. " The expressions of our Lord 
alternate between kindness and seriousness, between 
promise and warning. Scarcely has the Savior ex- 
pressed disapprobation of the assumption of the dis- 
ciples, who would not acknowledge as a follower of 
the Lord the man who followed not them, when he 
begins again to assure them of the dignity and honor 
which belonged to them, according to verse 37 ; 
scarcely is this said to them when they are again 
impressively exhorted to avoid on their part offend- 
ing any little one. For that in the kingdom of 
heaven we should be loving children, honoring one 
another reciprocally and equally, is, as we have 
already seen in Matthew, the fundamental thought 
of the whole discourse of our Lord. What Matthew 
has drawn in brief, Mark gives in its original full- 
ness. It is not to be imagined that the strong, 
thrice-repeated, stunning expression about the worm 
and fire had its origin any where else than in the 
lips of our Lord himself; as the natural sequence of 
this expression, we find a corresponding, threefold 
expression about the hand, and foot, and eye." 
(Stier.) Most commentators connect what our Lord 
says concerning offenses with verse 37, and under- 
stand by the cutting off the hand and the foot, the 
same as in Matthew v, 29, 30; not so Lange, as we 
have shown in Matthew xviii, 8, 9. However strange 
Lange' s interpretation of hand, and foot, and eye. 
may appear, a thorough examination of the context 
will make it very probable. The offense given to 
little ones is, by Lange, primarily referred to the 
conduct of the disciples toward him whom they had 
forbidden to cast out devils in the name of Jesus. 
The Lord having enjoined it upon the disciples, in 
answer to the question of John, to recognize all who 
do good works in his name, (vs. 39, 40,) and having, 
moreover, enforced this injunction by the declara- 
tion, that even the least respect paid to the name of 
Christ should not be left without its reward, adds 
now the solemn warning not to give any offense to 
any that stand in a spiritual relation to him. Fur- 
ther explanation of the nature of the offenses see in 
the parallel passage of Matthew. — For every one 

SHALL BE SALTED WITH FIRE, AND EVERT SACRIFICE 

shall be salted with salt. The exegesis of this 
passage is very difficult. Scarcely two commenta- 
tors find one and the same sense in it. The main 
question is : who must be understood by " every one?" 
and this again is closely connected with the other: 
to what does the conjunction " for" refer? Some 



interpreters understand by ',' every one " only the 
finally lost, others only the true believers, and others 
again all men. We will take up and examine these 
different interpretations in regular order. Meyer 
maintains, that the " for " must be referred to the 
preceding verse, and the " every one " be likewise re- 
stricted to the individuals specified there. Accord- 
ing to him, a new subject is introduced, and quite an 
opposite idea advanced with the second clause, com- 
mencing " every sacrifice." Fire and salt are oppo- 
sites, and by the " fire " the fire of hell is meant. 
Lost men may allegorically be called sacrifices, and 
"shall be salted" must not be understood in any 
other sense than that of the well-known use of salt 
in connection with sacrifices. Meyer, accordingly, 
paraphrases the passage as follows : " I speak very 
properly of their fire, (v. 48 ; ) for every one of those 
that are thrown into gehenna will be salted there 
with fire ; that is, the claims of the Divine covenant 
will be vindicated by fire in the case of every one of 
them; and every sacrifice, that is, every true believer, 
will be salted with salt; that is, he will set forth in 
his own person the claims of the Divine covenant at 
his entrance into the Messianic kingdom ; that is, he 
will be made acceptable unto God, as is done with 
every sacrifice by salting it." Other expositors con- 
sider it more natural to connect the "for" of verse 
49 with the entire threefold exhortation, " Cut it off, 
pluck it out, it is better for thee !" But they also do 
not agree in their interpretation of the words. 
Stier, restricting both clauses of the verse to be- 
lievers, expounds as follows : " Every one who would 
not come into gehenna, but would obtain the better 
part, shall be salted with fire. To salt does not sig- 
nify to destroy, but to preserve, to render durable 
and pleasant. The ' and ' between the two clauses 
is equivalent to an 'as;' for, whatever is salted 
with the salt of the covenant — and this might be 
done with fire or merely with salt — is an acceptable 
offering. The Lord quotes from the Mosaic law of 
sacrifices, (Lev. ii, 13,) and unfolds its typical im- 
port. He speaks at once of the fire and of the salt 
of the sacrifices, and embraces both in one by the 
one word ' shall be salted,' which he applies to both. 
The same fire of the Divine purity and holiness, 
which must, in the future state, unquenchably burn 
the impure soul, must, in this world, salt every 
one who would come into contact with it; that is, 
must sanctify him by putting to death every thing 
within him that is worthy of de#th, by a gracious, 
condemning, purifying destruction of sin, accom- 
panied by the deliverance of the sinner. This is the 
thought of the Lord, (comp. 1 Peter iv, 12-17; Luke 
xxiii, 31.) But he expresses this in the typical lan- 
guage of sacrifice, both because this language sup- 
plied him with the briefest and most comprehensive 
expression, and because Isaiah, of whose concluding 
words he had quoted two of the preceding verses, 
had affirmed that the saints should be brought to 
the Lord for a meat-offering, (Isa. lxvi, 20; comp. 



MARK IX, 30-50. 



715 



lx, 7; Mai. i, 11; Rom. xv, 16.) The fire consumes 
only the combustible matter that is thrown into it; 
if the worm in gehenna would die, the fire also 
would be extinguished, and there would remain in 
the ashes the pure salt, which resists all destruction 
as well as corruption. Of what, then, does our 
Lord speak in verse 49 after he had previously 
spoken of hell fire? He advises us as a free-will 
self-offering, to allow ourselves to be sanctified, not 
only by the salting salt, but also by the salting fire, 
which every one must experience, as no one without 
some burnt-offering — to which salt was also applied, 
(Lev. iii, 1, 2 ; Ezek. xliii, 24) — can become an ac- 
ceptable offering before God. He intends, therefore, 
to teach us that, in order to escape condemnation, 
there remain for us two means of becoming holy and 
happy. These two means are the salt of truth and 
the fire of affliction. The being salted with salt 
would thence denote the voluntary purification of 
our souls, in obeying the truth through the Spirit, 
(1 Peter i, 22;) in this way the life which mortifies 
the old man comes to us in the softest possible 
manner, though the Gospel must even thus show its 
burning power against sin ; for the holiness of 
God, manifested along with his grace, chastises us 
severely, demanding the denial of our ungodly na- 
ture. But who has become an offering of God 
without the aid of affliction, which, through the ac- 
companying help of God, constrains us to obedience ? 
Consequently, we must not sever the two united 
means of grace; they go always in various ways to- 
gether as the Lord here embraces them in one view. 
In themselves they are not entirely separated; be- 
cause the salt burns as well as salts, and the fire 
salts as well as burns. Even the word is a fire 
(Jer. xxiii, 29) in the same way as the Holy Spirit 
is. (Matt, iii, 11.) Besides, in every case the rod of 
affliction is indispensable, (Heb. xii, 6-8;) and, on 
the other hand, no affliction is salutary unless the 
word of God accompany it. Each gives efficacy to 
the other; but the salt is, and continues to be, the 
main thing even when fire accompanies it The 
conflict teaches us to attend to the word, (Isa. xxviii, 
19,) and the word renders the conflict salutary to 
us." However instructive and edifying this inter- 
pretation of Stier is, yet we prefer that of Olshausen 
as grammatically more correct, plainer, and more 
exact. " The salting with fire refers exclusively 
neither to the everlasting fire of hell, [as Meyer 
holds,] nor merely*to the exhortation to self-denial, 
[as Stier holds,] but includes both, so that ' every 
one ' is to be understood literally of the whole human 
race. The sense of the expression therefore is this: 
because of the general sinfulness of the race, every 
individual must be salted with fire, either, on the one 
hand, by his entering of his own free will on a course 
of self-denial and earnest purification from his in- 
iquities, or, on the other hand, by his being carried 
against his will to the place of punishment. The 
fire appears here first as the cleansing, purifying 



element, and then as that which inflicts pain. But 
for him who submits in earnest to the pain which is 
necessarily associated with the overcoming of sin, 
it works beneficially. As every sacrifice is, on the 
part of him who offers it, a type of his inwardly de- 
voting himself with all that he is and has to the 
eternal source of his being, so the salt was intended 
to show that such a sacrifice could never be well- 
pleasing to God without the pain of self-denial, and 
the quickening influence of the Spirit of fire from on 
high. We are, then, to explain the grammatical con- 
nection of the two clauses so as not to understand by 
the sacrifice being salted with fire a different thing 
from the person's being salted with salt: the latter 
clause contains the sensible image and type of the 
spiritual process indicated by the first clause. It is 
not necessary, however, on this account to give to 
the article 'and' the meaning of 'as;' we have only 
to supply ' therefore,' so that the sense should be, 
' and for this reason [as it stands written] must 
every sacrifice be salted with salt' We have, ac- 
cordingly, in this passage an authoritative explana- 
tion of the meaning of a sacrifice, and of the cere- 
mony of presenting them to the Lord sprinkled with 
salt." With the interpretation of Olshausen Lauge 
agrees in substance : " Every human being must 
pass through fire according to the symbolical mean- 
ing of the burnt-offering; he must either enter into 
the fire of gehenna, which in his case is the substi- 
tute of the salt, which he lacked, or as the burnt- 
offering of God into the furnace of the enumerated 
self-denials, after he has been seasoned before with 
the salt of the Spirit." So Ewald: "The 'for' of 
verse 49 contains or introduces the cause on which 
the preceding exhortation rests. Sairifice rather 
your hand, or foot, or eye, in the service of God, than 
be cast with your whole bodies as sacrifices of death 
into the fire of hell. For it is the unalterable law 
for the race : every thing through the fire. But, in 
order that fire may become for man a sacrificial fire, 
he must be voluntarily prepared as a sacrifice and 
be seasoned with salt; otherwise the fire of gehenna 
will replace the salt and the sacrifice." — Salt is 
good: but if the salt have lost his [its] SALT- 

NESS, WHEREWITH WILL YE SEASON IT ? HAVE SALT IN 

YotCRSELVES. Expositors differ as widely on the 
connection of verse 50 with verse 49 as on that of 
verse 49 with the preceding. But it is not neces- 
sary to give all the various views. It seems most 
natural to suppose that the Lord passes in verse 50 
from the specific use and meaning of salt in sacri- 
fices to the generic properties, which, if they are 
once lost, the Savior tells us, can not be given to it 
again. But Stier, holding fast the connection with 
verse 49, as interpreted by him, says : " In so far as 
we are a meat-offering, well-pleasing to God, cer- 
tainly not without a burnt-offering to be prepared in 
the first instance, and also afterward, in so far as we 
would be, and would continue to be such, among 
each other and before the world — we are exhorted 



716 



MARK X, 1-31. 



in the most friendly manner never to suffer this 
salutary and necessary salt to be wanting, never 
suffer it to be lost. The fire must, alas ! strike us 
because of sin ; but it is not as an evil now that it is 
spoken of: salt is and remains the best for us, the 
unmingled good — KaXbv, which of itself can and will 
help to the nakdv cot, better for thee, (verses 43-48.) 
Hold this fast, have it, keep it, and use it well, says 
our Lord to his disciples. The more salt there is in 
you, the less will you need fire. To take in and to 
hold fast the power of sanctifying truth for free-will 
obedience in self-denial, and to reject our own in- 
ward corruption — to forsake all that we have, (Luke 
xiv, 33, 34) — this is good and beautiful. And this 
admonition is sharpened by recalling to their minds 
the impossibility of seasoning salt which has lost its 
powers." — And have peace one with another. 
" These closing words point back to the commence- 
ment of the discourse. Perhaps the expression 
' have salt' is intended to form a contrast to the 
' have peace.' The former seems to describe a sharp 
and caustic, the latter a gentle, mode of action ; both 
are to be united in the regenerate ; in regard to the 
ungodliness that is in the world he must reprove and 



rebuke, and in so far he must, like Christ himself. 
(Matt, x, 34,) bring in strife, but in regard to all that 
is congenial and kindred in the children of God, 
gentleness must prevail. As, therefore, salt does 
not season salt, but only that which is unsalted, so 
the living energies of the children of God should not 
be expended in contests among themselves, but be 
devoted to the awakening of life in the world. The 
closeness with which the last verses in Mark connect 
themselves both with the preceding context and with 
the commencement of the whole discourse, makes it 
to my mind improbable that they originally stood in 
any other connection." (Olshausen.) Lange re- 
marks : " As salt, the spirit of chastening grace, is 
the primary condition of peace with God, so it is also 
the basis of the peace which Christians have one 
with another. Hence the word of the Lord : have 
salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another. 
The Lord places the ambitious dispute of the dis- 
ciples on an equal footing with their uncharitable 
zeal against a beginner in faith. All ungodly zeal 
displayed within and without the Church proceeds 
from one and the same fundamental defect, the lack 
of salt, that is, of obedience to the truth." 



SECTION XII. 

THE SOJOURN OF JESUS IN PEREA. 
CHAPTBE X, 1-31. 

1. DISCUSSION BETWEEN CHRIST AND THE PHARISEES CONCERNING THE LAW OF 

MATRIMONY. 

Verses 1—13. (Compare Matthew xix, 1-9.) 

(1) And he arose from thence, and cometh into the coasts of Judea by the farther 
side of Jordan; 1 and the people resort unto him again; and, as he was wont, he 
taught them again. (2) And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, Is it law- 
ful for a man to put away his wife? tempting him. (3) And he answered and said 
unto them, What did Moses command you ? (4) And they said, Moses suffered to 
write a hill of divorcement, and to put her away. (5) And Jesus answered and said 
unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. (6) But from 
the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. (7) For this cause 
shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; (8) and they twain 



1 Instead of "by the farther side of Jordan," some 
Codices read, "and beyond Jordan," (ie<x£ ntpav toO lopSdvov, 
instead of 6ta tov irdpav tov 'IopSavou;) a number of ancient 
versions have tbe same reading, which is considered the 
better by Lachman, Tischendorf, and Meyer. These 
critics think that the "and" (nal) was dropped in order 
to make the passage agree with Matthew xix, 1, and 



that the preposition (Sia.) was inserted as an explanation. 
Lange, on the other hand, is of the opinion that the 
reading, " icai," arose from the want of a correct insight 
into the other reading. (Compare note on Matt, xix, 1.) 
Between our Lord's leaving Galilee and the following 
discourse all that Luke records from ix, 52, to xviii, 14, 
is to be inserted. (See Synoptic Table, Nos. 108-140.': 



MARK X, 1-31. 717 



shall be one flesh : so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. (9) "What there- 
fore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. (10) And in the house his 
disciples asked him again of the same matter. (11) And he saith unto them, Who- 
soever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. 
(12) And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she 
committeth adultery. 

3. LITTLE CHILDREN ARE BROUGHT TO JESUS. HIS DECLARATION CONCERNING 
THEIR RELATION TO THE KINGDOM OP GOD. 

"Verses 13—16. (Compare Matthew xix, 13-15; Luke xtiii, 15-17.) 

(13) And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them ; and 
his disciples rebuked those that brought them. (14) But when Jesus saw it, he was 
much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, 
and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God. (15) Yerily I say unto 
you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not 
enter therein. (16) And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, 
and blessed them. 

3. THE RICH YOUNG MAN. JESUS SPEAKS OP THE DANGERS OP WORLDLY RICHES, 
AND THE REWARDS OP HIS FOLLOWERS. 

"Verses 17—31. (Compare Matthew xix, 16-30; Luke xviii, 18-30.) 

(17) And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and 
kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit 
eternal life? (18) And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is 
none good but one, that is, God. (19) Thou knowest the commandments, Do not 
commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, 
Honor thy father and mother. (20) And he answered and said unto him, Master, 
all these have I observed from my youth. (21) Then Jesus beholding him loved 
him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou 
hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take 
up the cross, and follow me. (22) And he was sad at that saying, and went away 
grieved : for he had great possessions. (23) And Jesus looked round about, and 
saith unto his disciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the king- 
dom of God ! (24) And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus 
answereth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust 
in riches to enter into the kingdom of God ! (25) It is easier for a camel to go 
through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. 
(26) And they were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who 
then can be saved? (27) And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is im- 
possible, but not with God : for with God all things are possible. (28) Then Peter 
began to say unto him, Lo, we have left all, and have followed thee. (29) And 
Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left 
house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, 



718 



MARK X, 1-31. 



for my sake, and the Gospel's, (30) but he shall receive a hundredfold now in this 
time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with 
persecutions ; and in the world to come eternal life. (31) But many that are first 
shall be last ; and the last first. 



Verses 2-12. Let us take to heart Christ's teach- 
ings on the marriage relation : 1. That it is a Divine 
institution, holy and indissoluble, the basis of human 
society and the emblem of the life-union between 
the Lord and his Church. 2. That sin has disor- 
dered this holy and blissful relation, and made it the 
instrument of wretchedness and misery. 3. That 
the law can not restore the Divine order before man's 
relation to his Maker is restored. 

Verses 13-16. Whosoever shall not receive 
the kingdom op god as a little child, he shall 
not enter therein. Our Lord repeats here in other 
words the same lesson he had taught his disciples 
before, when he said to them : " Except ye be con- 
verted, and become as little children, ye shall not 
enter into the kingdom of heaven." We must become 
as a little child in self-obliviousness, simplicity, and 
truth. He that is most childlike is the greatest in 
the estimation of God. 

Verses 17-31. The inconsistencies in the young 
man's conduct. " 1. He hastens to Jesus full of en- 
thusiasm — leaves him with a heart filled with sad- 
ness. 2. Not regarding what men would say, he 
kneels down before Jesus, and not regarding his 
own convictions, he sets at naught his advice. 3. 
He comes to the Lord with a keen sense of needing 
salvation, and leaves him with the conviction of 
guilt in his bosom." (Lange.) — One thing thou 
lackest. I. The young man had many good quali- 
ties, which were recognized even by Christ himself: 
1. He possessed a high respect for what is morally 
good ; 2. He entertained no doubts as to the reality 
of an eternal life, and was equally certain that Jesus 
could point out to him the way leading to that life; 
3. He was anxious to become a partaker of this 
eternal life. Neither his station in life nor his 
wealth satisfied him; there was an aching void 
within him ; 4. He had a spirit of genuine docility. 
Though he knew much, he sought for more informa- 
tion, and sought it from Christ, disregarding the 
prejudices and opposition of his fellow-men ; 5. His 
external morality was faultless. No one could 
charge him with the violation of any social law or 
right; nevertheless, 6. His moral susceptibility was 
so keen that he did not feel at ease. II. The one 
thing which he lacked was a full and perfect sur- 
render of the heart to God. Selfishness is the very 
opposite of the two great commandments : thou 
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 
thy neighbor as thyself. To love our neighbor truly 



we must love God supremely. Whatever else we 
have, if we have not this love we are nothing, (1 
Cor. xiii,) we are morally worthless and wretched, 
clouds without water, wandering stars, rushing into 
boundless gloom and ruin. Whatever we love more 
than God, no matter what it is, must be sacrificed. 
The young man's heart was addicted to his earthly 
possessions ; for this reason the Lord commanded 
him to sell all he had and give it to the poor. Only 
under this condition he could follow Christ. What 
sacrifice does the Lord require at thy hands ? Make 
it, and thou shalt have a great treasure in heaven. 
Take thy cross upon thyself, come and follow Jesus, 
who, though he was rich, became poor, that we 
might become rich ! — How can a rich man enter 
into the kingdom of God ? 1. The thing itself is 
difficult from the very nature of the case ; 2. It is 
impossible as long as the rich man sets his heart on 
earthly possessions; 3. The inward change neces- 
sary to make it possible is a miracle of Divine grace. 
These truths are, (1.) Full of terror for the worldly- 
minded rich man ; (2.) Full of comfort for the pious 
poor; (3.) A cause of the deepest gratitude to God 
for his superabundant grace both for the rich and 
poor. — But he shall receive a hundredfold. In 
the possession of true religion we find a hundred- 
fold indemnification for every sacrifice of temporal 
advantages; first, in the higher and purer enjoyment 
of the blessings of this world ; secondly, what we 
have forsaken or lost on account of our embracing 
religion, is restored to us by houses of hospitable 
friends, Christian brethren and sisters, spiritual 
mothers and children, fields of labor, etc. The 
spiritual nature of the new acquisitions appears, 
among other considerations, also from this, that 
among the things to be found again, neither father 
nor wife is mentioned. Yet godliness is profitable 
for all things, and has the promise of the life which 
now is as well as of the life to come. Thirdly, we 
obtain eternal life in the perfected kingdom of God, 
a participation in the glory of the Lord. — With per- 
secutions ; that is, not only along with and in spite 
of persecutions, but these persecutions will be part 
of the very best acquisitions, (see Matt, v, 12 ; Rom. 
v, 3; James i, 2, 4; 1 Peter i, 6 ; Heb. xii, 6.) The 
Lord adds this, lest his disciples might look forward 
for uninterrupted prosperity. The spiritual nature 
of the blessings enumerated appears also from this, 
that they are independent of the favor of men and 
can not be reached by persecutions. 



MARK X, 32-52. 719 



SECTION XIII. 

THE FINAL DEPARTURE OF JESUS FROM PEREA FOR JERUSALEM. 

CHAPTBE X, 32-52. 

X. JESUS ANNOUNCES THE THIRD TIME HIS SUFFERINGS AND DEATH. 

Verses 32—34. (Compare Matthew xx, 17-19; Luke xviii, 31-34) 

(32) And they were in the way going up to Jerusalem ; and Jesus went before 
them : and they were amazed ; and as they followed, they were afraid. And he 
took again the twelve, and began to tell them what things should happen unto 
him, (33) saying, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem ; and the Son of man shall be 
delivered unto the chief-priests, and unto the scribes ; and they shall condemn him 
to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles : (34) And they shall mock him, and 
shall scourge him, and shall spit upon him, and shall kill him ; and the third day 
he shall rise again. 

3. THE REQUEST OF THE SONS OF ZEBEDEE. 
"Verses 35—45. (Compare Matthew xx, 20-28.) 

(35) And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, come unto him, saying, Master, 
we would that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall desire. (36) And he 
said unto them, "What would ye that I should do for you ? (37) They said unto 
him, Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy 
left hand, in thy glory. (38) But Jesus said unto them, Ye know not what ye 
ask : can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism 
that I am baptized with ? (39) And they said unto him, We can. And Jesus said 
unto them, Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of; and with the baptism 
that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized : (40) But to sit on my right hand 
and on my left hand is not mine to give ; but it shall be given to them for whom it is 
prepared. (41) And when the ten heard it, they began to be much displeased with 
James and John. (42) But Jesus called them to him, and saith unto them, Ye 
know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship 
over them ; and their great ones exercise authority upon them. (43) But so shall 
it not be among you : but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minis- 
ter: (44) And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all. (45) 
For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to 
give his life a ransom for many. 

3. THE BLIND BEGGAR BARTIMEUS. 
"Verses 46—53. (Compare Matthew xx, 29-34; Luke xviii, 35-43.) 

(46) And they came to Jericho : and as he went out of Jericho with his disci- 
ples and a great number of people, blind Bartimeus, the son of Timeus, sat by the 



720 



MARK X, 32-52. 



highway side begging. (47) And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, 
he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me. (48) 
And many charged him that he should hold his peace : but he cried the more a 
great deal, Thou son of David, have mercy on me. (49) And Jesus stood still, and 
commanded him to be called. And they called the blind man, saying unto him, Be 
of good comfort, rise ; he calleth thee. (50) And he, casting away his garment, 
rose, and came to Jesus. (51) And Jesus answered and said unto him, "What wilt 
thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I 
might receive my sight. (52) And Jesus said unto him, G-o thyAvay; thy faith 
hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus 
in the way. 



Verses 32-84 And they were in the way 
going up to Jerusalem. See note on Matthew xx, 
17, and Synoptic Table, Nos. 135-144. — And Jesus 
went before them, and they were amazed. " The 
amazement of the disciples was caused by the heroic, 
determined conduct of their Master. They saw in 
his majestic, solemn, and determined bearing, that 
the crisis was imminent. As this trembling and 
amazement of the disciples took place before his 
final, positive declaration, that the time of his suffer- 
ing and death was at hand, their painful emotions 
must have arisen from a dark foreboding of the 
nearness of the decisive moment." (Lange.) — And 
as they followed, they were afraid. Meyer rec- 
ommends the reading of some of the Codices, "but 
those that followed him were afraid." The mean- 
ing, according to this reading, is, that the majority 
of the disciples, in their amazement, hesitated and 
remained behind, while those that continued to fol- 
low him did so in great fear. But Lange justly ob- 
jects to this view, because the reading is not suffi- 
ciently authenticated, and because we find no inti- 
mation in the Gospel of John, that at that time some 
of his followers left him. Moreover, the contrast 
between such as left the Lord at that time, and those 
that followed him with fear and trembling, if it ex- 
isted, would be set forth in stronger language, as is 
the case in John vi, 66. Yet the expression used by 
the Evangelist seems to indicate a hesitancy on the 
part of many followers, a danger of their scattering, 
which the Lord meets by taking the twelve apart 
and telling them in positive language that he would 
now speedily suffer and die, adding, however, at the 
same time the glorious declaration, that he would 
rise again from the dead. And from the ambitious 
prayer of the two sons of Zebedee, which was soon 
afterward made, and from the conduct of all the dis- 
ciples when they learned the nature of that prayer, 
we may infer that the Lord succeeded by this com- 
munication to raise the drooping spirits of his dis- 
ciples. — And began to tell them. This third and 
pointed prediction of his suffering, clearly sets 
forth, 1. The highest prophetic clearness of the 



Lord ; 2. His perfect willingness to be made a sacri- 
fice; 3. His royal certainty as to his final tri- 
umph. — What a contrast bettveen the Master and his 
disciples ! 1. While they are enveloped in darkness 
his knowledge is full and clear ; 2. While they trem- 
ble with fear, his equanimity is undisturbable; 3. 
While they but reluctantly follow him, he boldly goes 
ahead to meet his enemies, and death itself. — Three 
weighty reasons why ice should be willing to go with 
Jesus into suffering and death: 1. Jesus has taken 
the lead in the severest suffering ; 2. Jesus has sanc- 
tified and taken away all bitterness from our suffer- 
ing by his own suffering and death; 3. Jesus has 
secured, through his own victory over all his enemies, 
a glorious issue of all our sufferings. 

Verses 35-45. " Christ has now prepared his dis- 
ciples for his last journey to Jerusalem and its im- 
portance, and has come forth from out of the desert 
of Ephraim ; the first group of Galilean pilgrims, 
consisting, in all probability, of his special friends 
and followers, who had journeyed directly from 
Galilee through Samaria to Ephraim, and went 
thence with the Lord to Jericho, had by this time 
undoubtedly joined him. This appears from the 
presence [in the crowd] of Salome, and the part she 
took in the petition of her sons. Matthew repre- 
sents Salome herself as advancing the prayer, while 
according to Mark her sons do it; such variations, 
however, which are explained by the nature of the 
case, show only the mutual independence of the 
Evangelists, and instead of impairing, greatly in- 
crease the weight of their statements. Even accord- 
ing to Matthew, the Lord addresses himself more 
particularly to the sons, after their mother has 
merely acted as the speaker." (Larige.) — Let us 
learn from this section the difference between false 
and true greatness. I. The conduct of the disciples 
exhibits many marks of false greatness : 1. Such 
greatness is selfish. The mother of the two disciples 
thought only of her sons and of herself. True great- 
ness is not attainable through selfish motives ; 2. It 
aims at a phantom, yea, at something that would be 
ruinous to its possessor, if it should be reached. II. 



MARK XI, 1-26. 



721 



The nature of true greatness : 1. The condition of 
real glory is a fellowship with the sufferings of 
Christ; as the apostle expresses it, "to be crucified 
and buried with Christ, to become like unto his 
death;" that is, we must possess the spirit of self- 
denial, as exhibited in his suffering. Without this 
spirit man can never attain the character that is 
pleasing in God's sight and approved of men. 2. 
God is the fountain of all real greatness, (v. 40.) 
Those for whom true greatness is prepared are those 
that comply with God's established conditions : they 
attain to it conditionally, as the husbandman secures 



the harvest, or the scholar learning, by putting forth 
the necessary efforts on his part. 3. It manifests 
itself in the promotion of the best interests of all, 
(vs. 43, 44.) Its mission is to minister, not to be 
ministered unto — to give, not to rule. 4. Jesus 
Christ is the only pattern of true greatness, (v. 45.) 
Fix your eyes upon Christ till riches appear to you 
as dust, worldly distinction as child's play, and honor 
with men as an empty dream. 

Verses 42-52. On the apparent discrepancies 
and the details of this miraculous cure, see the 
parallel passage of Matthew. 



SECTION" XIV. 

CHEIST'S SOLEMN ENTRANCE INTO JERUSALEM. THE WITHERED FIG-TREE, AND THE 

CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE. 

CHAPTEE XI, 1-26. 

1. CHRIST'S SOLEMN ENTRANCE INTO JERUSALEM. 

"Verses 1— 11. (Compare Matthew xxi, 1-11; Ltjke xix, 29-46; John xii, 12-19.) 

(1) And when they came nigh to Jerusalem, unto Bethphage and Bethany, at 
the Mount of Olives, he sendeth forth two of his disciples, (2) and saith unto them, 
Go your way into the village over against you : and as soon as ye be entered into 
it, ye shall find a colt tied, whereon never man sat; loose him, and bring him. (3) 
And if any man say unto you, "Why do ye this? say ye that the Lord hath need of 
him ; and straightway he will send him hither. (4) And they went their way, and 
found the colt tied by the door without in a place where two ways met ; and they 
loose him. (5) And certain of them that stood there said unto them, What do ye, 
loosing the colt? (6) And they said unto them even as Jesus had commanded: 
and they let them go. (7) And they brought the colt to Jesus, and cast their gar- 
ments on him ; and he sat upon him. (8) And many spread their garments in the 
way; and others cut down branches off the trees, and strewed them in the way. 
(9) And they that went before, and they that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna; 
Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord : (10) Blessed be the kingdom 
of our father David, that cometh in the name of the Lord : Hosanna in the high- 
est. (11) And Jesus entered into Jerusalem, and into the Temple : and when he 
had looked round about upon all things, and now the eventide was come, he went 
out unto Bethany with the twelve. 

3. THE WITHERED FIG-TREE, AND THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE. 
"Verses 12— 26. (Compare Matthew xxi, 12-22; Luke xix, 45, 46.) 

(12) And on the morrow, when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry : 

(13) And seeing a fig-tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find 

46 



722 



MARK XI, 1-26. 



any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the 
time of figs was not yet. (14) And Jesus answered and said unto it, 15o man eat 
fruit of thee hereafter forever. And his disciples heard it. (15) And they come to 
Jerusalem : and Jesus went into the Temple, and began to cast out them that sold 
and bought in the Temple, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and 
the seats of them that sold doves; (16) and would not suffer that any man should 
carry any vessel through the Temple. (17) And he taught, saying unto them, Is 
it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye 
have made it a den of thieves. (18) And the scribes and chief-priests heard it, and 
sought how they might destroy him : for they feared him, because all the people 
was astonished at his doctrine. (19) And when even was come, he went out of the 
city. (20) And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig-tree dried up 
from the roots. (21) And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto him, Master, 
behold, the fig-tree which thou cursedst is withered away. (22) And Jesus an- 
swering saith unto them, Have faith in Grod. (23) For verily I say unto you, That 
whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into 
the sea ; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which 
he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. (24) Therefore I 
say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive 
them, and ye shall have them. (25) And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have 
aught against any; that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your 
trespasses. (26) But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in 
heaven forgive your trespasses. 



Verses 1-11. And when thet came nigh to 
Jerusalem. On the chronology see introductory 
remarks to Matthew xxi, 1-11, and the Synoptic 
Table, No. 147. —Ye shall find a colt tied. Mat- 
thew says: "an ass and a colt with hei\" Such 
variations serve greatly to set forth the historical 
character of the Gospels and the independence of 
their authors. — Blessed be the kingdom of our 
father David. " The Messianic kingdom was the 
reestablishment of the kingdom of David in a higher 
form ; as David was a type of the Messiah, so his 
kingdom was one of the Messiah's kingdom. In 
waiting for the Messiah, the Jews waited for his 
kingdom, and in saluting the Messiah, they saluted, 
consequently, the appearance of his kingdom. Christ 
and his kingdom can not be separated from each 
other; but his kingdom while in a state of develop- 
ment differs as widely from his kingdom of glory, as 
the glorified Christ differs from Christ in his humilia- 
tion." (Lange.) — And when he had looked round 
about upon all things. " Brief, pointed, and lofty 
is the closing part of the report, which Mark gives 
of Christ's entry into Jerusalem. Jesus enters the 
city, visits the Temple, examines every thing with 
the eye of a sovereign, whereupon he retires to 
Bethany in the evening with his disciples. To this 
distinction between the day of the solemn entry and 



that of the Temple cleansing we are indebted to 
Mark alone. Matthew and Mark connect the cleans- 
ing of the Temple with the royal entry, because the 
Lord takes, thereby, as it were, possession of his 
Father's house, and exercises the rights that be- 
longed to him in consequence of his birth." (Lange.) 
Verses 12-26. And on the morrow; that is, on 
Monday morning. Mark gives in this particular the 
chronological order the most exactly. Sunday was 
the day of the entry and on which every thing was 
examined. Monday is the day on which the fig-tree 
was cursed and the Temple cleansed, by which latter 
act the rage of the Sanhedrim was raised to its 
highest point. It was, probably, also on Monday 
that the Greeks desired to see Christ, (John xii, 
20-36.) — And he would not suffer that any one 

SHOULD CARRY A VESSEL THROUGH THE TEMPLE; that 

is, through the court, (see Lev. xix, 30 ; Deut. xii, 
5; Ex. xxx, 13.) The court seems to have been 
used as a passage from one part of the city to the 
other. The Lord did not allow any one to carry 
tools, etc., through the vestibule, whereby the quiet 
of the sacred place would have been disturbed. — 

MY HOUSE SHALL BE CALLED OF ALL NATIONS THE 

house of prayer. " Of all nations" is in the dative 
case in Greek, and must be construed with " the 
house of prayer;" the meaning is: My house shall 



MARK XI, 27— XII, 44. 



723 



be the house of prayer to all nations. Though this 
declaration could be fully verified only after the de- 
struction of the Temple, when the house of God 
ceased to be a limited locality, and became coexten 
sive with the Christian Church, yet it was, in part, 
realized even during the Old Testament dispensa- 
tion, by permitting the strangers in Israel to offer sac- 
rifices, (Lev. xvii, 8; xxii, 19; Ezra ii, 43; vii, 7;) and 
the court of the Gentiles shadowed forth the future 
universality of the worship of the true and living 
God. — The Lord refers to two passages, Isaiah Ivi, 
7, (comp. Is. ii,) and Jeremiah vii, 11. — Have faith 
in God. Faith evidently means here trust, confi- 
dence. Have unshaken confidence in God. — Be- 
lieve THAT YOU" RECEIVE THEM, AND TE SHALL HAVE 

them. See note on Matthew xxi, 22. Whoever 
prays in the Divine assurance of faith, receives in 
the very act of prayer the object of his desire, (Heb. 
xi, 1.) This faith, however, is essentially the mir- 
acle-working faith of which the Lord here speaks. — 



And when ye stand praying, forgive. That our 
Lord repeats here what he had said in the Sermon 
on the Mount, (Matt, vi, 14, 15,) on the necessity 
of forgiving, to pray acceptably, seems to bear a sig- 
nificant relation to the symbolical judgment he had 
just pronounced on the barren fig-tree. As that act 
was associated in the minds of the apostles with the 
miraculous powers promised to the prayer of faith, 
the Lord deems it necessary to remind them- that 
this miracle-working faith must not be exercised by 
them for the gratification of feelings of revenge, or 
in the service of fanaticism. But there is, apart 
from this consideration, a more general connection 
between forgiving and the prayer of faith, as Stier 
remarks : " Whenever the heart, conscious of its own 
guilt, is not perfectly ready to exercise forgiveness, 
whenever there is any ban of enmity, there is a 
secret doubting which breaks and hinders the power 
of prayer. This is what the apostle means in 1 
Timothy ii, 8 : 'without wrath and doubting.' " 



SECTION" XV. 



THE LAST CONFLICTS OF JESUS WITH HIS ENEMIES AT JERUSALEM ON TUESDAY OF THE 

PASSION-WEEK. 



CHAPTEE XI, 27, TO CHAPTEE XII, 44. 

1. THE QUESTION OP THE SANHEDRIM AS TO CHRIST'S AUTHORITY, AND THE 
COUNTER QUESTION OF CHRIST AS TO JOHN THE BAPTIST'S MISSION. 

Chapter XI, 27- 33. (Compare Matthew xxi, 23-27; Luke xx, 1-8.) 

(27) And they come again to Jerusalem : and as he was walking in the Temple, 
there come to him the chief-priests, and the scribes, and the elders, (28) and say 
unto him, By what authority doest thou these things ? and who gave thee this 
authority to do these things ? (29) And Jesus answered and said unto them, I will 
also ask of you one question, and answer me, and I will tell you by what authority 
I do these things. (30) The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men ? an- 
swer me. (31) And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From 
heaven ; he will say, Why then did ye not believe him ? (32) But if we shall say, 
Of men ; they feared the people : for all men counted John, that he was a prophet 
indeed. (33) And they answered and said unto Jesus, We can not tell. And Jesus 
answering saith unto them, Neither do I tell you by what authority I do these 
things. 

3. THE PARABLE OP THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN. 

Chapter XII, 1—13. (Compare Matthew xxi, 33-46; Luke xx, 9-17.) 

(1) And he began to speak unto them by parables. A certain man planted a 
vineyard, and set a hedge about it, and digged a place for the winefat, and built a 



724 MARK XI, 27— XII, 44. 

tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country. (2) And at the 
season he sent to the husbandmen a servant, that he might receive from the hus- 
bandmen of the fruit of the vineyard. (3) And they caught him, and beat him, 
and sent him away empty. (4) And again he sent unto them another servant ; and 
at him they cast stones, and wounded him in the head, and sent him away shame- 
fully handled. (5) And again he sent another ; and him they killed, and many 
others; beating some, and killing some. (6) Having yet therefore one son, his 
well beloved, he sent him also last unto them, saying, They will reverence my son. 
(7) But those husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir ; come, let us 
kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours. (8) And they took him, and killed 
him, and cast him out of the vineyard. (9) What shall therefore the lord of the 
vineyard do ? he will come and destroy the husbandmen, and will give the vine- 
yard unto others. (10) And have ye not read this Scripture ; The stone which the 
builders rejected is become the head of the corner : (11) This was the Lord's doing, 
and it is marvelous, in our eyes ? (12) And they sought to lay hold on him, but 
feared the people ; for they knew that he had spoken the parable against them : 
and they left him, and went their way. 

3. THE TREACHEROUS ATTACK OF THE PHARISEES AND HERODIANS CONCERNING 

TRIBUTE TO CESAR, AND THEIR DISCOMFITURE. 

Verses 13—17. (Compare Matthew xxii, 15-22; Luke xx, 20-24.) 

(13) And they send unto him certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians. 
to catch him in his words. (14) And when they were come, they say unto him, 
Master, we know that thou art true, and carest for no man ; for thou regardest not 
the person of men, but teachest the way of God in truth : Is it lawful to give tribute 
to Caesar, or not ? (15) Shall we give, or shall we not give ? But he, knowing their 
hypocrisy, said unto them, "Why tempt ye me ? bring me a penny, that I may see it. 
(16) And they brought it. And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and super- 
scription ? And they said unto him, Caesar's. (17) And Jesus answering said unto 
them, Bender to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to Cod the things that are 
God's. And they marveled at him. 

4. THE ATTACK OF THE SADDUCEES CONCERNING THE RESURRECTION OF THE 

DEAD, AND THEIR DEFEAT. 

"Verses 18— 3T. (Compare Matthew xxii, 23-33; Luke xx, 27-40.) 

(18) Then come unto him the Sadducees, which say there is no resurrection; 
and they asked him, saying, (19) Master, Moses wrote unto us, If a man's brother 
die, and leave his wife behind him, and leave no children, that his brother should 
take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. (20) JSTow there were seven 
brethren : and the first took a wife, and dying left no seed. (21) And the second 
took her, and died, neither left he any seed : and the third likewise. (22) And the 
seven had her, and left no seed: last of all the woman died also. (23) In the 
resurrection therefore, when they sball rise, wbose wife shall sbe be of them? for 



MARK XI, 27— XII, 44. 725 



the seven had her to wife. (24) And Jesus answering said unto them, Do ye not 
therefore err, because ye know not the Scriptures, neither the power of God ? (25) 
For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in mar- 
riage ; but are as the angels which are in heaven. (26) And as touching the dead, 
that they rise ; have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake 
unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of 
Jacob ? (27) He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living : ye there- 
fore do greatly err. 

5. THE QUESTION OP THE SCRIBE AS TO THE FIRST COMMANDMENT. 

Verses 28-34. (Compare Matthew xxii, 34-40.) 

(28) And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, 
and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first com- 
mandment of all ? (29) And Jesus answered him, The first of all the command- 
ments is, Hear, Israel ; The Lord our God is one Lord : (30) And thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy 
mind, and with all thy strength : this is the first commandment. (31) And the 
second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none 
other commandment greater than these. (32) And the scribe said unto him, Well, 
Master, thou hast said the truth : for there is one God ; and there is none other but 
he : (33) And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and 
with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbor as himself, is 
more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. (34) And when Jesus saw that 
he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of 
God. And no man after that durst ask him any question. 

6. THE COUNTER QUESTION OP THE LORD TO THE SCRIBES CONCERNING DAVID 

AND HIS SON. 

"Verses 35— 37. (Compare Matthew xxii, 41-46; Luke xx, 41-44.) 

(35) And Jesus answered and said, while he taught in the Temple, How say the 
scribes that Christ is the son of David ? (36) For David himself said by the Holy 
Ghost, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine 
enemies thy footstool. (37) David therefore himself calleth him Lord ; and whence 
is he then his son ? And the common people heard him gladly. 

7. CHRIST'S PUBLIC WARNING AGAINST THE SCRIBES. 

"Verses 38— 40. (Compare Matthew xxiii; Luke xx, 45-41.) 

(38) And he said unto them in his doctrine, Beware of the scribes, which love 
to go in long clothing, and love salutations in the marketplaces, (39) and the chief 
seats in the synagogues, and the uppermost rooms at feasts : (40) Which devour 
widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers : these shall receive greater 
damnation. 



726 



MARK XI, 27— XII, 44 



8. THE WIDOW'S MITE. 



"Verses 41—44. (Compare Luke xxi, 1-4) 



(41) And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast 
money into the treasury : 1 and many that were rich cast in much. (42) And there 
came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, 2 which make a farthing. 
(43) And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, 
That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the 
treasury : (44) For all they did cast in of their abundance ; but she of her want did 
cast in all that she had, even all her living. 



Verses 27-33. Br what authority doest thou 
these things ? " The Sanhedrim evidently referred 
to Christ's whole appearance and conduct in the 
Temple as the Messiah, whom the people believed 
him to be ; the cleansing of the Temple was only an 
isolated function of his Messianic office. The law 
commanded to prove the prophets, (Deut. xiii, 2.) 
The great criterion by which his claims were to be 
tested was his perfect agreement with the revealed 
religion of the Jewish theocracy : the power to per- 
form miracles was not indispensably necessary ; the 
presence of miraculous powers without a perfect 
agreement with the teachings of the Pentateuch was 
insufficient to accredit the prophet, while the same 
is not said about the absence of miraculous powers. 
(Comp. Deut. xviii, 20; Ezek. xiii, 1.) That Jesus 
had performed miracles in proof of his Divine 
mission, could not possibly be denied, but his ene- 
mies endeavored to lay to his charge the attempt to 
found a new religion. For this reason they demand 
of him a proof, 1. Of having received from God his 
miracle-working power and prophetic inspiration ; 
and, 2. Of his theocratic commission. Inasmuch as 
the latter involved the former, Jesus appeals at once 
to John. John was the latest and greatest of the 
Old Testament prophets, and he had declared Jesus 
to be the Messiah. The Sanhedrim, though not rec- 
ognizing the claims of John, did not dare to call 
his mission into question before the people. They 
had designed to entrap Jesus in his words, expecting 
that he would appeal to his Divine dignity ; but 
Jesus appealed to John's testimony, thereby frus- 
trating not only their design, but confounding them 
before the people. This appeal to John's testimony 



was an appeal to an authority which they did not 
dare to impugn, and, at the same time, a solemn 
declaration to them, that their rejection of John's 
testimony made them guilty of formal apostasy from 
the hope of their fathers." (Lange.) 

Chapter XII, verses 1-12. Of the three para- 
bles, which, according to Matthew, Jesus delivered in 
the Temple, Mark gives only the second ; on the one 
hand, more condensed than Matthew; on the other, 
more full than Luke. According to Matthew, Christ's 
adversaries pronounced the sentence themselves, 
while according to Mark, Christ passes it. (See note 
on Matthew xxi, 41.) 

Verses 18-27. Like the Sadducees of old, modern 
infidels still attack the Christian faith by supposing 
the greatest improbabilities, if not absolute impos- 
sibilities. Worthy of our special notice is the calm 
dignity and meekness with which our Lord answers 
these mocking Sadducees. He simply reminds them 
of their ignorance of the Scriptures, and their 
spiritual unsusceptibility. Carnal men conceive of 
eternal life as something carnal, earthly, because 
they have no organ for the apprehension of the 
Divine. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at, that 
only those who know God as the living God, from 
their own inward experience, believe from the heart 
the resurrection of the body. — " In this narrative of 
our Lord's encounter with the skeptics of his day, 
four things claim our notice : The objection. The 
refutation. The argument. The limitation. I. The 
objection. The objection of the Sadducees, although 
illustrated by an extreme case, was on their grounds 
perfectly legitimate. They urged the confusion which 
must result from relationships, which in this life are 



1 Not the treasury proper is meant here, but a box or 
chest into which the worshipers cast their offerings. Be- 
ing, however, to a certain extent part of the treasury, it 
went by that name. According to the Rabbins this box 
consisted of thirteen brass chests, called trumpets from 
their orifices, which were wide above and small below, 
and stood in the court of the women. In addition to 
the regular tribute-money the voluntary offerings were 
deposited there. According to Lightfoot there were 
nine chests for the regular tribute-money, and four for 
voluntary offerings, from which wood, frankincense, deco- 



rations of the Temple, burnt-offerings, etc., were pur- 
chased. The voluntary offerings flowed most liberally 
before the Feast of the Passover. Scarcely any one ever 
entered the Temple without giving something. This 
practice is still observed in the synagogue. 2 The Aottov 
was the smallest copper coin. The widow gave two such 
coins, and might, as Bengel observes, have kept one. 
Mark states the actual value of the coin by telling us 
that two made one (Roman) quadrans, which was itself 
one-fourth of a Roman an, ten of which made a denari- 
us. A leplon was, therefore, about one-fifth of a cent. 



MARK XI, 27— XII, 44. 



727 



successive, becoming at the resurrection cotempo- 
raneous. Exactly analogous to this is a difficulty 
propounded by some at the present day, based on 
the fact, that the particles composing the living body 
are perpetually changing : whence it has been asked, 
If a soul has been vitally united to many successive 
sets of atoms, to which of those sets shall she be 
united in the resurrection? ''for they all had he?'.' 
II. The refutation. The reply of our Lord dis- 
poses at once both of the ancient and modern diffi- 
culty. He assures them that those marital rights, 
which seemed to them involved in such hopeless con- 
fusion, will exist no longer. In like manner it may 
be replied to the modern objector that, if the change 
of particles alluded 'to does not interfere with the 
present identity of the body, much less can we affirm 
it to preclude the perpetuation of that identity under 
conditions totally unknown to us. For any thing 
we know, atomic identity may form no feature in 
the resurrection body. HI. The Argument. The 
argument propounded by our Lord in proof of a 
resurrection rests on the words addressed by Jehovah 
to Moses from out of the burning bush In it we 
remark two peculiarities: 1. That this affirmative 
argument is not drawn from any thing in man's own 
nature, but _/ro?» his relationship to the Everlasting. 
This is high ground, and it is the only safe ground. 
Who that has studied the subtilties of metaphysi- 
cians about immateriality and indestructibility has 
not felt a painful misgiving as to the soundness of 
such evidence on which to rest an immortal hope? 
After all the labored pleadings does not the thought 
intrude, ' That which has had a beginning may have 
an end?' Hence heathen theories of immortality 
have mostly leaned for support either on Platonic 
preexistence, on the one hand, or on Oriental ab- 
sorption, on the other. It is only when we leave our 
dialectics and turn to the moral evidence, and see in 
the many triumphs of guilt and sufferings of inno- 
cence the necessity of an after-death retribution, that 
the mind attains any thing like satisfaction on the 
subject. And what is this, but an argument based 
on the moral character of God as reflected from the 
conscience of man ? If, therefore, the general con- 
sideration of suffering virtue and successful crime 
demands a future adjustment, much more does the 
fact of a Divine covenant instituted with individual 
man, and of which the promises remain yet to be 
fulfilled, demand a future life for its realization. 
Such a covenant existed between Jehovah and the 
patriarchs. At the time of Moses this covenant ex- 
isted still. 'I am the God,' not 'I was the God.' 
But they had slept in the cave of Machpelah for 
several centuries. Yet they had sought a better 
country — a father-land, and in faith they died, ' not 
having received the promises ;' ' wherefore God is 
not ashamed to be called their God : for he hath pre- 
pared for them a city.' (Heb. xi, 13-16.) This then 
is the Christian argument for immortality; the 
promise of Him who can not lie. ' Because I live, ye 



shall live also.' [It is vital union with him, who, 
having been ' raised up from the dead by the glory 
of the Father, is become the first-fruits of them 
that slept' Herein lies also the truth, that the hope 
of eternal life rests only upon man's personal com- 
munion with his God, and that a man, in order to be 
assured of his own personal immortality, must be 
assured of his personal union with God. And this ar- 
gument points the Sadducees at the same time to the 
proper source of all their doubts, which was nothing 
else than the estrangement of their inward life from 
God. The testimony of our own heart is, that with- 
out the consciousness of a personal union with God 
all faith in the soul's immortality has neither conso- 
lation nor a firm basis. This has been the uniform 
experience of all believers in the old as well as in 
the new dispensation ; not before man lias attained 
an assurance of the favor of God, can he have a 
hope of a blessed immortality, (Ps. xvi, 10, 11; 
lxxiii, 25, 26; lxxxiv, 12; Rom. viii, 38, 39;) and 
this Divinely-wrought hope remains firm and un- 
shaken as long as the inner religious life lasts.] 
2. We notice that our Lord's doctrine of immor- 
tality includes the resurrection of the body as a 
necessary part of the endless life of humanity. 
These promises belonged to the patriarchs, not as dis- 
embodied spirits, departed souls, ghosts, shades, but 
as men — creatures consisting of both body and soul. 
In body and soul, therefore, must they finally receive 
them. Herein the Gospel far outsoars the loftiest 
flight of human philosophy. Unassisted reason could 
only suggest the probability of the soul's surviving 
the death of the body. The oracle, which Revelation 
writes ' with an iron pen and lead in the rock for- 
ever,' is, 'In my flesh shall I see God.' This is the 
broad line of demarkation which distinguishes the 
immortality of Christian faith from that of philo- 
sophic speculation ; and it must not be lost sight of. 
For the leaven of Platonism still works among us, 
as it did in the early days of the Church. And 
though it may not in the majority of minds run to 
the extreme of resolving all history into myth, all 
prophecy into allegory, and all objective doctrine 
into subjective sentiment, yet there is danger of 
its substituting a vapid, misty, pseudo-spiritualism, 
for that vivid realism which characterizes Revela- 
tion in every page. IV. The Limitation. This is 
important. The Savior's argument refers not to the 
universal resurrection belonging to man generically 
but to ' the resurrection of life ' belonging only to 
those who are in covenant with God in Christ. As 
the Sadducees' objection lay against any resurrec- 
tion, it was sufficient for its refutation that ' the 
resurrection of the just' should be demonstrated; 
leaving our Lord at liberty on this occasion to pass 
over its terrible opposite. Now, without at all enter- 
ing into the question of the two resurrections spoken 
of in St. John's Revelation, it is most certain that a 
resurrection of peculiar blessedness is promised to 
God's chosen people, quite distinct from that which 



728 



MARK XI, 27— XII, 44. 



the general work of redemption insures to all men. 
This is no millenarian dream, but a cardinal truth 
of our holy religion. ' This,' said Jesus, ' is the 
Father's will, which hath sent me, that of all which 
he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should 
raise it up again at the last day.' When St. Paul, 
shaking from him all things else as dross, pressed 
forward with all the eagerness of his strong soul, ' if 
by any means he might attain to the out-rising from 
among the dead,' he must have had in view some- 
thing more than the common destiny of all men. 
And when the old confessors did not accept deliver- 
ance ' that they might obtain a better resurrection,' 
they are represented, not as fanatics, but as ex- 
emplars of Divine faith. This then is the ' living 
hope' of the true Christian, and of him alone. To 
him the resurrection is but the consummation of 
that conformity to the Divine Head, which by faith 
has already commenced in his soul. He is heir, 
with 'faithful Abraham,' ' of the covenant of promise.' 
But such a hope belongs not to those, who, ' without 
God in the world,' are ' dead in trespasses and sins;' 
for ' God is not the God of the dead but of the 
living.' " (Condensed and altered from the Hom- 
ilist.) 

Verses 28-34. Is more than all whole burnt- 
offerings and sacrifices. Love and inclination is 
what is required, not service and work ; all that is 
outwardly brought as an offering to the Lord is or- 
dained and accepted only on account of the heart. 
To an apprehension of this great truth the Old 
Testament Scriptures were well calculated to lead 
the devout reader, because they point out in many 
instances the superiority of a proper condition of the 
heart over all outward religious forms and practices. 
(See 1 Sam. xv, 22; Ps. xl, 7; Hos. vi, 6.) — And 
when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly — 
literally, having or using his reason, intelligently. 
A legitimate use of the reasoning faculty leads man 
to God, on which account the Lord said of this man 
that he was not far from the kingdom of God. 
"Whoever apprehends the spiritual nature of the 
law, especially in its contrast to outward forms of 
worship, is spiritually minded — rational in a moral 
point of view — is in a fair way of turning away from 
self-righteousness, and of obtaining that knowledge 
of himself which is an indispensable condition of en- 
tering into the kingdom of God. What this scribe 
still lacked was the total surrender to his conviction, 
its practical carrying out in following Jesus. The 
impression made upon him was an earnest of Christ's 
final victory over his most respectable opponents." 
(Lange.) — By a proper discernment of the spirit and 
intent of the Divine law a man gets near the king- 
dom of God; but in order to enter into the kingdom 
he needs a saving knowledge of Christ, through 
which alone the internal discord, between his delight 
in the Divine law and his constant violation of it, 
can be removed, (comp. Luke xiii, 24.) We may, 
also, find in this passage an intimation that many 



outside of the pale of his visible Church have a spiritual 
insight into the law and the Gospel, and are, conse- 
quently, nearer the kingdom of God than many a 
nominal member of the Church, but to such the 
word of Bengel applies : If thou art near the king- 
dom of God, enter into it. If thou fail to enter, it 
would have been better for thee never to have been 
near. — And no man after that durst ask him any 
question. Luke connects this remark with the dis- 
comfiture of the Sadducees, while Matthew has it 
after the question asked by the Lord. The refer- 
ence in each case is true ; for the object of the 
Pharisees in sending the scribe with his question was 
defeated beforehand by the personal character of the 
inquirer, he being himself pronounced by the Savior 
to be not far from the kingdom of God. " Thus the 
remarkable fact was brought out," says Dr. Alexan- 
der, "that while the worst of his opponents were un- 
able to convict him of an error or betray him into a 
mistake, the best of them, when brought into direct 
communication with him on the most important sub- 
jects, found themselves almost in the position of his 
own disciples." 

Verses 35-37. The great question addressed by 
our Savior to the Pharisees after their various in- 
sidious attempts to insnare him, is stated by Mat- 
thew, in its full historical significance, as the last 
decisive question put to his adversaries. In that 
Evangelist it. has, therefore, the form of a discussion 
or rabbinical disputation. Mark also indicates the 
same by saying, "And Jesus answered." From him 
we learn further, that Jesus addressed this question 
in hearing of the people. "The comment of Mark, 
that the common people heard him gladly, fore- 
shadows the Lord's moral conquest of the better dis- 
posed of the people, and his complete, intellectual 
triumph over all his adversaries. It shows us, also, 
that Jesus had it in his power at that moment to 
crush the hierarchy by the mere indication of his 
will before the people. But he, whose kingdom was 
not of this world, would not thus triumph over his 
enemies." (Lange.) 

Verses 38-40. Of the withering denunciation of 
the scribes and Pharisees, which is given by Mat- 
thew at length, Mark and Luke give only what 
Matthew has in the introductory warning and the 
first woe, the three leading features of their charac- 
ter, namely, ambition, avarice, and hypocritical self- 
righteousness. A full delineation of pharisaic Juda- 
ism had not the same value for heathen converts, 
for whom Mark and Luke wrote, as for the Jewish 
Christians, for whom Matthew primarily wrote. 

Verses 41-44. Most commentators connect this 
pleasing and significant short narrative with the 
Lord's denunciation of the avarice of the Pharisees, 
as if the severity of the rebuke thus administered 
was to be still hightened by the contrast between the 
poor widow, who gave to God all her substance, and 
those who, out of their abundance, cast in only a 
scanty portion, although they might not have ac- 



MARK XI, 27— XII, 44. 



729 



quired their property by unfair means like the Phar- 
isees. But Stier apprehends the true connection 
more correctly, when he says: "Immediately after 
the denunciation of woes upon the Pharisees, and 
consequently, as Matthew informs us, after the an- 
nouncement of the judgments upon Jerusalem, and 
of the desolation of the Temple, after the parting 
word, 'Ye shall henceforth see me no more,' he does 
not at once go away, but he sits down quietly once 
more to observe what is going on in this Temple. 
By his very silence he says, 'Have ye whom I have 
now upbraided any answer to return? I am ready 
to hear it.' He does not seek to escape from the 
wrath he had provoked by his powerful rebukes, for 
his hour is not yet come. This is one point. An- 
other point is this : he sits down right opposite the 
treasury-chest to observe how the people put in their 
contributions. During the few preceding days he 
had taken a view of every thing in the Temple; he 
lingers here ere he leaves it. For what other pur- 
pose but to manifest his condescending, patient sym- 
pathy with the sanctuary, now desecrated and given 
over to destruction, and then to intimate symbolic- 
ally along with this, what in future he would by no 
means fail to do in every house and sanctuary of his 
people as the rightful Lord and supreme guardian? 
It has been supposed that our Lord takes notice of 
the pious widow contributing out of her absolute 
poverty in order to draw a contrast that might put 
to shame the rapacity of the Pharisees, who devour 
widows' houses. But this idea seems to us to destroy 
the tender beauty of his conduct and saying. We 
suppose that after having uttered the lamentation, 
recorded in Matt, xxiii, 37, he has entirely finished his 
rebukes, and he has no intention to renew them. 
He rather calms his agitated heart by kindly conde- 
scending to any trace of godliness which is still to 
be found in that den of thieves so soon to be broken 
up, and really rejoices over a pair of mites brought 
to the Temple with simple good-intent for the sake 
of God. This is a lofty contrast between wrath and 
love! What a man! He is never exhausted in the 
immovable depths of the love of his holy soul, never 
unduly excited and moved by the most powerful out- 
bursts of judicial, zealous testimony. Immediately 
after a discourse like the preceding one, he has again 
the mind, the calmness, the delight, the readiness 
for quietly searching out and observing the smallest 
good. Did he then feel and act thus in the flesh? 
How does he now look down upon the gifts and 
offerings in every little Church and community, 
upon what is given and done in the whole world, 
that he may try it according to its value, want of 
value, or relative value, especially that he may not 
overlook the smallest thing, and that he may remind 
in the Churches each individual, 'I know thy work,' 
as at last he will proclaim it to all from the judg- 
ment-seat, 'This ye have done, this ye have not 
done.' " — The incident here recorded has always 
been acknowledged to be one of the greatest import- 



ance to the Church; a homiletical application seems 
to us to be in place here, and we know of no better 
one than is contained in the following homily 
abridged from the Homilist: This fragment of evan- 
gelical history illustrates three facts: First. That 
secular contributions for religious purposes are a 
Divine institution. Here, in one of the angles of 
the Temple, was a treasury chest to receive the offer- 
ings of all who entered the sacred edifice. God has 
made the sustentation, as well as the spread of relig- 
ion in the world, to depend upon the secular offerings 
of man. Why this? He could have studded the 
earth with temples and filled the world with Bibles, 
without such help. The arrangement is for man's 
good. " Collections" for religious purposes are among 
the most important means of grace. This is a point 
which requires to be insisted upon. The Church has 
come to regard a collection rather as a necessary 
evil, than a Divine ordinance; it is shunned rather 
than hailed; considered a sacrifice rather than a 
privilege. Secondly. That Jesus observes both the 
sum and spirit of these secular contributions. In a 
position commanding a view of the chest, Jesus 
stood, and saw who contributed ; ivhat was contrib- 
uted; and how it was contributed. Men frequently 
conceal the sum from their fellow-men, and nearly 
always the spirit; but Christ knows both, in every 
case. Thirdly. That the spirit of secular contribu- 
tion is, to Christ, a far more important thing than 
the sum. Jesus was now in the midst of all grades 
of society; some distinguished by wealth, some by 
office, and some by learning ; and from all these con- 
tributors he singles out one, whom he pronounces as 
having done more, and as being greater, than all the 
rest. What was it that gave this distinguished dig- 
nity to this woman ? Feeling. Her heart was 
right. Perhaps she looked the image of sorrow and 
poverty. There she is, meanly attired, her counte- 
nance furrowed, it may be, by grief, and pale with 
want; yet in her breast there circulate the noblest 
sympathies : her moral pulsations are healthy and 
strong. This passage leads us to infer three things 
concerning the worth of true feeling. I. That it is 
greater than secular wealth. The narrative tells 
us, that " rich men " were present, but Christ pro- 
nounces no commendation on them. It was that 
poor, friendless, forlorn widow, that enlisted his sym- 
pathies and won his high encomium, and that, because 
of the warm and genuine generosity of her heart. 
This conduct of our Savior suggests two remarks. 
First. That his conduct here is strikingly singular. 
Read the history of the world, or even mark the 
doings of your cotemporaries, and where will you 
find men that act as Jesus now acted, declaring, in 
the presence of the rich men of the day, the superi- 
ority of the pious poor to them ? To what do men 
take off their hats and render obeisance ? Not to 
noble feeling, as it glows in the bosom of the poor 
man, but to the gorgeous displays of opulence. The 
fact that Jesus acted contrary to the common prac- 



730 



MARK XIII, 1-37. 



tice of the race shows that he went against the 
general current of the world's feeling and conduct. 
Secondly. That his conduct is manifestly right. 
Although singular, man, every-where, feels it to be 
right. Had Jesus acted otherwise — had he mingled 
with the wealthy and stood aloof from the poor — 
paying ever more attention to the affluent worldling 
than to the indigent saint, humanity never could 
have believed that he was, what he professed to be, 
the Son of God. Christ teaches here, then, what all 
must feel to be right, though but few practically 
recognize, that true feeling is greater than secular 
wealth. Another thing which this passage leads us 
to infer, concerning the worth of true feeling, is : 
II. That it is greater than munificent deeds. 
These rich men cast in their "abundance;" some of 
them, probably, gave large sums ; and yet Jesus 
said, "This poor woman hath cast in more than they 
all." What is meant by the "more?" He must 
mean one of three things — -either financially, pro- 
portionally, or morally. It can not be the first. Is 
it the second ? Does he mean to say that she put in 
" more" in proportion to her means ? This was no 
doubt true. And it is frequently true that many 
who give sums too small to record in " reports," give 
more than those who lay down hundreds, or even 
thousands. The Christian law of proportion in 
giving is violated in every Church. But we do not 
think this is the meaning here. An individual may 
give much "more" in proportion to others, and yet 
not acceptably to Christ. The third we take to be 
the meaning : it was more morally : she gave her 
heart and self with her mites. First. This is more 
valuable in itself. In fact, there is no real value in 
a gift, unless it is done with the heart. " Though I 
give my body to be burned," etc. Secondly. This 
is more valuable in its influence. He who gives his 
strongest desires and best sympathies to a cause, 
gives that which will do far more good, though he 
has not a fraction of money to bestow, than if he 
presented his thousands without heart. If the man's 
heart is with it, his efforts, prayers, life — the totality 



of his influence, will be ever helping it on. Another 
thing which this passage leads us to infer, concern- 
ing the worth of true feeling, is : III. That it is 

GREATER THAN ARTISTIC MAGNIFICENCE. The Temple 

in which Jesus now stood was a truly-magnificent 
place, formed and furnished with the most costly 
materials, and arranged with the most exquisite 
taste and skill. Many of the visitors were now taken 
up in admiring it; "they spoke of the Temple, how 
it was adorned with goodly stones and gifts." But 
what did Jesus say ? Had he no eye for that fine 
specimen of Divine art? He looked at it; he was 
not unconscious of its grandeur; but feeling more 
impressed with the worth of souls, and, perhaps, with 
that specimen of noble feeling which the poor widow 
had displayed, he said, (Luke xxi, 5, 6,) "As for 
these things which ye behold, the days will come, in 
the which there shall not be left one stone upon 
another, that shall not be thrown down." This 
Temple is built of perishing materials and will share 
the fate of all that is earthly, but the soul is im- 
perishable. If we suppose, as is certainly natural, 
that Jesus thus refers to the magnificent Temple in 
comparison with the noble feelings which the poor 
widow had developed; then we have, undoubtedly, 
the idea that true feeling is greater than any artistic 
magnificence. " As for these things " — as if Christ 
had said — -" what are they to the noblo heart of that 
widow?" This will apply to the temples of a people, 
in relation to their worship. In these days people 
seem marvelously interested in rearing magnificent 
edifices for worship ; they must have tall steeples, 
gothic roofs, painted windows, and architectural 
elaborations, even though, in some cases, they can 
not pay for them by some thousands. We rejoice in 
the improved taste of Christians in their ecclesias- 
tical buildings. But, as " for these things," what are 
they in comparison with the feeling of the worship- 
ers ? We must judge of the prosperity of religion, 
not by the number nor magnificence of our temples, 
but by the amount of true feeling which the wor- 
shipers display. 



SECTION XVI. 



THE PROPHECY OF CHRIST CONCERNING- THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE AND HIS 

JUDICIAL COMING. 

CHAPTBE XIII, 1-37. 

1. THE OCCASION OF HIS DISCOURSE. 
Verses 1—4. (Compare Matthew xxiv, 1-3; Luke xxi, 5-7.) 

(1) And as he went out of the Temple, one of his disciples saith unto him, Master, 
see what manner of stones and what huildings are here! (2) And Jesus answering 
said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone 



MARK XIII, 1-37. 731 



upon another, that shall not be thrown down. (3) And as he sat upon the Mount 
of Olives, over against the Temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked 
him privately, (4) tell us, when shall these things he? and what shall be the sign 
when all these things shall he fulfilled? 

2. A GENERAL SURVEY OP WHAT IS TO PRECEDE CHRIST'S JUDICIAL COMING. 
Verses 5— 13. (Compare Matthew xxiv, 4^14; Luke xxi, 8-19.) 

(5) And Jesus answering them began to say, Take heed lest ajiy man deceive 
you : (6) For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive 
many. (7) And when ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars, be ye not troubled : 
for such things must needs be ; but the end shall not be yet. (8) For nation shall 
rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes 
in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles : these are the beginnings 
of sorrows. (9) But take heed to yourselves : for they shall deliver you up to coun- 
cils ; and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten : and ye shall be brought before 
rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them. (10) And the Gospel 
must first be published among all nations. (11) But when they shall lead you, and 
deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye pre- 
meditate : but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye : for it is 
not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost. (12) ]S"ow the brother shall betray the 
brother to death, and the father the son ; and children shall rise up against their 
parents, and shall cause them to be put to death. (13) And ye shall be hated of all 
men for my name's sake : but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be 
saved. 

3. THE PREMONITORY SIGNS OF THE APPROACHING DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM, 

AND OF THE JUDGMENT WHICH IS TO TAKE PLACE WHEN THE 

TIMES OF THE GENTILES SHALL BE FULFILLED. 

"Verses 14—23. (Compare Matthew xxit, 15-28; Luxe xxi, 20-24.) 

(14) But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel 
the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then 
let them that be in Judea flee to the mountains : (15) And let him that is on the 
housetop not go down into the house, neither enter therein, to take any thing out 
of his house : (16) And let him that is in the field not turn back again for to take 
up his garment. (17) But woe to them that are with child, and to them that give 
suck in those days ! (18) And pray ye that your flight be not in the Winter. (19) 
For in those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the beginning of the cre- 
ation which God created unto this time, neither shall be. (20) And except that the 
Lord had shortened those days, no flesh should be saved : but for the elect's sake, 
whom he hath chosen, he hath shortened the days. (21) And then if any man 
shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ ; or, lo, he is there ; believe him not : (22) For 
false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to se- 
duce, if it were possible, even the elect. (23) But take ye heed: behold, I have 
foretold you all things. 



732 



MARK XIII, 1-37. 



4. THE LAST TYPE AND VIRTUAL BEGINNING OP THE PINAL JUDGMENT. 
"Verses S4-S7. (Compare Matthew xxix, 29-31; Luke xxi, 25-28.) 

(24) But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall he darkened, and 
the moon shall not give her light. (25) And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the 
powers that are in heaven shall be shaken. (26) Aud then shall they see the Son 
of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. (27) And then shall he 
send his angels, and shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the 
uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven. 

5. THE SUDDENNESS OP OUR LORD'S JUDICIAL COMING, AND THE NECESSITY OP 

CONSTANT WATCHFULNESS. 

"Verses 28-37. (Compare Matthew xxiv, 32-51; Luke xxi, 29-36.) 

(28) ISTow learn a parable of the fig-tree : When her branch is yet tender, and 
putteth forth leaves, ye know that Summer i3 near: (29) So ye in like manner, 
when ye shall see these things come to pass, know that it is nigh, even at the doors. 
(30) Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things 
be done. (31) Heaven and earth shall pass away : but my words shall not pass 
away. (32) But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels 
which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. (33) Take ye heed, watch 
and pray : for ye know not when the time is. (34) For the Son of man is, as a man 
taking a far journey, who left his house, and gave authority to his servants, and to 
every man his work, and commanded the porter to watch. (35) "Watch ye there- 
fore : for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at mid- 
night, or at the cock-crowing, or in the morning : (36) Lest coming suddenly he 
find you sleeping. (37) And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch. 



Verses 1-4. Why does the national punishment 
of the Jewish people, here predicted, impress the 
mind with a deeper awe than that of any other 
nation"! I. On account of the import of the simple, 
historical fact. It was not only the complete de- 
struction of their capital city and national life, but 
the total subversion of the sanctuary of God, and the 
dispersion of the covenant people of God. II. On 
account of the typical significance of the great 
catastrophe. The destruction of Jerusalem is the 
type and earnest of our Lord's coming to judgment. 
As he overturned the opposing power of the Jewish 
hierarchy and polity, he will put all his enemies 
under his feet. III. On account of its concomitant 
events. 1. The fall of Jerusalem was the beginning 
of the spread of the Gospel among all nations, and 
is, for this very reason, the type of the judgment to 
be visited upon the antichristian nations, which shall 
precede the ushering in of the millennium. But, 2. 
This is the reason why prior to the introduction of 
the millennium the Church is militant, characterized 
by persecutions from without, and by heresies, apos- 
tasies, and lukewarmness from within. 



Verses 5-13. The prophecy concerning the false 
Christs refers to all those that claim Christ's place 
in relation to man, such as the pretended vicar of 
Christ, and his priesthood, ecclesiastical despots, 
high-church bigots, etc., and has, alas! been fulfilled 
in every age of the Church. — What use are believers 
to make of the signs of the times in determining the 
time of Christ's coming ? I. What are the signs 
that shall precede his coming ? In general, every 
great change in the kingdom of God points to this 
greatest and last one. Such are, 1. Ecclesiastical 
convulsions by the manifestation of antichristian 
principles; 2. Political and national convulsions, 
desolating wars, the rise and downfall of kingdoms 
and nations ; 3. Natural phenomena, such as fam- 
inos, pestilences, and earthquakes ; 4. Persecution 
of the faithful, apostasy, increase of wickedness. II. 
How far we may look for the coming of Christ as 
near at hand from these signs of the times? 1. We 
must not confine every coming of Christ to his last 
coming to judgment. 2. Every violent commotion 
in the political and physical world may be viewed as 
a coming of Christ, but not as his last coming. 3. 



MARK XIII, 1-37. 



733 



His last coming is conditioned by the preceding 
preaching of the Gospel all over the earth. 4. As 
the exact time of his coming to judgment is not re- 
vealed to us, the Lord gives us a threefold exhorta- 
tion : (1.) To beware of deceivers; (2.) Not to be 
disheartened, but to examine boldly and attentively 
the signs of the times; (3.) To persevere to the end 
in faith, hope, and charity. — The circumspection and 
intrepidity which the Lord recommends to his dis- 
ciples in reference to his coming : 1. Circumspection 
and care with reference to enticing illusions of a 
counterfeit Christianity ; fearlessness with regard to 
threatening wars and other national calamities ; 2. 
Circumspection and care with regard to the enemies 
of the Gospel and their treachery ; fearlessness with 
regard to the defense of the Gospel; 3. Care and 
circumspection with reference to the temptations 
coming from the nearest relations and the world in 
general ; fearlessness in view of the certain deliver- 
ance of the faithful Christian. 

Verses 14-23. How God displays his mercy even 
in the visitation of the severest judgments : 1. God 
mercifully apprises men of the impending storm and 
indicates its coming by unmistakable signs ; 2. He 
opens a place of refuge and directs his children 
to flee thither ; 3. He points out prayer as the best 
means of mitigating his judgments; 4. He never 
loses sight of those that innocently suffer; 5. He 
shortens the time and lessens the severity of his 
judgments for the elect's sake; 6. He mercifully 
warns against apostasy as the greatest of all possi- 
ble calamities. — The great tribulation: 1. The 
central point of the Divine judgments upon the an- 
cient world; 2. The type of the judgments that shall 
fall upon the modern world; 3. The beginning and 
the last premonitory sign of the end of the world. — 
Wherever the carcass is, there will the eagles be 
gathered together — a law of life: 1. Typified in na- 
ture; 2. Fulfilled and constantly fulfilling in the 
course of history; 3. Waiting for its final fulfillment 
at the end of time. 

Verses 24-27. The second advent of Christ. 
I. Its prevenient signs, startling commotions both 
in Church and State, corresponding to violent con- 
vulsions in nature; their simultaneous appearance 
will show the close harmony between the laws of 
nature and those of the spiritual world. II. Its 
nature. 1. There is a twofold coming of Christ, a 
gradual and a final coming. For this reason the 
preparatory signs are at all times more or less 
visible, showing forth important periods of progress- 
ive developments in the Church, all of which, how- 
ever, point in their turn to the end. 2. In every 
such development, connected with powerful and 
painful commotions, the faithful will recognize the 
exercise of Christ's judicial office in his Church. 
For by severe judgments he will bring about a 
salutary sifting, and in this way prepare the Church 
for his abiding and perfect spiritual reign. 3. The 
last coming of Christ will comprise all his antece- 



dent, typical comings, and fulfill them at the same 
time. III. How far is our preparation for his com- 
ing affected by the nature of his coming? 1. With 
the coming of Christ this present world-system will 
come to a close ; let every one, therefore, tear him- 
self inwardly loose from the world, lest he perish 
with it. 2. Inasmuch as scarcely one preparatory 
sign will appear, that has not appeared in substance 
before, the last decisive day will come for most men 
unexpectedly, and thus prove their ruin. 3. For 
this reason all signs of all times bear the image of 
the last signs and times, in order that we should not 
be careless and indifferent at any time, but rather 
look upon every day as possibly the day of the final 
judgment. — The last day — the great festival-day 
of the Church : 1. While all created luminaries 
grow pale, the Lord himself shall appear as the 
bright luminary of his day ; 2. The impersonal ele- 
ments of the world disappear, while the glorified 
person of the Redeemer is fully revealed, and thus 
his personal kingdom is ushered in ; 3. All the 
wicked being separated and removed, there is no 
alloy in the union of pure spirits; 4. Angels shall 
be the ministering servants at this great day — all 
the elect, both in heaven and on earth, being gath- 
ered by them. 

Verses 28-37. How will men be affected when 
they see the signs preceding the final catastrophe ? 
I. The effects of these signs on the world. 1. See- 
ing the fallacy of all their shrewd calculations, men 
are seized with great fear ; 2. Seeing that what they 
considered an impossibility comes nevertheless to 
pass, their hearts shall fail them for fear; completely 
paralyzed in all their energies, they shall tremblingly 
await the things that are to come ; 3. At last they 
shall see the Son of man himself come in his glory, 
and shall be compelled to pronounce upon them- 
selves the sentence of condemnation. II. Their 
effects upon believers. 1. Oppressed and persecuted 
a long time by the world, they shall then raise their 
heads, seeing that their redemption is nigh; for as 
the leaves of the fig-tree proclaim the presence of the 
Spring, so these signs and wonders assure them with 
infallible certainty of the nearness of the coming 
of their Lord ; 2. They are diligent in the discharge 
of all their duties, persevering in prayer ; the signs 
of the times do not discourage them, but whatever 
wonderful phenomena take place, they are so many 
solemn admonitions to them to be always ready to 
stand before the judgment-seat of Christ. — The last 
day — known to the Father alone: 1. To the Father 
as the Omnipotent Creator and Dispenser of all 
things; 2. To the Father in the dealings of his 
grace and drawings to his Son ; 3. To the Father in 
the exercise of his supreme long-suffering and of his 
awful wrath; 4. What Christ in the day of his flesh 
did not know, what angels can not know, Christians 
ought not to pry into. Not knowing the exact 
time of Christ's coming, we ought the more to have 
a daily assurance of our personal salvation. 



734. MARK XIV, 1-16. 



SECTION XYII. 

THE LAST PASSOVER. 
CHAPTEE XIV, 1-16. 

1. THE COWARDICE AND CONFUSION OF HIS ENEMIES. 

"Verses l, 3. (Compare Matthew xxti, 3-5.) 

(1) After two days was the feast of the Passover, and of unleavened bread: and 
the chief-priests and the scribes sought how they might take him by craft, and put 
him to death. (2) But they said, Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar of 
the people. 

3. THE SUPPER AT BETHANY. THE TREACHERY OF JUDAS. 
"Verses 3—11. (Compare Matthew xxvi, 6-16; Luke xxii, 1-6.) 

(3) And being in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, 
there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very pre- 
cious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head. (4) And there were some 
that had indignation within themselves, and said, Why was this waste of the oint- 
ment made? (5) For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, 
and have been given to the poor. And they murmured against her. (6) And 
Jesus said, Let her alone ; why trouble ye her ? she hath wrought a good work on 
me. (7) For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may 
do them good: but me ye have not always. (8) She hath done what she could: 
she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying. (9) Verily I say unto you, 
Wheresover this Gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also 
that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her. (10) And Judas 
Iscariot, one of the twelve, went unto the chief-priests, to betray him unto them. 
(11) And when they heard it, they were glad, and promised to give him money. 
And he sought how he might conveniently betray him. 

3. THE PREPARATION FOR THE PASSOVER. 

"Verses 13— ie. (Compare Matthew xxvi, 17-19; Luke xxii, 7-13.) 

(12) And the first day of unleavened bread, when they killed the passover, his 
disciples said unto him, Where wilt thou that we go and prepare that thou mayest 
eat the Passover? (13) And he sencleth forth two of his disciples, and saith unto 
them, G-o ye into the city, and there shall meet you a man bearing a pitcher of 
water: follow him. (14) And wheresoever he shall go in, say ye to the goodman 
of the house, The Master saith, Where is the guestchamber, where I shall eat the 
Passover with my disciples? (15) And he will shew you a large upper room fur- 



MARK XIV, 1-16. 



735 



nished and prepared: there make ready for us. (16) And his disciples went forth, 
and came iuto the city, and found as he had said unto them : and they made ready 
the Passover. 



Verses 1, 2. Let us observe how God can disap- 
point the designs of wicked men, and overrule them 
to his own glory. Our Lord's enemies did not in- 
tend to make his death a public transaction. They 
sought to take him by craft. They said, not on the 
feast day, lest there be an uproar of the people. 
Their plan was to do nothing till the Feast of the 
Passover was over, and the worshiping multitudes 
had returned to their own homes. The overruling 
providence of God completely defeated this politic 
design. The betrayal of our Lord took place at an 
earlier time than the chief-priests had expected. 
The death of our Lord took place on the very day 
when Jerusalem was most full of people, and the 
Passover Feast was at its hight. In every way the 
counsel of these wicked men was turned to foolish- 
ness. They thought to have put him to death privily 
and without observation ; and instead, they were 
compelled to crucify him publicly, and before the 
whole nation of the Jews. There is comfort in all 
this for the followers of Christ, They live in a 
troubled world, and are often tossed to and fro by 
anxiety about public events. Let them not doubt 
that every thing is ordered for good by an all-wise 
God, that all things in the world around them are 
working together for their Father's glory. Let them 
call to mind the words of the Psalmist : " The kings 
of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take 
council together against the Lord." "He that sit- 
teth in the heavens shall laugh ; the Lord shall have 
them in derision." It has been so in time past. It 
will be so in time to come. 

Verses 3-9. Let us observe how good works are 
sometimes undervalued and misunderstood. Mary's 
act, springing from gratitude and love to the Lord, 
was blamed even by the disciples. Their colder 
hearts could not understand such costly liberality. 
They called it " waste." Let us beware of the spirit 
of narrow-minded fault-finding. It is too common 
in the Church. There are always such as decry 
what they call extremes in religion, and are inces- 
santly recommending what they term moderation in 
the service of Christ. If a man devotes his time, 
money, and affections without reserve to the pur- 
suit of worldly things, they do not blame him. But 
if the same man devotes himself and all he has to 
Christ, they can scarcely find words to express their 
sense of his folly. Let charges like these not dis- 
turb us ; let us rather pity those who make them. 
If a man once understands the sinfulness of sin, and 
the mercy of Christ in dying for him, he will never 
think any thing too good or too costly to give to 
Christ. He will fear wasting time, talents, money, 
affections on the things of this world, but he will not 



be afraid of wasting them on his Savior. He will 
fear going into extremes about business, money, 
politics, or pleasure; but he will not be afraid of 
doing too much for Christ. Let us devote ourselves 
and all we have to Christ's glory. Our position in 
the world may be lowly, and our means of useful- 
ness few. But let us, like Mary, do what we can. 
Finally, let us see in the praise our Savior bestowed 
upon her a sweet foretaste of things yet to come in 
the day of judgment. Let us believe that the same 
Jesus, who here pleaded the cause of his loving 
handmaid when she was blamed, will one day plead 
for all who have been his servants in this world. 
Let us work on, remembering that his eye is upon 
us, and that all we do is noted in his book. Let us 
not heed what men say or think of us because of 
what we do in the service of Christ. The praise of 
Christ at the last day will more than compensate 
for all we suffer in this world from unkind tongues. 

Verses 10, 11. Let us learn from the melan- 
choly history of Judas, to what lengths a man may 
go in a false profession of religion. Judas was 
chosen by the Lord himself to be an apostle. He 
was privileged to be a companion of the Messiah, 
and an eye-witness of his mighty works. He was 
sent forth to preach the kingdom of God, and to 
work miracles in Christ's name. He was so like his 
fellow-apostles, that they did not suspect him of be- 
ing a traitor. And yet this very man turns out at 
last a false-hearted child of the devil. Never was 
there such a fall, such an apostasy, such a miserable 
end to a fair beginning. And how can this amazing 
conduct of Judas be accounted for ? The love of 
money was the chief cause of this man's ruin. The 
Holy Ghost declares plainly " he was a thief." (John 
xii, 6.) And his case stands before the world as an 
eternal comment on the solemn words, " the love of 
money is the root of all evil." (1 Tim. vi, 10.) May 
we then lay to heart our Lord's caution, to beware 
of covetousness ! (Luke xii, 15.) It is a sin that 
eats like a cancer, and once admitted into our 
hearts, may lead us finally into every wickedness. 
The true Christian ought to be far more afraid of 
being rich than of being poor. 

Verses 12-16. The extraordinary direction which 
the Lord gave his disciples with regard to the prep- 
aration of the Paschal meal, was designed, I. To im- 
press upon this last Passover the stamp of Divine 
dignity and authority, and to furnish them with a 
lesson of faith and obedience, from which they 
should learn to obey the Lord implicitly, and to 
leave their future, temporal support with Him, in 
whose service they should lack nothing. These 
revelations of the hidden glory of their Lord were 



736 



MARK XIV, 17-31. 



to be to them, at the same time, a counterpoise to 
that depth of humiliation into which they were soon 
to see him sink. II. It is very probable, that our 
Lord gave the mysterious direction in order to keep 



the place where he desired to eat the Passover a 
secret from Judas, and thus to prevent him from 
communicating it to the high-priests. Even this 
should have been a warning to Judas. 



SECTION XVIII. 

JESUS EATS THE PASSOVER WITH HIS DISCIPLES. 
CHAPTEE XIV, 17-31. 

1. THE TRAITOR UNMASKED. 

"Verses 17— 21. (Compare Matthew xxvi, 20-25; Luke xxii, 21-23; John xiii, 21-30.) 

(17) And in the evening he cometh with the twelve. (18) And as they sat and 
did eat, Jesus said, Verily I say unto you, One of you which eateth with me shall 
betray me. (19) And they began to be sorrowful, and to say unto him one by one, 
Is it I? and another said, is it I? (20) And he answered and said unto them, It is 
one of the twelve, that dippeth with me in the dish. 1 (21) The Son of man indeed 
goeth, as it is written of him : but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is 
betrayed! good were it for that man if he had never been born. 



2. THE INSTITUTION OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 
"Verses 23-25. (Compare Matthew xxvi, 26-29; Luke xxii, 19, 20; 1 Corinthians xi, 23-25.) 

(22) And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave 
to them, and said, Take, eat ; 2 this is my body. (23) And he took the cup, and 
when he had given thanks, he gave it to them: and they all drank of it. (24) And 
he said unto them, This is my blood of the new 3 testament, which is shed for 
many. (25) Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine, 
until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God. 

3. THE PREDICTION OF THE OFFENSE OF THE DISCIPLES, AND OF PETER'S DENIAL. 
Verses 26- 31. (Compare Matthew xxvi, 30-35; Luke xxii, 31-34; John xiii, 36-38.) 

(26) And when they had sung a hymn, they went out into the Mount of Olives. 
(27) And Jesus saith unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: 4 
for it is written, I will smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered. (28) 



1 According to John xiii, 26, our Lord said : " To 
whom I shall give a sop when I have dipped it." 
Lange supposes that Judas, in order to conceal his em- 
barrassment and to feign composure, stretched out his 
hand for the sop while Jesus' hand was still in the 
dish, and that, for this reason, Jesus added the words 
recorded here. 2 "Eat" is wanting in A, B, C, and sev- 
eral other Codices. 3 "New 13 wanting in B, C, D, L. 
Tischendorf omits it; Lachman retains it according to 



A and other Codices. The reading is also fluctuating in 
Matthew. The expression, ' The blood of the testa- 
ment,' can, from the nature of the case, mean nothing 
else than, of the new testament." (Lange.) 4 The words, 
"because of me this night," are wanting in many 
manuscripts, and may have been transferred from verse 
29. Lachman, however, has retained " because of me ' 
according to A and other Codices, and he has also "this 
night " in brackets. 



MARK XIV, 27-31. 



But after that I am risen, I will go before you into Galilee. (29) But Peter said 
unto him, Although all shall be offended, yet will not I. (30) And Jesus saith unto 
him, Verily I say unto thee, That this day, even in this night, before the cock crow- 
twice, thou shalt deny me thrice. (31) But he spake the more vehemently, If I 
should die with thee, I will not deny thee in any wise. Likewise also said they all. 



Verses 17-20. Let us learn from this passage 
that self-examination should precede the reception of 
the Lord's Supper. By the solemn warning, " One 
of you which eateth with me shall betray me," the 
Lord meant to stir up in the minds of his disciples 
those very searchings of heart which are here so 
touchingly recorded. He meant to teach his whole 
Church throughout the world, that the time of draw- 
ing near to the Lord's table should be a time for 
diligent self-inquiry. The benefit of the Lord's Sup- 
per depends entirely on the spirit and frame of mind 
in which we receive it. The state of mind which we 
should look for in ourselves before going to the 
Lord's table is well described in the Catechism of 
the Church of England. We ought to " examine 
ourselves whether we repent truly of our former 
sins — whether we steadfastly purpose to lead a new 
life— whether we have a lively faith in God's mercy 
through Christ, and a thankful remembrance of his 
death — and whether we are in charity with all men." 
If our conscience can answer these questions satis- 
factorily, we may receive the Lord's Supper without 
fear. More than this God does not require of any 
communicant. Less than this ought never to con- 
tent us. 

Verse 21. We are here taught the relation which 
man's free agency bears to the Divine government of 
the world. The two are perfectly consistent; for, 

1. Man is a free, moral agent. The Lord would not 
attribute any guilt to Judas, nor pronounce the awful 
woe against him, if he had been the passive instru- 
ment of a Divine decree, which he could not resist. 

2. The infinite power and wisdom of God can make 
even the sins of men to subserve the carrying out of 
his Divine mercy in our redemption. 

Verses 22-25. Lange remarks: "As the first 
Passover was celebrated by the Israelites in the firm 
belief of their being spared, before they were actually 
spared in that terrible night, so the New Testament 
Passover — the Lord's Supper — was instituted in the 
full assurance of the salvation of the human race by 
the Lord Jesus Christ, before this great fact was ac- 
complished by his death and subsequent resurrec- 
tion." — And they all drank of it. This is an 
expression not used of the bread, and prophetically 
condemns the practice of the Romish Church, which 
withholds the cup from the laity. Mark, as it seems, 
desiring to lay special stress on the fact that they all 
drank from the cup in their turn, introduces the 
words of our Lord, as spoken while the cup was pass- 
ing round. — The Lords Supper. 1. Its institution 
is inexplicable for him who sees in the Lord's death 



47 



nothing more than the death of a very holy man, 
who left us an example how to die. 2. It is the ful- 
fillment of what was typified in the Old Testament, 
and no type was so full of meaning as the Passover 
at its original institution. 3. A covenant-act. 4. 
A grateful acceptance of the atonement. 5. A 
mutual communion of the redeemed. 6. A type of 
the joys of heaven. — Let it be a settled principle, 
that no unbeliever ought to go to the Lord's table, 
and that the sacrament will not do our souls the 
slightest good, if we do not receive it with repent- 
ance and faith. Those who come to it without re- 
pentance and faith will go away worse than they 
came. It is meant to strengthen and increase grace, 
but not to impart it — to help faith to grow, but not 
to implant it. If we have faith in Christ, it is our 
duty, as well as our privilege, to go to the Lord's 
Supper, and if we turn our back on his table we 
commit a great sin. If we live yet in sin and world- 
liness, we have no business at the communion. We 
must repent and believe with the heart unto right- 
eousness. Then, and not till then, can we worthily 
eat and drink. 

Verses 26-31. Before the cock crow twice. 
The other Evangelists speak only of one crowing of 
the cock ; Mark is more exact in the statement, 
based on the words of Peter, that even the first crow- 
ing (v. 68) did not bring him to himself. From 
this statement of Mark we learn, also, the time of 
the trial of the Lord. (See note on Matt, xxvi, 
31-35.) — We are taught here how much ignorant 
self-confidence is often found in the heart of profess- 
ing Christians. Peter could not think it possible 
that he would ever deny his Lord. " If I should die 
with thee," he says, "I will not deny thee in any 
wise." And he did not stand alone in his confi- 
dence. The other disciples were of the same opinion. 
" Likewise also said they all." Yet what did all this 
confident boasting come to? Twelve hours did not 
pass away before all the disciples forsook our Lord 
and fled. So little do we know how we shall act 
in any particular position till we are placed in it ! 
There is far more wickedness in all our hearts 
than we know. We never can tell how far we 
might fall, if once placed in temptation. There is 
no degree of sin into which the greatest saint may 
not run, if he is not held up by the grace of God, 
and if he does not watch and pray. The seeds of 
every wickedness lie hidden in our hearts. " He 
that trusteth his own heart is a fool," (Prov. xxviii, 
26.) "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed 
lest he fall," (1 Cor. x, 12.) 



738 MARK XIV, 32-52. 



SECTION XIX. 

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE. 

CHAPTBE XIY, 32-52. 

1. THE AGONY OP OUR LORD IN GETHSEMANE. 

Verses 32—43. (Compare Matthew xxvi, 36-46; Luke xxii, 39-46.) 

(32) And they came to a place which was named G-ethsemane : and he saith to 
his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray. (33) And he taketh with him Peter 
and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy; (34) and 
saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death : tarry ye here, and 
watch. (35) And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, 
if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. (36) And he said, Abba, Father, 
all things are possible unto thee ; take away this cup from me : nevertheless, not 
what I will, but what thou wilt. (37) And he cometh, and findeth them sleeping, 
and saith unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou? couldest not thou watch one hour? 
(38) Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, 
but the flesh is weak. (39) And again he went away, and prayed, and spake the 
same words. (40) And when he returned, he found them asleep again, (for their 
eyes were heavy,) neither wist they what to answer him. (41) And he cometh the 
third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest : it is enough, 
the hour is come ; behold, the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 
(42) Rise up, let us go ; lo, he that betray eth me is at hand. 

3. THE SEIZURE OF JESUS, AND THE PLIGHT OF HIS DISCIPLES. 
"Verses 43—53. (Compare Matthew xxvi, 47-56; Luke xxii, 47-53; John xviii, 3-12.) 

(43) And immediately, while he yet spake, cometh Judas, one of the twelve, 
and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief-priests and 
the scribes and the elders. (44) And he that betrayed him had given them a token, 
saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he ; take him, and lead him away 
safely. (45) And as soon as he was come, he goeth straightway to him, and saith, 
Master, Master ; and kissed him. (46) And they laid their hands on him, and took 
him. (47) And one of them that stood by drew a sword, and smote a servant of 
the high-priest, and cut off his ear. (48) And Jesus answered and said unto them, 
Are ye come out, as against a thief, with swords and with staves to take me? (49). I 
was daily with you in the Temple teaching, and ye took me not: but the Scriptures 
must be fulfilled. (50) And they all forsook him, and fled. (51) And there fol- 
lowed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; 
and the young men laid hold on him: (52) And he left the linen cloth, and fled 
fi om them naked. 



MARK XIV, 32-52. 



739 



Verses 32-42. And began to be sore amazed 

AND TO BE VERT HEAVY. The verb £K&a.{i8iic&ai, 
rendered, to be sore amazed, is applied to the fright 
caused by a thunder-clap, (Acts ix, 6,) and by a 
specter, (Matt, xiv, 26.) On the unheard-of anguish 
of soul that now seized the Savior, see the notes in 
Matthew. Lange remarks : " The treacherous, false, 
and despairing world, represented by Judas, grieves 
his heart; the powers of darkness, under whose con- 
trol sinners act, fill him with horror, while the im- 
potent, fettered humanity, represented by the three 
chosen disciples, wrapt in sleep for sadness, calls 
forth in him the feeling of entire loneliness." — And 

PRAYED THAT IF IT WERE POSSIBLE THE HOUR MIGHT 

pass from him. While Mark lays the main stress on 
the agonizing supplication of Jesus, Matthew em- 
phasizes more the unconditional surrender of his will 
to his Father's will. — Abba, Father. "Abba, the 
Aramaic word for Father, is here preserved by the 
Evangelist, like other vernacular expressions which 
we have already met with, (v, 41 ; vii, 11; ix, 5 ; 
xi, 21.) He also gives the Greek translation, not as 
uttered by our Lord himself, but as necessary to its 
being understood by Gentile readers. This seems 
more likely than the opinion of some writers, that 
the two forms, Greek and Aramaic, had become 
combined in practice so as to form one name, which 
they prove from Paul's employing the same com- 
bination, (Rom. viii, 15; Gal. iv, 6.) But how could 
such a combination have arisen, if not from the 
necessities of those to whom the language of our 
Lord was not vernacular? Paul's use of the Ara- 
maic form arose, most probably, from the tradition 
of our Savior's having used it on this occasion." 
(Alexander.) — Simon, sleepest thou? The Lord 
calls him very significantly Simon, as he generally 
did, whenever he designed to remind him of his 
weakness and old nature. — Neither wist they 
what to answer him. Wist is the past tense of the 
obsolete wis, to know. They had no excuse to offer, 
and, therefore, kept silent, (comp. chap, ix, 6.) — 
Sleep on now [literally, sleep the rest, namely, of 
your time] and take your rest. Some expositors 
take these words as an interrogation : Do ye yet 
sleep f But the Greek to lotxov, refers only to the 
future. The verb is, therefore, to be taken as an 
imperative. Meyer, and most of the German inter- 
preters, regard it as ironical, implying a still more 
severe reproof: " Sleep on, continue to sleep!" and 
say that after a short pause, seeing Judas come, he 
told them in earnest, that there is now no time for 
sleeping ; but how improbable is it, that the Lord 
should have spoken ironically on an occasion like 
this! We, therefore, follow Bengel, who supplies 
the words, "if you can," and supposes that after the 
Lord had gone through his agony, some time still 
elapsed before Judas appeared, and that Jesus kindly 
suffered his disciples to sleep the few remaining 
moments, awakening them when the traitor ap- 
proached.— It is enough. In Greek it is a single 



word, a-kx^ 1 -, the meaning of which is rather obscure. 
The translation, It is enough, is approved by most 
expositors. If construed with what goes before, it 
means, You need no longer watch with me ; but it is 
better to refer it to what follows, meaning, You have 
slept enough now. — -We subjoin a few homiletical 
sketches on this important section from different 
stand-points. Gethsemane, or God's Nearness to 
Man. Man needs a realizing sense that, though the 
Divine be infinitely removed from the human, there 
is between them oneness of soul and sympathy. To 
render this possible, the Divine comes down to the 
level of the human — becomes human. "The Word 
was made flesh.'' In Christ we feel that the great 
God is our Father. " As the children are partakers 
of flesh and blood, he also himself took part of the 
same." Gethsemane teaches us in the most affect- 
ing manner God's oneness with man in the person 
of Jesus. We there learn how the Son of God is 
sinless, and yet like us in feeling and heart. — The 
agony of Christ — the effect of Ms priestly sympathy 
with a fallen world. 1. He feels all its woes, hence 
his suffering. 2. He realizes the whole power of sin 
in its woes, hence the struggle. 3. He atones for 
the whole guilt in its woes, hence his persevering 
prayer. — How does the contemplation of the darkest 
hours in the life of our Savior strengthen and com- 
fort us in the hour of our sorest trials ? I. It 
teaches us patience. 1. The courage of the patient 
sufferer does not consist in an unnatural suppression 
of human feelings; 2. On the contrary, pain is to 
be keenly felt, yet not as coming accidentally, but as 
being inflicted upon us by the all-wise and gracious 
will of God. II. It teaches us to pray, 1. With 
filial confidence ; 2. With perfect resignation ; 3. 
Fervently. III. It teaches us to watch, 1. Over our 
body, lest it be overwhelmed with grief and pain ; 2. 
Over the soul, lest it fall a prey to unbelief; 3. Over 
our heart, lest it lose its sympathy with the suffer- 
ings of others. IV. It points out to us the only true 
help in the hour of our sore distress. This help 
consists, 1. In the assurance wrought by God in us, 
that his purposes are always good and merciful, but 
at the same time absolutely necessary ; 2. In the 
strength imparted, which enables us to suffer God's 
will readily and willingly. ■ — From our Lord's agony 
in the garden let us learn, 1. How keenly he felt 
the burden of the sin of the world. Why is the 
Almighty Son of God, who had worked so many 
miracles, so heavy and disquieted ? Why is Jesus, 
who came into the world to die, so like one ready to 
faint at the approach of death? There is but one 
reasonable answer to these questions. The weight 
that pressed down our Lord's soul was not the fear 
of death and its pain. Thousands have endured the 
most agonizing sufferings of body, and died without 
a groan, and so, no doubt, might our Lord. But the 
real weight that bowed down the heart of Jesus was 
the weight of the sin of the whole world which he 
was now taking upon kirn ; 2. What an example 



740 



MARK XIV, 32-52. 



our Lord gives us of the importance of prayer in 
time of trouble ; 3. That entire submission of 'will to 
the will of God should be our chief aim in this world; 
4. That there is great weakness, even in true disci- 
ples of Christ, and that they have need to watch and 
pray against it. We see Peter, James, and John, 
those three chosen apostles, sleeping, when they 
ought to have been watching and praying. Does 
our Lord excuse this weakness of his disciples ? By 
no means. He uses that very weakness as an argu- 
ment for watchfulness and prayer. He teaches us 
that the very fact that we are encompassed with in- 
firmity, should stir us up continually to watch and 
pray. We must watch like soldiers — we are upon the 
enemy's ground. We must always be on our guard. 
We must pray without ceasing. Watching without 
praying is self-confidence and self-conceit. Praying 
without watching is enthusiasm and fanaticism. 
The man who knows his own weakness, and know- 
ing it, both watches and prays, is the man that will 
be held up and not allowed to fall. 

Verses 43-52. And there followed him a cer- 
tain young man. It is very probable that the Evan- 
gelist himself was this young man, as has been 
shown in the Introduction to this Gospel, (p. 657.)- — ■ 
And he left the linen cloth, a loose garment 
worn at night. The action of this young man may 
be viewed as representative of those that follow 
Jesus in a moment of enthusiastic excitement, with- 
out properly counting the cost. — And the young 
men laid hold on him. " The young men" is lack- 
ing in B, C, D, and other Codices. Lachman and 
Tischendorf expunge it as spurious. If it is genuine, 
it most probably means, " disorderly young men, 
such as are found in every mob, ready to commit 
acts of violence." — Mark in this section, 1. How 
little our Lord's enemies understood the nature of 
Ms kingdom. The chief-priests and scribes clung 
obstinately to the idea, that our Lord's kingdom 
was a worldly kingdom, and therefore they supposed 
that it would be upheld by worldly means, that he 
would be vigorously defended by his disciples, and 
would not be taken prisoner without fighting. 2. 
How our Lord submitted to be made a prisoner of 
his own free will. He was not taken captive, be- 
cause he could not escape. It would have been easy 
for him to scatter his enemies to the winds, if he 
had thought fit. " Thinkest thou," he saith to Peter, 
" that I can not pray to my Father, and he shall 
presently give me more than twelve legions of 
angels? But how then shall the Scriptures be ful- 
filled, that thus it must be ? 3. How our Lord con- 



demns those who think to use carnal weapons in de- 
fense of him and his cause. The sword has a law- 
ful office of its own. It may be used righteously Id 
the defense of nations against oppression. It may 
become positively necessary to use it, to prevent 
confusion, plunder, and rapine upon earth. But the 
sword is not to be used in the propagation and main- 
tenance of the Gospel. Christianity is not to be en- 
forced by bloodshed, and belief in it extorted by 
force. Happy would it have been for the Church 
if the command of Christ had been obeyed ! But, 
alas ! there are few countries in Christendom where 
the mistake has not been made of attempting to 
change men's religious opinions by compulsion, 
penalties, imprisonment, and death? The cause of 
truth does not need force to maintain it. False re- 
ligions, like Mohammedanism, have been spread by 
the sword, and a false Christianity, like that of the 
Roman Church, has been enforced on men by bloody 
persecutions. But the real Gospel of Christ requires 
no such aids as these. It stands by the power of the 
Holy Ghost. "Not by might, nor by power, but by 
my Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts." (Zech. iv, 6.) 
"The weapons of our warfare are not carnal." 4. 
How much the faith of true believers may give way, 
and how little they know of their own hearts till 
they are tried. We are told that when Judas and 
his company laid hands on our Lord, and he quietly 
submitted to be taken prisoner, the eleven disciples 
all forsook him and fled. Perhaps up to that mo- 
ment they were buoyed up by the hope that our 
Lord would work a miracle, and set himself free. 
But when they saw no miracle worked, their cour- 
age failed them entirely. Their former protestations 
were all forgotten. The fear of present danger got 
the better of faith. The sense of immediate peril 
drove every other feeling out of their minds. How 
many professing Christians have done the same ! 
How many, under the influence of excited feelings, 
have promised that they would never be ashamed 
of Christ! They have come away from the com- 
munion-table, or the striking sermon, or the experi- 
ence meeting, full of zeal and love, and ready to say 
to all who caution them against backsliding, " Is thy 
servant a dog, that he should do this thing?" And 
yet in a few days these feelings have cooled down 
and passed away. A trial has come, and they have 
fallen before it. Let us learn from this section 
lessons of humiliation and self-abasement. Let us 
resolve by God's grace to cultivate a spirit of lowli- 
ness and self-distrust. And let it be one of our daily 
prayers, " Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe." 



MARK XIV, 53-72. 



741 



SECTION XX. 

JESUS BEFORE THE ECCLESIASTICAL TRIBUNAL. PETER DENIES HIM. 

CEAPTEE XIV, 53-72. 

X. JESUS BEFORE THE HIGH-PRIEST. 
"Verses 53— 65. (Compare Matthew xxvi, 57-68; Luke xxn, 54; 63-71; John xviii, 12-14; 19-24.) 

(53) And they led Jesus away to the high-priest: and with him were assembled 
all the chief-priests and the elders and the scribes. (54) And Peter followed him 
afar off, even into the palace of the high-priest : and he sat with the servants, and 
warmed himself at the fire. (55) And the chief-priests and all the council sought 
for witness against Jesus to put him to death; and found none. (56) For many 
bare false witness against him, but their witness agreed not together. (57) And 
there arose certain, and bare false witness against him, saying, (58) We heard him 
say, I will destroy this Temple that is made with hands, and within three days I 
will build another made without hands. (59) But neither so did their witness agree 
together. (60) And the high-priest stood up in the midst, x and asked Jesus, saying, 
Answerest thou nothing? what is it which these witness against thee? (61) But he 
held his peace, and answered nothing. Again the high-priest asked him, and said 
unto him, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? (62) And Jesus said, I 
am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and com- 
ing in the clouds of heaven. (63) Then the high-priest rent his clothes, and saith, 
What need we any further witnesses ? (64) Ye have heard the blasphemy : what 
think ye? And they all condemned him to be guilty of death. (65) And some 
began to spit on him, and to cover his face, and to buffet him, and to say unto him, 
Prophesy : and the servants did strike him with the palms of their hands. 2 

2. PETER'S DENIAL. 
"Verses 66— V3. (Compare Matthew xxvi, 69-75; Luke xxii, 55-62; John xviii, 15-18; 25-27.) 

(66) And as Peter was beneath in the palace, there cometh one of the maids of 
the high-priest : (67) And when she saw Peter warming himself, she looked upon 
him, and said, And thou also wast with Jesus of Nazareth. (68) But he denied, 
saying, I know not, neither understand I what thou sayest. And he went out into 
the porch ; and the cock crew. (69) And a maid saw him again, and began to say 
to them that stood by, This is one of them. (70) And he denied it again. And a 
little after, they that stood by said again to Peter, Surely thou art one of them : for 



'"In the midst" is wanting in the best Codices. 
1 La.nge, with Lachman and Tischendorf, prefers the 
reading ikafiov, instead of 'i$a\\ov, according to A, B, C, 
K, and translates accordingly: "And the servants re- 
ceived him with slaps on the face while leading him into 



the guard-house from the room where he had been ex- 
amined." If this reading is adopted, we have to under- 
stand by the "servants" the keepers of the prison, and 
by the preceding "some," the Temple officers. Meyer 
refers " some " to the members of the Sanhedrim. 



742 



MARK XIV, 53-72. 



thou art a Galilean, and thy speech agreeth thereto. 1 (71) But he began to curse 
and to swear, saying, I know not this man of whom ye speak. (72) And the second 
time the cock crew. And Peter called to mind the word that Jesus said unto him, 
Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice. And when he thought 
thereon, he wept. 



Verses 53-65. And they led Jesus away to the 
high-priest. Mark takes no notice of the fact, that 
Annas, whom the Jews seemed to have regarded as 
the legitimate incumbent of the office, sent Jesus 
bound to his son-in-law, Caiaphas, who was appointed 
high-priest by the Romans. — And warmed himself 
at the fire. From this we have to infer that it 
was a cold night. The fire was kindled in the open 
court-yard, (see notes in Matt.) — And found none — 
literally, they did not Jind, namely, two who could 
testify to one and the same act, as the law required. 
— But their witnesses agreed not together — 
literally, the testimonies were not equal, which may 
mean, not adequate or sufficient to their purpose; 
or, not even or harmonious. The expression has, 
most probably, reference to the legal requisition of 
two concurrent witnesses to -the same fact. — And 
there arose certain, etc. At length they seemed 
to have attained their purpose, having met with a 
plurality of witnesses to one remarkable expression 
of the Savior. The particular charge here alleged 
was false, because they perverted the words of 
Christ. He had never said that he would destroy 
the Temple. — But neither so did their witness 
agree together; that is, even on this point they 
did not agree, probably because every one of the wit- 
nesses added words of his own to the declaration of 
Christ. — But he held his peace, and answered 
nothing. As the witnesses did not agree together, 
the accused was not obliged to answer or defend 
himself; and all he could have said would have been 
unavailing. — Art thou the Christ, the Son of 
the Blessed? "The Blessed" was an epithet rev- 
erently applied to the Supreme Being. The high- 
priest uses it sanctimoniously, in order to make the 
supposed blasphemy of Jesus, in calling himself the 
Son of God, appear more prominent. Dr. Alex- 
ander, calling attention to the question, " whether 
the high-priest intended merely to inquire, if Jesus 
claimed to be the Christ, that is, the Messiah, em- 
ploying two familiar Messianic titles, or whether he 
designed to ask, if he claimed also to be a Divine 
person ?" decides in favor of the latter, " because the 
second title would be otherwise superfluous, and be- 
cause the answer of our Lord to the question was 
treated as a blasphemy, for which a mere assumption 
of the Messianic office would have furnished no col- 
orable ground or pretext." (See more on this sub- 
ject in Matthew.) — Christ before Caiaphas: a 



most distressing contrast between the Seeming 
and the Real. I. Seeming judges, but real crim- 
inals. In the hall of Caiaphas were assembled the 
great authorities of the Jewish nation, "the chief- 
priests, and elders, and all the council." These men 
were the recognized officers of justice, and justice in 
its highest forms— justice not only between man and 
man, but between man and God. The high-priest, 
who professed to stand in the place of God, to be his 
representative on earth, was president of this assem- 
bly of the judges.' No body of men on earth ever 
professed a profounder deference to justice than 
these men. Justice to them seemed to be every 
thing ; yet under all this seeming righteousness what 
have we? Iniquity in its most putrescent forms. 
In the name of justice they perpetrate four great 
enormities. 1. They assembled in their judicial 
capacity for the purpose of putting an untried man 
to death. They came not to judge, but to murder. 
2. To give the appearance of justice to their en- 
deavors, they procured false witnesses. But even 
false witnesses, in that false age, could not make out 
a case against him. 3. Without a particle of evi- 
dence they condemned as blasphemy the declaration 
of truth which they extorted from Christ, and which 
they could not refute. 4. Upon this unfounded 
charge of blasphemy, they pronounced him guilty of 
death, and treated him with the utmost cruelty. — 
What a revelation is here, then, of the moral char- 
acter of these judges of the land ! If such outrages 
on truth, morality, and religion, were practiced by 
the chief tribunal of the country, how deeply im- 
mersed in depravity must have been the whole of 
Jewish society at this hour ! for the character of a 
government is always the product and reflection of 
the people. No wonder that the Son of God rolled 
in peals of awful thunder his denunciations against 
this apostate race, who thus affronted Heaven with 
their hypocrisy. The measure of their iniquities was 
fast filling up; the whole nation had become, mor- 
ally, a rotten carcass, and the Roman eagle — 
Heaven's messenger of justice — already scented the 
prey, was spreading its wings for Jerusalem, and 
would soon fasten its talons upon the putrescent 
mass. II. A seeming criminal, but a real Judge. 
Who is this seeming criminal ? Jesus of Nazareth ! 
How wan and sad he seems ! No friend stands by 
him ; all his disciples have forsaken him and fled. 
He is in the hands of heartless ruffians, and at the 



1 "And thy speech agreeth thereto" is wanting in B, 
C, D, L, and others. Lachman and Tischendorf leave it 



out of the text, as having been received into the text 
from Matthew. 



MARK XIV, 53-72. 



743 



mercy of rulers who thirst for his blood. He has 
just been brought up from Gethsemane, and the 
dark shadow of a mysterious sadness hangs over 
him, he looks as the very man of sorrows, and ac- 
quainted with grief. Such is the appearance of this 
criminal, but in reality this prisoner at the bar is the 
great Judge of the world. His majesty radiates in 
Divine splendor. Observe, 1. His majestic silence. 
There is a silence which means more than any words, 
and speaks ten times more powerfully to the heart. 
Such was the silence which Christ now maintained in 
this hall. In his bright consciousness of truth, all 
their false allegations against him melted away as 
the mists from the mountain in the Summer sun. 
His Divine soul looked calmly down upon the dark 
and wretched spirits in that hall, as the queen of the 
night looks peacefully upon our earth amid the roll- 
ing clouds and howling winds of nature in a passing 
storm. Observe, 2. His sublime speech. " Here- 
after ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right 
hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." 
He only speaks a few words, but in these words he 
himself appears in all his Divine grandeur. We see 
sometimes in nature a strong breeze sweeping away 
from the face of the sun a dark mass of cloud that 
had wrapt it in concealment, and darkened the whole 
earth with its shadows. These words of Christ were 
something like that breeze ; they scattered the dark 
clouds of ignorance and error that had concealed his 
Divinity, and made him flash for a moment as the 
Sun of Righteousness upon these guilty people. They 
are not to be limited to the final appearing of Christ 
to judgment, but refer to the whole state of his ex- 
altation — an exaltation that was to commence at his 
ascension to heaven, and continue through intermin- 
able ages. Observe, (1.) They would see the sublime 
dignity of his position. He tells them that they shall 
see him "sitting on the right hand of power"' — an 
expression indicating the highest exaltation and au- 
thority. As if he had said to them, You are now on 
the judgment-seat, and I appear as a prisoner before 
you. Nevertheless, I say unto you, it is only in ap- 
pearance, it is only for the hour; very soon the scene 
will be changed, and you will see me on the right 
hand of power, enthroned in majesty and might, as 
the Judge of all mankind. Observe, (2.) They would 
see the sublime dignity of his procedure. They 
would see him "coming in the clouds of heaven." 
They would see him coming in the dispensation of 
his Spirit on the day of Pentecost — in the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem and the ruin of their own com- 
monwealth — in every event of their future history, 
and finally in the last, Great Day of Judgment. — 
Learn from this not to confound the Seeming with 
the Real. Things are not what they seem. Verily, 
the moral world is upside down. Sinners, not saints, 
now sit on thrones and judge the earth. Learn to 
unmask men and things, and judge all by the light 
of the great thoughts of Him who is now sitting on 
the right hand of God. Yield not to appearances, 



not even in religion. (Condensed from the Hom- 
ilist.) 

Verses 66-72. On the details of Peter's denial, 
see the notes on Matthew. — Avd when he thought 
thereon; in Greek kiripaluv, literally, casting — to 
which the word his mind or his thoughts is supplied — 
on it. In this sense the verb is used by classic 
writers. Others supply the word his eye, namely, on 
the Savior. Lange supplies the reflexive pronoun 
himself, and translates, "rushing out." But the 
common translation in the English version, and in 
that of Luther is the most natural. — The fall and 
rise of Peter. I. Peter's fall. First. It is easily 
accounted for. The change in the history of this 
distinguished apostle is no miracle. He was not 
hurled down from the pinnacle of faithful disciple- 
ship by forces over which he had no control. We 
can trace the process, and mark every step he took 
in the downward course. 1. Self-sufficiency. His 
confidence in his own power to do the true thing was 
amazing ; he felt that he could follow Christ any 
where, he avowed himself ready to lay down his life 
for his sake. (John xiii, 37.) When warned of this 
very sin, he declared that though all men denied 
Christ he would not; he seemed to have been so 
confident of his own power, that he attempted single- 
handedly to crush the enemies of Christ in the 
garden. This state of mind is always the first step 
downward. Presumption often ends in ruin. " Pride 
goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before 
a fall." A humble, practical dependence upon God 
is the great upholding power of the soul. 2. Partial 
knowledge. He had not duly considered the sacri- 
ficial work of Christ. Frequently had his Master 
told him that he was going to lay down his life for 
the sheep, that his mission was a mission of media- 
torial suffering. Peter seemed to have ignored all 
this aspect of his teaching ; his mind seemed to have 
been taken up more with his character, as one who 
was to effect a temporal deliverance of his country. 
Hence when the sufferings of Christ began to accu- 
mulate, and the approach of a terrible death became 
more obvious, he became agitated with surprise, and 
fear, and awful solicitude. Partial knowledge is 
always dangerous ; one-sided views of truth are often 
perilous in their character. 3. Spiritual negligence. 
He had been guilty of a sad neglect of duty in Geth- 
semane; his Master asked him to watch with him, 
but he fell asleep. Had he kept watch, had his eyes 
marked the writhings of the agonized frame, and his 
ears caught the mysterious groans of his Master, he 
might have got such an inspiration as to the Divinity 
of the tragedy as would have held him in faithful 
loyalty; but he lost the advantage of that wonderful 
power by his negligence. The same neglect he also 
displayed from the garden up to the palace of Caia- 
phas. Had he walked step by step with Jesus, close 
by his side, interchanged looks and words with him, 
he might have had an infusion of moral power that 
would have kept him true. But he followed " afar 



744 



MARK XV, 1-19. 



off;" he was away from the Divine air that encircled 
Christ, and he breathed the atmosphere of men in- 
spired with the very spirit of hell. Spiritual negli- 
gence is a downward step. Once omit a duty, and 
you receive a downward impulse. 4. Fear of man. 
Peter had, certainly, no desire to injure Christ. On 
the contrary, had he believed that his avowal would 
have rescued his Master from his enemies, we be- 
lieve he would have made it; but he felt that all 
was over with Christ now, that his death was inevi- 
table, and that if he acknowledged his connection 
with him his doom also would be sealed; and hence, 
to save himself from the danger, he commits the sin 
of denial. Secondly. It is very heinous. 1. The 
denial succeeded great advantages. What privileges 
Peter had enjoyed! What signal favors Christ had 
bestowed upon him ! He had lifted him to the ecsta- 
sies of the Transfiguration. He had just witnessed 
the institution of the New Testament covenant; his 
Master had significantly washed his feet, and he had 
heard his farewell discourses! 2. His denial oc- 
curred after the most solemn and repeated warnings, 
and after his deprecation of the possibility of it. 3. 
It was thrice repeated, each time with aggravated 
guilt The first denial was a kind of ambiguous 
evasion. "I know not what thou sayest" — a pre- 
tended ignorance of the very question. The next is 
a distinct denial, breathing the rising spirit of pro- 
fanity and contempt. He denied it with an oath, 
"I know not the man." In the next his temper is 
gone, passion is rampant, reason and conscience are 
lost amid the raging of excitement, and he begins 
to curse and to swear! Peter was an old sailor, and 
perhaps, like most mariners, in early life had been 
in the habit of using profane language, and now the 
Spirit of goodness having left him for an hour, the 
old sailor, with all his boisterous roughness and wild, 
dashing profanity, comes up. Such is Peter's fall. 
He had reached a lofty altitude in spiritual experi- 
ence; he received the very keys of the kingdom to 
unlock the treasures of heavenly mercy, and here 



we find him in the hell of falsehood and profanity. 
II. Peter's rise. There is no more miracle in his 
rise than in his fall. He is not lifted back to his old 
state irrespectively of means. We can trace his 
pathway. First. There is an incidental occurrence. 
While he was in the hight of his impious rage, " im- 
mediately the cock crew." From Mark we learn that 
the cock had crowed once before this. This was the 
second time. It was three o'clock in the morning, 
and the notes of the bird fell like a thunderclap on 
the conscience of Peter. This incident arrested his 
downward course, struck conviction into his heart, 
and brought reason again into action. Incidents the 
most simple are the ministers of God, ministers 
which often arrest the careless, guide the perplexed, 
soothe the sorrowing, and bless the upright in heart. 
God can give the microscopic object in nature an 
arrow to pierce the soul, the weakest sound a thun- 
der that shall rouse the conscience into fury. Sec- 
ondly. T here is an action of memory. "And Peter 
remembered the words of Jesus." The echo of this 
bird of the morning brought, as with a flash, the 
words of Christ to his memory, and on these words 
he dwelt in his mind. Mark says: "When he thought 
thereon he wept." A Providential incident is power- 
ful to a man only as it awakens thought, and power- 
ful to him for good only as the thought is engaged 
on the right subject. Thirdly. There is a Divine 
manifestation. Luke tells us: "The Lord turned 
and looked upon Peter." What a look was that! 
Fourthly. There is a repentant effort. "He went 
out from the companionship of ruffians, and the scene 
of bigotry and injustice — he went out from the circle 
where he had been tempted to a course of wickedness, 
the memory of which now struck him with horror — 
he went out to unburden himself of that load of 
guilt which he had contracted, and to consecrate his 
being once more to the will of his Master. He wept 
bitterly, and his tears were "like blessed showers, 
which leave the skies they come from bright and 
holy." (Condensed from the Homilist.) 



SECTION XXI 



JESUS BEFORE THE TRIBUNAL OF PILATE. 



CHAPTEB XY, 1-19. 

(Compare Matthew xxvn, 1, 2; 11-30; Luke xxiii, 1-25; John xviii, 28-xix, 16.) 

(1) And straightway in the morning the chief-priests held a consultation with 
the elders and scribes and the whole council, and bound Jesus, and carried him 
away, and delivered him to Pilate. (2) And Pilate asked him, Art thou the King 
of the Jews? And he answering said unto him, Thou sayest it. (3) And the 



MARK XV, 1-19. 



745 



chief-priests accused him of many things; but he answered nothing. 1 (4) And Pi- 
late asked him again, saying, Answerest thou nothing? behold how many things 
they witness against thee. (5) But Jesus answered nothing; so that Pilate mar- 
veled. (6) Now at that feast he released unto them one prisoner, whomsoever they 
desired. (7) And there was one named Barabbas, which lay bound with them that 
had made insurrection with him, who had committed murder in the insurrection. 
(8) And the multitude crying aloud 2 began to desire him to do as he had ever done 
unto them. (9) But Pilate answered them, saying, Will ye that I release unto you 
the King of the Jews? (10) For he knew that the chief-priests had delivered him 
for envy. (11) But the chief-priests moved the people, that he should rather re- 
lease Barabbas unto them. (12) And Pilate answered and said again unto them, 
"What will ye then that I shall do unto him whom ye call the King of the Jews ? 
(13) And they cried out again, Crucify him. (14) Then Pilate said unto them, 
"Why, what evil hath he done? And they cried out the more exceedingly, Crucify 
him. (15) And so Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas unto 
them, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be crucified. (16) And 
the soldiers led him away into the hall, called Prsetorium ; and they call together 
the whole band. (17) And they clothed him with purple, and platted a crown of 
thorns, and put it about his head, (18) and began to salute him, Hail, King of the 
Jews ! (19) And they smote him on the head with a reed, and did spit upon him, 
and bowing their knees worshiped him. 



General Remarks. — "Mark notices with Matthew 
the second formal meeting of the Sanhedrim on the 
morning of the crucifixion; he states more distinctly 
with Luke that the whole Sanhedrim led Jesus to 
Pilate, omitting with the same Evangelist the trag- 
ical end of Judas, the dream of Pilate's wife, Pilate's 
washing his hands, and the imprecations of the Jews 
against themselves, recorded by Matthew; he further 
omits with Matthew that Jesus was sent to Herod, 
as stated by Luke, and with the two other Synoptists 
the details of the trial of Jesus before Pilate, as re- 
corded by John. He intimates, what Luke and John 
state more fully, that there were several charges 
brought against Jesus, to which He made no reply, 
but confines himself with Matthew mainly to the two 
principal points of the trial of Christ before Pilate; 
namely, his admission of being the Messiah— the 
King of the Jews — and that he was put on an equal 
footing with Barabbas." (Lange.) See the intro- 
ductory remarks to § 76 in Matthew. — So that Pi- 
late marveled. "The refusal of Jesus to give 
Pilate, who undoubtedly wished to set him free, a 
reason for his silence is explained by the considera- 
tion that the judge ought to have done so on his own 
conviction, and that even the most formal contradic- 
tion on our Lord's part would not have prevented or 



delayed the fatal concession by which Pilate ulti- 
mately sacrificed him to his enemies. As yet, how- 
ever, he continues to pronounce him guiltless, and 
after an attempt to transfer him to Herod's jurisdic- 
tion (Luke xxiii, 5-12) still reiterates the same con- 
viction. (Luke xxiii, 13-15.) Passing over these 
particulars preserved by Luke, Mark proceeds to 
describe Pilate's next expedient for the rescue of his 
prisoner.'" (Alexander.) — And the multitude cry- 
ing aloud [or according to another reading, going 
up] began to desire. Lange considers this the 
moment when the crowd returned from the palace 
of Herod, whither Pilate had sent Jesus. During 
that time the high-priests, etc., had stirred up, ex- 
cited, and instructed their partisans. — Will te 

THAT I RELEASE UNTO YOU THE KlNG OF THE JEWS ? 

From Matthew we learn that Pilate had at first pro- 
posed to them to choose between Jesus and Barab- 
bas, not doubting that in this way he would secure 
the liberation of the former. The terms, King of the 
Jews, used by Mark, and Christ, used by Matthew, 
are evidently taken as synonyms. — And they 
cried out again, Crucify him. " Again" refers 
not to crucify him, for they had not demanded that 
peculiar mode of punishment before, but to their tu- 
multuous demand, stated in verse 8, to have Barab- 



1 "But he answered nothing " is not in the Greek text. 
2 Instead of ai/<x/3o7jo-as — crying aloud — several Codices have 
dramas — ascending — namely, to the Prsetorium. Lach- 



mann, Tischendorf, and Lange prefer the latter reading, 
believing that ava^is was changed into di/cg3ori<ra9 by the 
copyists, because they did not understand its meaning. 



746 



MARK XV, 1-19. 



bas released. He would have been crucified by the 
Roman Government if he had not been released, and 
they now demand that Jesus should take his place. As 
crucifixion was a Roman, not a Jewish punishment, 
our Lord would most probably have been stoned to 
death if the Jews had at the time possessed the 
power to inflict capital punishment. "By causes 
seemingly so accidental," remarks Dr. Alexander, 
"was the great Providential purpose realized, ac- 
cording to which Christ was to die an ignominious 
and agonizing death, yet one which should preserve 
the integrity of his body from mutilation or distor- 
tion, and at the same time bring about a literal ful- 
fillment of the curse pronounced on every one who 
hangs upon a tree, (Deut. xxi, 23; Gal. iii, 13;) the 
original reference is to the posthumous exposure of 
the body, after stoning or beheading, by suspension 
in some public place — the only hanging practiced 
under the law of Moses, while the terms of the male- 
diction are so chosen as to be appropriate to cruci- 
fixion also, a remarkable example of the unexpected 
way in which the prophecies are often verified. This 
was, in fact, one of the ends to be accomplished by 
the Savior's transfer from the Jewish to the Roman 
power, as we learn from the remarkable expressions 
of John, (xviii, 32.)" Compare the note on cruci- 
fixion in Matthew. — And delivered Jesus, when 

HE HAD SCOURGED HIM, TO BE CRUCIFIED. John looks 

upon the scourging as the last attempt, on the part 
of Pilate, to save Jesus, while Mark and Matthew 
look upon it as the prelude of the crucifixion. Each 
of these two views is correct from its own stand- 
point. Pilate intended to move the people to pity by 
the scourging, but instead of being moved they were 
but hardened, and thus the scourging proved to be 
the real beginning of the crucifixion. — On the indig- 
nities perpetrated on our Lord, see the notes in Mat- 
thew. — Jews and Gentiles combined in putting 
Jesus to death. The death of our Savior was, 1. To 
set in the clearest light the sin of the whole world; 
2. To atone for it, and to unite Jews and Gentiles in 
one body. (Eph. ii, 14; Col. i, 19, 20.) — The glori- 
ous manifestation of the perfect innocence of the 
condemned Savior: 1. By his own silence. 2. By 
the confessed convictions of his judge. 3. By the 
blind rage of his enemies. 4. By his Divine pa- 
tience. — Christ justified even at the tribunal of his 
enemies: 1. By the judge; he seeks to release him. 
2. By his accusers and the people — their conflicting 
testimonies and their demand for the release of Ba- 
rabbas. 3. By the soldiers ; without being aware of 
it, they adorn him with the emblems of his spiritual 
dignity. — Pilate, the judge of Jesus, self condemned : 
1. In passing the sentence of death on Jesus, he sins 
against the clear conviction of his own judgment, 
against the compunctions of his conscience, against 
faithful warnings. 2. He is the representative of all 
worldly men, who, against their better convictions, 
pronounce against the Savior. — The fatal choice 
of the Jews — an old and yet ever-repeated fact. 



Whoever prefers sin to Christ, prefers, like the Jews, 
1. A robber to the richest Dispenser of grace; 2. A 
rebel to the King of kings; 3. A murderer to the 
Prince of life. — Let us mark in this section : 1. What 
a striking proof the Jewish rulers gave to their own 
nation that the times of the Messiah had come. The 
chapter opens with the fact that the chief-priests 
bound Jesus and delivered him to Pilate, the Roman 
Governor. Why did they do so? Because they had 
no longer the power of putting any one to death, 
and were under the dominion of the Romans. By 
this one act they declared that the prophecy of Jacob 
was fulfilled. "The scepter had departed from 
Judah, and the lawgiver from between his feet," and 
Shiloh the Messiah, whom God had promised to 
send, must have come. (Gen. xlix, 10.) Yet their 
eyes were blinded. They could not, or would not, 
see what they were doing. Let us never forget that 
wicked men are often fulfilling God's predictions 
to their own ruin, and yet know it not. In the very 
hight of their madness, folly, and unbelief, they are 
often unconsciously supplying fresh evidence that 
the Bible is true. 2. Let us mark the meekness and 
lowliness of our Lord. When he stood before Pi- 
late's bar, and was accused of many things, he an- 
swered nothing. Though the charges against him 
were false, and he knew no sin, he was content to 
endure the contradiction of sinners against himself, 
not answering again. (Heb. xii, 3.) Though he 
was innocent of any transgression, he submitted to 
bear groundless accusations made against him with- 
out a murmur. How great the contrast between 
the second Adam and the first! Our first father, 
Adam, was guilty, and yet tried to excuse himself! 
The second Adam was guiltless, and yet made no 
defense at all. " As a sheep before her shearers is 
dumb, so openeth he not his mouth." (Isa. liii, 7.) 
Let us learn a practical lesson from our Savior's ex- 
ample. Let us beware of giving way to irritation 
and ill-temper, however provoking and undeserved 
our trials may seem to be. Nothing in the Christian 
character glorifies God so much as patient suffering. 
"If when ye do well and suffer for it, ye take it 
patiently, this is acceptable with God. For even 
hereunto were ye called, because Christ also suffered 
for us, leaving us an example that ye should follow 
his steps." (1 Peter ii, 20, 21.) 3. Let us learn 
from the conduct of Pilate, what a pitiable sight an 
unprincipled man is. It is clear that he was con- 
vinced of our Lord's innocence.—" He knew that 
the chief-priests had delivered him for envy." 
Though willing to save his life, he was afraid to do 
it, if it offended the Jews. And so, after a feeble at- 
tempt to divert the fury of the people from Jesus, 
and a feebler attempt to satisfy his own conscience, 
by washing his hands publicly before the people, he 
at last condemned one whom he himself called " a 
just person." He rejected the strange and mys- 
terious warning which his wife sent to him after her 
dream. He stifled the remonstrances of his own 



MARK XV, 20-32. 



747 



conscience, when he delivered Jesus to be crucified ! 
Behold in this miserable man a striking emblem of 
unprincipled men in high places! How many there 
are, who know well that their public acts are wrong, 
and yet have not the courage to act up to their 
knowledge! They fear the people! They can not 
bear to be unpopular ! Like dead fish, they float 
with the tide. Self is the idol before which they bow 
down, and to that idol they sacrifice conscience, in- 
ward peace, and an immortal soul. Let us mark, 4. 
The exceeding guilt of the Jews. At the eleventh 
hour the chief-priests had an opportunity of repent- 
ing if they would have taken it. They had the 
choice given them whether Jesus or Barabbas should 
be set free. Coolly and deliberately they persevered 



in their bloody work. The power of putting our 
Lord to death was no longer theirs, but they publicly 
took upon themselves the responsibility of his death. 
We marvel at the wickedness of the Jews at this 
part of our Lord's history — and no wonder. To re- 
ject Christ and choose Barabbas was indeed an 
astounding act! It seems as if blindness, madness, 
and folly could go no further. But let us take heed 
that we do not unwittingly follow their example. 
Let us beware that we are not found at last to have 
chosen Barabbas and rejected Christ. The service 
of sin and the service of God are continually before 
us. Are we making the right choice ? Happy is he 
who can give a satisfactory answer. (Ryle's Exposi- 
tory Thoughts on the Gospel.) 



SECTION XXII. 

JESUS IS LED TO CALVARY AND CRUCIFIED. 



CHAPTBE XV, 20-32. 

(Compare Matthew xxyii, 32-44; Luke xxiii, 26-43; John xix, 17-27.) 

(20) And when they had mocked him, the} 7 took off the purple from him, and 
put his own clothes on him, and led him out to crucify him. (21) And they com- 
pel one Simon a Cyrenian, who passed by, coming out of the country, the father 
of Alexander and Eufus, to hear his cross. (22) And they bring him unto the 
place G-olgotha, which is, being interpreted, The place of a skull. (23) And they 
gave him to drink wine mingled with myrrh: but he received # not. (24) And 
when they had crucified him, they parted his garments, casting lots upon them, 
what every man should take. (25) And it was the third hour, and they crucified 
him. (26) And the superscription of his accusation was written over, THE KESTG- 
OF THE JEWS. (27) And with him they crucify two thieves ; the one on his 
right hand, and the other on his left. (28) And the Scripture was fulfilled, which 
saith, And he was numbered with the transgressors. (29) And they that passed 
by railed on him, wagging their heads, and saying, Ah, thou that destroyest the 
Temple, and buildest it in three days, (30) save thyself, and come down from the 
cross. (31) Likewise also the chief-priests mocking said among themselves with 
the scribes, He saved others; himself he can not save. (32) Let Christ the King 
of Israel descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe. And they that 
were crucified with him reviled him. 



They led him out to crucify him; this was done 
in all executions ; within the city no criminal could 
be executed, (comp. Lev. xxiv, 14; 1 Kings xxi, 13; 
Acts vii, 58.) According to the Jewish law three, 
and according to the Roman law ten days were to 



elapse between the sentence and the execution; in 
the present case, however, this law as well as so 
many other3 were trampled under foot. — The father 
of Alexander and Rufus. These men must have 
been well known in the Church, for which Mark 



748 



MARK XV, 20-32. 



wrote his Gospel more especially ; they, like the son 
of Timeus, speak for the originality of Mark's Gos- 
pel and his vivid recollection. Lange thinks the 
Rufus here mentioned was the same as the one men- 
tioned in Romans xvi, 13. — Coming out op the 
country. From this item it has been inferred, that 
our Lord was crucified on Thursday, not on Friday, 
the first day of the feast. But there is no ground 
for such an inference. The field from which Simon 
came may have been within a Sabbath-day's walk 
from the city limits. Moreover, Friday, though the 
first day of the feast, was not the Paschal Sabbath ; 
and apart from these considerations, his coming from 
the field seems to have been regarded as something 
unusual or strange, so much so, that the attention of 
the procession was directed to him alone out of so 
large and so mixed a crowd. — Lange's SSibelluCl'f 
contains a very rich collection of homiletical sugges- 
tions on the scenes of the cross, from which we have 
selected and modified the following: "The death on 
the cross was, 1. As the most painful and ignomin- 
ious of all deaths — the most expressive of its vica- 
rious character ; 2. It was the best adapted to reveal 
the spiritual glory of the Savior of the world; it 
served, 3. To draw most impressively the attention 
of all men to him; and, 4. To present him- — hang- 
ing between heaven and earth — as the only Mediator 
between God and man. — Jesus Christ on the cross- 
Satan's highest triumph and greatest defeat. ■ — - The 
cross — the emblem of self-sacrificing love, and the 
most wonderful display of God's holiness and mercy — 
should change, 1. Our self-righteousness into true 
repentance; 2. Our unbelieving fears into childlike 
confidence; 3. Our murmuring under the ills of 
life into cheerful resignation. — The mysterious cir- 
cumstances of the great fact of the propitiation for 
the sin of the world. I. The darkness that reigned 
while it was being accomplished, as seen, 1. In the 
delusion of the heathen, who believed they were put- 
ting to death a pretender to a worldly crown ; 2. In 
the scoffings and revilings of the Jews; 3. In the 
hiding of the sun ; 4. In the silence of God the 
Father ; 5. In the mysterious words of Christ ; 6. In 
the strange misconstruction of his words. II. The 
bright light which broke through this darkness, 1. 
By the triumphant, unobscured self-consciousness of 
the Divine Sufferer, who refuses the stupefying drink; 

2. By praying for the forgiveness of his murderers ; 

3. By the absolution of a dying sinner ; 4. By the 
sympathetic mourning of nature ; 5. By the freedom 
and obedience with which the Savior realizes death — 
the wages of sin — in his own self-consciousness, and 
thus takes away the sting of death from all that be- 
lieve in him ; 6. By the immediate effects of his 
death. — The great sermon preached on Golgotha to 
the whole world, 1. By God; 2. By the darkened 
heavens ; 3. By the shaking earth ; 4. By the few 
repentant and believing ones ; 5. By the wicked ; 6. 
By the dying Savior. — The Homilist, in a series of 
homilies, contemplates Christ on the cross in four 



aspects : .4s the Victim of wickedness ; as the Exem- 
plar of religion ; as the Deserted of Heaven ; and as 
the Power of God. We subjoin the outlines of the 
first-named aspect here, and defer those of the two 
last ones to the next section. It will scarcely need 
an explanation to the reflecting reader why we pre- 
sent here no homily on the fundamental doctrines 
derived from the death of Christ. For such medita- 
tions and applications, there is an abundance of 
strictly-doctrinal passages in the New Testament. — 
Christ on the cross — the victim of wickedness. 
We see, 1. Wickedness fastening him upon the cross. 
It had secured his condemnation, and thus outraged 
every sentiment of justice ; it had scourged and in- 
sulted him in the hall of Pilate, and it had compelled 
him to bear on his own lacerated frame the cross 
from the hall of judgment to Golgotha. It now 
fastens him on that cross, drives the rugged nails 
through his hands and feet, and suspends him there 
in unknown torture. This is the masterpiece of 
wickedness. Christ seems powerless before its force. 
He hangs there in excruciating agony as the help- 
less prey of human vultures. Their ruthless talons 
are fastened on the tenderest nerves of his heart and 
being. He seems to be in the red-hot iron grasp of 
wickedness. The fiendish thousands of his age 
closed about him like wild beasts. " Many bulls 
have compassed me about, strong bulls of Bashan 
have beset me round." For six thousand years 
wickedness had been growing. It had wrought deeds 
of impiety and crime that had wrung the ages with 
agony, and often roused the Justice of the universe 
to roll her fiery thunderbolts of retribution through 
the world. But now it had grown to full matura- 
tion ; it stands around this cross in such gigantic 
proportions as had never been seen before, it works 
an enormity before which the mightiest of its past 
exploits dwindle into insignificance. It crucifies the 
Lord of life and glory. 2. We see wickedness tor- 
menting him even while on the cross. It is said that 
Socrates spent his last hours in quiet. No one was 
suffered to disturb the tranquillity of his philosophic 
soul; weeping friends and loving disciples were with 
him to buoy him up with their kind words and loving 
looks ; even his executioner was touched into com- 
passion, and wept when he gave the fatal cup of 
hemlock into his hand. But Christ is not allowed to 
die even with the agonies of the cross, great as they 
were ; his enemies, till his last breath, endeavor to 
highten his tortures by acts and words of heartless 
cruelty and blasphemous insults. They that passed 
by moved their heads in gestures of ridicule, and the 
chief-priests, with the scribes and elders, said, " He 
saved others ; himself he can not save. If he be the 
king of Israel, let him now come down from the 
cross, and we will believe him." They could not 
deny that he saved others, that he went about doing 
good. This being true, why should they treat him 
thus ? Where is the justice, where is the humanity — 
ay, where is even the simple propriety of putting a 



MARK XV, 33-47. 



749 



social benefactor to death, and treating him thus ? 
As to his not being able to save himself — he could 
have delivered himself and overwhelmed his enemies 
with destruction — physically. But morally he could 



not, and his moral inability is his glory. He could 
not because he had promised to die, and he could 
not break his word. He could not, because the sal- 
vation of the world depended upon his death. 



SECTION XXIII. 

THE DYING HOUR OF CHRIST, THE POWER OF HIS DEATH, AND HIS BURIAL. 

CHAPTEE XT, 33-47. 
(Compare Matthew xxvii, 45-66; Luke xxiii, 44-56; John xix, 28-42.) 

(33) And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole 
land until the ninth hour. (34) And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud 
voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, 
my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? (35) And some of them that stood by, when 
they heard it, said, Behold, he calleth Elias. (36) And one ran and filled a sponge 
full of vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink, saying, Let alone ; let 
us see whether Elias will come to take him down. (37) And Jesus cried with a 
loud voice, and gave up the ghost. (38) And the vail of the Temple was rent in 
twain from the top to the bottom. (39) And when the centurion, which stood over 
against him, saw that he so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said, Truly this 
man was the Son of God. (40) There were also women looking on afar off: among 
whom was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, 
and Salome; (41) who also, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered 
unto him ; and many other women which came up with him unto Jerusalem. (42) 
And now when the even was come, because it was the preparation, that is, the day 
before the Sabbath, (43) Joseph of Arimathea, an honorable counselor, which also 
waited for the kingdom of God, came, and went in boldly unto Pilate, and craved 
the body of Jesus. (44) And Pilate marveled if he were already dead : and calling 
unto him the centurion, he asked him whether he had been any while dead. ( 5) 
And when he knew it of the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph. (46) And he 
bought fine linen, and took him down, and wrapped him in the linen, and laid him 
in a sepulcher which was hewn out of a rock, and rolled a stone unto the door of 
the sepulcher. (47) And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses beheld 
where he was laid. 



My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? 
On these mysterious words, which we have consid- 
ered at large in Matthew, the Homilist has the fol- 
lowing homiletical sketch, which in the main, though 
not entirely, agrees with the interpretation given in 
Matthew: "The language can only be taken in one 
of two senses — either as expressing a fact in relation 
to God — that God had actually deserted Christ — or 



that Christ merely had the feeling that he had done 
so. Can we accept the former? Are there any just 
grounds for believing that the Eternal Father did 
now so change either in feeling or conduct toward 
his Son, as to warrant the idea of desertion? Did 
wrath now take the place of love in the Divine heart? 
Did a dark frown of indignation take, for a moment, 
the place of a Father's smile? Did He, who before 



750 



MARK XV, 33-47. 



declared, 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am 
well pleased' — now, for a moment, feel, 'This is my 
abhorrent Son, in whom I am displeased?' We con- 
fess an utter inability to accept such an idea as this, 
however popular it may be in some systems of the- 
ology. To us it seems repugnant to the character 
of Him who is immutabla in love, and who has 
pledged himself never to forsake those who trust in 
him; repugnant, moreover, to the distinct declara- 
tion of Christ, 'Therefore doth my Father love me, 
because I lay down my life.' (John x, 17.) Christ 
felt that his giving his life in agony for humanity 
was rather a reason for Divine love than otherwise. 
We are, therefore, left to the acceptance of the other 
idea; namely, that this cry expresses a feeling of de- 
sertion in Christ's mind. Our idea is, that amid the 
dying agonies of the moment, he felt as if the God 
of infinite love had left him. Let it not be imagined 
that because it might be only a feeling of desertion 
in the mind of Christ, and not a fact in the Divine 
conduct, that it is not a terrible reality. So far as the 
subject is concerned, it is desertion in its most over- 
whelming force. The fact, unless it is felt, is power- 
less. Supposing that God in reality forsakes a man, 
and that man does not feel the fact, the desertion is 
nothing to him. On the contrary, supposing that no 
such desertion takes place on God's part, yet, if a 
man deeply feel it, it is to him the most terrible of re- 
alities. Christ, then, we may suppose, had the feel- 
ing in its mightiest force. It was only, of course, as 
a man that he suffered; and as a man, the anguish of 
this moment might cloud his consciousness of near- 
ness to Infinite Love. It was, moreover, to him the 
hour of darkness at this moment. Satan was at the 
hight of his power, and his huge and hideous propor- 
tions, as he passed before the eye of Christ's spirit, 
would intercept the rays of Divine love, and throw a 
dark and chilly shadow upon his heart. The feeling 
seems only to have been momentary; it was just as 
if hell rolled between him and the heavens — an 
eclipse for the time of his moral sun. Accepting 
this, then, as the more likely interpretation, the ut- 
terance suggests three observations in relation to 
Christ at this moment: 1. That his sufferings were 
associated with the feeling of distance from God. 
This was natural under the circumstances. There 
is something in great suffering to superinduce this 
feeling in the mind. Prom the constitution of the 
soul we instinctively conclude that where the God 
of infinite love is, there is happiness, and only hap- 
piness. Unsophisticated reason says, 'In thy pres- 
ence is fullness of joy.' Where the sun is, there is 
light. Where love is, there is blessedness; and the 
converse of this is — where there is overwhelming suf- 
fering, God is absent. Thus Job felt in his trials, 
and he exclaimed: '0, that I knew where I might 
find him!' Thus David felt: ' My God, my God, why 
hast thou forsaken me?' And thus the old prophets 
felt in trial: 'Verily thou art a God that hidest thy- 
self.' Hence, too, souls in anguish involuntarily cry 



out for God's presence. 2. That his feeling of dis- 
tance from God was associated with a terrible amaze- 
ment. ' Why hast thou forsaken me?' His faith is 
tried, his reason seems to stagger. Surprise rushes 
on him like a wild tempest. His faculties seem baffled 
with sore astonishment. Why ? 'It can not be that 
I have offended thee? I came into the world to do 
thy will ; and it has been my delight to this hour. I 
am about finishing the work which thou gavest me 
to do. I am unconscious of the slightest deviation 
from thy will. It has been my meat and my drink 
to do what thou hast commanded. Why, then, hast 
thou forsaken me? Thy love is as immutable as 
thyself. My disciples forsook me and fled. I knew 
their weakness, and understood their conduct. But 
why dost thou forsake me, and leave me in this utter 
solitude of inexpressible anguish ?' Here, then, the 
holy Sufferer seems to have been tried in his reason; 
the desertion he felt was something most unaccount- 
able and perplexing; violently clashing with his clear 
ideas of his Father's wisdom and love. As a man, 
he had his intellectual trials, or he would not have 
been 'tempted in all points like as we are;' but he 
had not a trial of his reason like this. 3. His terri- 
ble amazement was associated with unshaken confi- 
dence in God. The felt mystery of his Father's 
conduct did not destroy his confidence in his charac- 
ter; he continues lovingly to look to him, as his 
God. 'My God, my God!' 'On other occasions.' 
says Bengel, 'he was accustomed to say, Father; 
now he says, My God, as being in a degree es- 
tranged. Yet he does so twice, and says My with 
confidence, patience, and self-resignation.' There is 
a lesson for us here. However much our rational 
faculties may be confounded by the mysteries of the 
Divine dealing, let us never lose confidence in the 
wisdom and love of God. Let us feel that although 
he often seems to hide himself from us, and move 
in ways inscrutable to our poor understanding, that 
all his movements are prompted by infinite love, 
and directed by unerring intelligence. Let us trust 
Him, where we can not trace Him, and feel with 
Job, 'Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.' 
Though he might permit us to be overwhelmed 
with suffering, confounded in intellect, and agonized 
in heart, let us feel that He is still our God, and in 
our deepest hour of distress call out, My God, my 
God I" ■ — And Jesus cried with a loud voice. The 
words which he uttered in this cry have been pre- 
served by John, (xix, 30,) and by Luke, (xxiii, 46. ) — 
And gave up the ghost— literally, breathed out or 
expired. None of the Evangelists used the word 
died, perhaps in order to suggest more strongly the 
idea, that our Lord's death was an act of his own 
will. The Lord expired at the ninth hour — three 
o'clock, P. M. — the hour of prayer and of the even- 
ing sacrifice. (Acts iii, 1.) — On the Divine power 
which Christ exerted on the cross, and the immedi- 
ate effects of his death, we quote again from the 
Homilist: "I. He displays a power over the material 



MARK XV, 33-47. 



751 



system. The effects of his power are seen : 1. Upon 
the sun: 'Now from the sixth hour there was dark- 
ness over all the land unto the ninth hour.' Whether 
the darkness extended literally over the whole earth, 
or not, we need not discuss here. [See the notes on 
Matthew.] Obviously, it wrapped Jerusalem in a 
mysterious gloom. There is no accounting for it on 
natural principles. There is no known law of na- 
ture that can explain it. An eclipse of the sun it 
was not, for it was at the time of the Passover, and 
that was at full moon, when an eclipse is impossible; 
besides a total eclipse can never last longer than a 
quarter of an hour. 2. Upon the Temple. 'The 
vail of the Temple was rent in twain from the top 
to the bottom.' This vail symbolized that the way 
into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest. 
It excluded all from that sacred spot, and none dared 
to enter save the high-priest, and he only once a year, 
on the great day of atonement, and then never with- 
out the blood of atonement in his hand, which he 
sprinkled upon and before the mercy-seat seven 
times. (Lev. xvi, 14.) That thick vail remained 
for ages, impressing man with the awful ness and 
difficulty of approaching the Most High. But now 
that vail was rent from top to bottom — rent, not by 
human hand or any secondary cause, but by the will 
of Him who now, by his death, opened up to the hu- 
man race a way of free access to God. 3. Upon the 
earth. 'The earth did quake, and the rocks rent.' 
(Matt, xxvii, 52.) A great earthquake is said by 
the Latin writers to have occurred about this time, 
but it can not with certainty be identified with this. 
With his dying eyes he looked upon the earth, and it 
trembled; with his thoughts 'he touched the mount- 
ains and they smoked.' 4. Upon the bodies of the 
dead. (Matt, xxvii, 53.) His dying breath shook 
the empire of death to its foundations. These 
graves, that were now opened in the neighborhood 
of Jerusalem, were patterns and pledges of what 
one day will inevitably take place throughout the 
vast regions of mortality. Christ's death is the 
death of death. His last breath upon the cross 
seemed to fall upon the dominion of the grave, as 
the first genial thaw of Spring upon the lifeless 
earth, bringing a few of the dead to life, [see note 
on Matthew xxvii, 52, 53,] and insuring the resur- 



rection of every buried seed. And, no doubt, the 
death of Christ had a power not only over the bodies 
of the departed, but also over their spirits. It pene- 
trated hades; it stirred with thrilling interest the 
unnumbered spirits of the sainted dead. II. He 
displays a power over the moral world. This is seen : 
1. In the salvation he vouchsafed to' the dying peni- 
tent. (Luke xxiii, 39-43.) There hangs the dying 
thief. The aggravated sins of a whole life press on 
his soul with a weight heavy enough to sink him in 
despair. A Divine power, however, touches his soul 
into penitence and faith, and with his last breath he 
cries to Jesus for salvation: 'Lord, remember me.' 
And what is the result? That dying One showed 
himself mighty to save. He rolled the crushing 
burden of guilt from the man's conscience. He 
pardoned his sins, and cleansed his soul. He 
plucked him, as a brand, from the burning. Here 
is the highest kind of power in the universe, the 
power to save ruined souls involved in the greatest 
guilt, and in the last moment of their mortal exist- 
ence. His power is seen: 2. In the authority which 
he exercised over the celestial region. This comes 
out in the wonderful response he gave to the cry of 
the penitent malefactor: 'To-day shalt thou be with 
me in paradise.' These words imply a commanding 
power over the celestial world, a power to go into it 
himself, and a power to take others thither. His 
power extends to all the realms of being that lie be- 
yond the sphere and ken of mortals. Though dying, 
he felt that the universe was his, and that in person 
he would soon be exalted above all heavens. His 
power is seen: 3. In the change which he wrought 
in the mind of the centnrion, a type of the conver- 
sion of the Gentile world; 4. In attracting to him- 
self new disciples — Nicodemus and Joseph; 5. In 
the effect it produced on the consciences of sinners. 
(Luke xxiii, 48.) 'They smote their breasts' — a 
brief but graphic description of the mingled grief, 
remorse, and terror which filled the spectators of 
this awful drama. That power his cross still exerts 
to rouse the guilty consciences and break the hard 
hearts of sinners. The same effect has been pro- 
duced in all subsequent ages whenever he has been 
faithfully exhibited to the spiritual eyes of men as 
crucified for sinners." 



752 MARK XVI, 1-20. 



SECTION XX IT. 

CHRIST'S RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION. 
CHAPTBE XVI, 1-20. 

1. AN ANGEL ANNOUNCES TO THE WOMEN THE RESURRECTION OF THE LORD. 

"Verses 1-8. (Compare Matthew xxviii, 1-10; Luke xxiv, 1-10.) 

(1) And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of 
James, and Salome, had brought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint 
him. (2) And very early in the morning, the first day of the week, they came 
unto the sepulcher at the rising of the sun. (3) And they said among themselves, 
Who shall roll us away the stone from 1 the door of the sepulcher? (4) And when 
they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away : for it was very great. (5) 
And entering into the sepulcher, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, 
clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted. (6) And he saith 
unto them, Be not affrighted: ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he 
is risen ; he is not here : behold the place where they laid him. (7) But go your 
way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee : there shall 
ye see him, as he said unto you. (8) And they went out quickly, 2 and fled from 
the sepulcher ; for they trembled and were amazed : neither said they any thing 
to any maw; for 3 they were afraid. 

3. MARY MAGDALENE AND THE TWO DISCIPLES. 
"Verses 9—13. (Compare Luke xxiv, 15-35; John xx, 11-18.) 

(9) JSTow when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first 
to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils. (10) And she went 
and told them that had been with him, as they mourned and wept. (11) And they, 
when they had heard that he was alive, and had been seen of her, believed not. 
(12) After that he appeared in another form unto two of them, as they walked, 
and went into the country. (13) And they went and told it unto the residue: 
neither believed they them. 

3. THE LAST INSTRUCTIONS OP OUR LORD TO HIS APOSTLES, AND HIS ASCENSION. 
"Verses 14-20. (Compare Luke xxiv, 36-51; John xx, 19-23.) 

(14) Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and upbraided 
them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them 
wbich had seen him after he was risen. (15) And he said unto them, Go ye into 
all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. (16) He that believeth and 

1 Some manuscripts read c<c, others &n6. 2 « Quickly " I yap, for, Lachman adopts the reading Se, according to B, 
i3 wanting in the most important Codices. 'Instead of | D, in the sense of "and." 



MARK XVI, 1-20. 



753 



is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. (17) And 
these signs shall follow them that believe; Id my name shall they cast out devils; 
they shall speak with new tongues; (18) they shall take up serpents; and if they 
drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them ; they shall lay hands on the sick, 
and they shall recover. (19) So then, after the Lord had spoken unto them, he 
was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. (20) And they 
went forth, and preached every-where, the Lord working with them, and confirm- 
ing the Word with signs following. Amen. 



Verses 1-8. And when the Sabbath was passed ; 
that is, on Saturday evening after sundown. — Had 
bought. The aorist in Greek [^ydgaaav] ought not 
to have been rendered as a pluperfect, contrary to 
its proper use, and without any necessity; for this 
statement is in no way contradictory to Luke xxiii, 
55, where another party of women is referred to. 
The two Marys, who had on Friday evening lingered 
too long at the grave to make the purchases then, 
were joined on Saturday evening by Salome in pro- 
curing them. — That they might come and anoint 
him. Inasmuch as embalming, in the strict sense of 
the term, was not customary with the Jews, and was, 
when performed, attended to by physicians, it is prob- 
able that a mere outward anointment was intended 
in order to bestow the last honor upon the body, as 
Nicodemus had already done, (John xix, 39.) — And 

VERY EARLY AT THE RISING OF THE SUN. Lange 

translates, " when the sun had commenced rising," 
and contends that this is in accordance with the 
sense of the aorist used here. Between the beginning 
and the completion of the rise of the sun we must 
suppose an interval. There is no more variance in 
the statement of the women's arrival between Mark 
and John, than there is between " very early" and 
"at the rising of the sun" in Mark. Dawn and 
sunrise are taken indefinitely in all languages. — 
And when they looked — literally, looking up. The 
sepulcher lay, as it seems, on an eminence, and the 
stone being very great, they saw it from afar, as they 
came nearer. — And entering into the sepulcher. 
From John xx, 1, 2, it appears that Mary of Mag- 
dala had started back for the city, as soon as she had 
seen the sepulcher open ; but her companions en- 
tered it. The tombs consisted generally of several 
apartments. — They saw a young man. According 
to Matthew the angel sat on the stone. There is, 
however, no contradiction between the two state- 
ments, since Matthew's account does not imply that 
the angel always kept that position, nor does Mark 
say that he [the angel] was inside of the grave ; he 
merely says, that he sat on the right side, perhaps at 
the entrance and on the stone which he had rolled 
away. On the apparent discrepancy of minor de- 
tails see introductory remarks to section 79 in Mat- 
thew, (pp. 629-G32.) — And Peter. This addition 
is peculiar to Mark. The particular mention of 
Peter was a very great favor for the poor disciple, 



who was sorely distressed on account of his fall, and 
needed pardon and the restoration to his apostolic 
office. — He goes before you into Galilee. This 
message was intended for the whole body of the 
Galilean disciples, and was, therefore, not at vari- 
ance with the Lord's appearing on that very day to 
his eleven disciples and the women ; Lange says on 
this point: " Christ had not only the 'twelve' and a 
few women, but a large number of others for dis- 
ciples, [the latter in a more general sense,] who, 
for the most part, lived in Galilee, but- were then at 
Jerusalem. Now as he appeared to a few of his dis- 
ciples first at Jerusalem, it was but natural for the 
whole body of disciples to expect that he would ap- 
pear unto them also at Jerusalem. But this was not 
Christ's purpose. For such an appearance in the 
midst of all his followers a gradual preparation was 
needed ; we see the same preparation even in the 
case of those of his male and female disciples, to 
whom he revealed himself at Jerusalem. First, an- 
gels appear to the women ; then he appears to Mary 
of Magdala, a soul, that, through the intensity of her 
longing for the beloved Master, had come so near 
the borders of the spirit-world, that she was neither 
afraid of the angels of heaven nor of the terrors of 
the grave. He revealed himself, as it seems, first to 
those of his disciples who were most susceptible and 
disconsolate, converting them thereby into exulting 
messengers of the fact of his resurrection for the 
other disciples. For the same reason he appeared 
unto Peter and the two other disciples on their way 
to Emmaus; and after these special manifestations 
he showed himself to the eleven, as in turn that man- 
ifestation was designed to prepare the whole body of 
believers for beholding him in Galilee. There were 
many among them that attained but gradually to the 
proper frame of mind to see him in the glory of his 
new life. These are the reasons why the Lord did 
not deem it proper to appear to his whole Church at 
once, and least of all at Jerusalem. They would 
have proclaimed his resurrection at once, but for a 
proper understanding and testimony of this fact they 
were not prepared before receiving the gift of the 
Holy Ghost. Had they proclaimed their Master's 
triumph in their own strength, they would only have 
provoked a persecution that might have proved fatal 
to the infant Church. Hence the order, to Galilee ! 
Yet the leaders of the Church were first to be as- 



754 



MARK XVI, 1-20. 



sured of the reality of the resurrection, so that they 
would not doubt his going before them into Galilee." 
— For [or according to the reading adopted by 
Lachman, and] they trembled and were amazed. 
They could not yet fully believe, for joy, because 
their feelings were too highly excited, and for fear, 
because the evidences of the fact were not yet suffi- 
cient, to banish all doubt, and because so much was 
for them at stake, that the apprehension of having 
their hopes blasted again, prevented them from en- 
tertaining any definite hope. — Neither said they 
any thing to any man ; that is, on the way. Mark, 
who omits the appearance of Jesus to the women, as 
related by Matthew, gives prominence to the fact, 
that " the announcements of the risen Savior through 
angels, women, and individual disciples were insuffi- 
cient to banish all doubt from the body of the dis- 
ciples : they did not become a body of believers be- 
fore the risen Savior appeared himself in their 
midst. And this fundamental idea pervades the 
whole Gospel, which is mainly based on the preach- 
ing of Peter, of that Peter who is made the head 
of a Church, where Christ is said to be represented 
by tradition, angels, prophets, holy women, and vis- 
ions." (Lange.) 

Verses 9-13. Neither believed they them. 
This clause seems very strange, especially on com- 
paring Luke xxiv, 37-45. Lange accounts for the 
doubts of the disciples in the following manner: 
" The eleven had undoubtedly learned by this time 
that Jesus had appeared unto Peter, whose testi- 
mony they could not reject. But now the two disci- 
ples returned from Emmaus with the news that he 
had appeared unto them on the way to Emmaus. 
Having no conception as yet of this new wonderful 
mode of Christ's existence — he appearing now here, 
now at another place— new doubts arise. Moreover, 
some of the eleven may have thought: Why should 
he have appeared unto the two disciples at Emmaus 
earlier than unto us, his apostles, at Jerusalem? 
They conceived, therefore, of his appearance as that 
of his spirit, and were affrighted when Jesus ap- 
peared in their midst, supposing that they saw a 
spirit, (Luke xxiv, 37,) so that the Lord has to con- 
vince them first of all of the reality of his body." 

Verses 14-20. Afterward he appeared unto 
the eleven. This appearance of Christ did un- 
doubtedly take place on the evening of the resurrec- 
tion-day, but as with the self-manifestation of Christ in 
the midst of his disciples every thing is decided, Mark 
connects with this appearance the great commission 
and other instructions subsequently given. The un- 
belief and hardness of heart of the disciples, so often 
rebuked by their Master, are now fully overcome, 
and the apostles are thus reinstated into their apos- 
tolic office. Though Thomas was not present the 
first evening, the rest of the apostles are called " the 
eleven," meaning the apostolic body. All of them, in- 
deed, had the same defect of faith for which Thomas 
was afterward especially reproved. "It might, in- 



deed, appear as if all that Mark records from verses 
14-18 was spoken on the evening of the first day. 
But the double narrative of this evening's proceedings 
in Luke and John will not allow any room for such 
an anticipatory discourse; and then verses 15-18 
are too plainly parallel with the conclusion of Mat- 
thew to allow any doubt as to its having been spoken 
on the mountain in Galilee. We must, therefore, 
intelligently notice the hint which Mark himself gives 
us in verse 19 by his 'after the Lord had spoken 
unto them,' by which his l and he said unto them,' 
in verse 15, loses— as most expositors see — all spe- 
cific chronological connection with verse 14. After 
he has in verses 9-14 given prominence to three 
special appearances, Mark gives us continuously the 
main substance of the discourses of Christ to the dis- 
ciples between the resurrection and the ascension, 
and that according to a view of them peculiar to him- 
self. What specific kind of connection there is be- 
tween the two accounts of what our Lord spoke on 
the Galilean mountain — how little or how much that 
connection extends to the words — what was the pre- 
cise order of utterances, are questions which it 
would not be prudent to answer positively. Though 
for ourselves we understand Mark's words to have 
followed the others, we can not prove that it was so. 
Through the Holy Ghost, who has thus reproduced 
and delivered to us his Word, the Lord speaks to us 
now both the one and the other — and both are im- 
mediately authentic. But the Divine Spirit rather 
points our attention away from the mere historical 
and external connection of the individual words ; the 
great object with us should be to appreciate the one 
design of the whole discourse, and to grasp it in all 
its doctrinal completeness. The discourses of the 
risen Lord permit, and indeed demand of us, be- 
yond all that preceded, such an elevation above the 
petty consideration of the exact, historical connec- 
tion — such a manifold and yet not altering glorifica 
tion." (Stier.) — Go ye into all. the world. "All 
the world" is evidently synonymous with "all na- 
tions" in Matthew. — And preach the Gospel, the 
joyful tidings of salvation. "Preaching the Gospel, 
in this sense, must emphatically begin the great work 
in every place to which the Lord's commissioned serv- 
ants come; wherever and among whatever people 
the salvation of the Triune God has not been 
preached — neither adults nor infants are to be bap- 
tized. Mark further that the Lord's command is 
not — Write down and record my words and my his- 
tory, but — Preach! All that comes in supplement- 
ary ; and by the Scriptures of the New Testament 
the Lord has — as was indispensably necessary — given 
the certain and all-sufficient text for all Gospel 
preaching; yet it is a profound truth, which we shall 
ponder well, that he did not at first and preparatorily 
speak of or ordain the writing of the Scripture, but 
connected all with the oral word. Only in the preach- 
ing Church, which possesses the spirit, does the letter 
of the Scripture live as a living word, and thus the 



MARK XVI, 1-20. 



755 



sacraments have their influence and efficiency." — 
To every creature — literally, to the whole creation. 
Most expositors understand by this term simply all 
men. But the Greek term uriaig means no where 
else merely men, and Stier contends that our Lord 
did not use this unusual and more comprehen- 
sive term without intending a wider signification. 
"Though the rest of the creation have no ears to 
hear with for themselves, man is their ear; and by 
means of its connection with man creation becomes 
actually partaker of a redemption springing out of 
man's redemption, after having been through man's 
fall subjected to vanity and corruption, as we learn in 
Romans viii, 19-23. Bengel's profound glance had 
slightly perceived the meaning of that passage, and 
he remarks here: To men primarily, (verse 16;) to 
the rest of the creatures, secondarily; As the curse, 
so the blessing.' In Christ the earth and all that is 
in it is again blessed; as all was laid under the curse 
through the sin of Adam. By reason of the intimate 
and indissoluble connection of man — both in his old 
and new creation — with nature which surrounds him, 
serves him, and with him has become wretched and 
been restored again, the Gospel applies through him 
and his mediation to brute creation — -just as the 
Lord in his promise to Noah and his sons included 
also the lower animals. (Gen. ix, 9, 10.) As the old 
saying, 'The righteous man is merciful to his beast,' 
becomes a full reality only through the Spirit of 
Christ, is this not a blessing, a deliverance flowing 
to the animal kingdom from that all-renewing grace? 
When deserts are changed into blooming gardens 
through civilization following in the train of Chris- 
tian missions, does the earth not share the blessings 
of the Gospel? This view is still further confirmed 
by what is said in verse 18 of the power given to the 
apostles over those noxious and deadly elements of 
nature, as it now is, which certainly did not have 
their origin in Paradise. Every creature, Tvaaa 
Kriaic, the whole creation, includes all that needs 
restoration. The word kt'igiq is used expressly to 
point to the Creator who renews his creation, or pro- 
claims a new creation, as the Berlenburg Bible says: 
'The entire Gospel refers to'the relation of the 
creature to God; helping it to find its Creator again, 
and its eternal good.' " — In a similar manner 
Lange interprets this passage: "The world, marred 
and held in bondage by demons, and filled with the 
fear of death, is to become a world of peace, faith, 
and life, blessed, set free, and glorified by the Gospel. 
The renewal or restoration of the world through the 
Gospel is a promise that pervades the whole Scrip- 
tures, (compare Deut. xxviii; Isa. xi; lxv, 17; Rom. 
viii; Rev. xxi;) and in our text this promise receives 
the confirmation and sanction of Christ. The fact 
of his own resurrection is the announcement of glad 
tidings for the whole creation, and the apostles are 
to preach it to the whole world, and to seal it by the 
sacrament, so that it may be appropriated individu- 
ally. Every true and earnest offer of salvation is 



henceforth a preaching of the Gospel, that has for 
its ultimate object the liberation of the creature 
from the bondage of vanity and corruption, a regen- 
erative power preparing the great restoration of 
all things that is to be consummated at the end of 
the present world-period. The idea of a universal 
palingenesia we find clearly intimated by the apostle 
Peter. (Acts ii, 20; iii, 20, 21; 2 Pet, i, 4; iii, 
13.)" — He that believeth and is baptized. In 
the original the aorist is used, having the force of the 
second future; lie that shall have believed and shall 
have been baptized. Our Lord speaks by anticipa- 
tion as the future Judge of the world. By " believ- 
ing" we must of course understand a believing with 
the heart, a living, appropriating trust in Jesus 
Christ, as the only Savior and final Judge of man- 
kind, (compare Acts xvii, 31;) from such faith all 
good works spring. — Baptism appears here to bear 
such a relation to faith as is thought by Baptists to 
be irreconcilable with infant baptism. Pedobaptist 
expositors content themselves with replying that our 
Lord speaks here only of adult believers, but define, 
at the same time, baptism in a manner that, in our 
opinion, must, if consistently applied, lead to the 
rejection of infant baptism. Thus Owen: "Baptism 
is the seal of the covenant-obligation of the believer, 
to love and serve the Lord Jesus Christ, and to walk 
in all his ordinances and commands. It is not a 
saving rite, although a duty incumbent on every be- 
lieving adult who has not been thus pledged to 
Christ by believing parents." Whedon: "The exter- 
nal baptism by water is a public profession that the 
baptism by the Spirit has taken place. It is a pro- 
fessional, outward consecration indicating an inward 
consecration of soul and body to the blessed Trinity. 
It is an emblematical regeneration figuring a real 
and spiritual regeneration. It is a figurative wash- 
ing away of sin, correspondent to the real washing 
away of sin. It is an external entering into the 
kingdom of heaven correspondent to the real enter- 
ing by regeneration into the spiritual kingdom of 
heaven. It is the being born of water, figuring the 
being born of the Spirit. Hence he who believes 
and is baptized really and truly, shall be saved." 
The objections to such a definition of baptism we 
have stated in our Dissertation, (pp. 642-644.) Stier 
says: "The relation between believing and being 
baptized is clearly and definitely laid down in the 
two clauses. To begin with the latter: we miss 
the corresponding fir/ (3air-iG-&£ic in connection with 
Ka.Taicf)fSf/o£T<u — it is not said : ' He that is not 
baptized shall be condemned !' Baptized or not, 
even if baptized, the unbelieving shall be con- 
demned! And this must lead us to decide that 
in the former clause the same holds good : the 
believer shall be saved, even though he be not bap- 
tized. All anxious misunderstanding of the insepa- 
rable conjunction of baptism with faith, as the con- 
dition of salvation, is removed by the plain sequel 
of the clause, ' But he that believeth not [and only 



756 



MARK XVI, 1-20. 



he] shall be condemned.' He that believeth will 
not omit to seek baptism, if he has not already re- 
ceived it; but we must not think of it as an absolute 
condition of salvation, for this simple reason, that it 
is not positively the baptized who is said to be saved, 
but the believing and the baptized. The precedence 
given to believing does not indicate the order of 
time for every individual, first to believe and then to 
be baptized, but may be understood thus : ' He that 
believeth also even as he has been baptized, that is, 
not merely, the baptized.' Faith is evidently the 
essential matter, whether it precedes or follows bap- 
tism. Inasmuch as only unbelief condemns, the 
contempt of baptism condemns only the disobedient 
and the unbelieving ; but the lack of baptism on the 
part of believers, and on the part of little children, 
does not condemn them. Though the opinions of 
the perdition of unbaptized children, once so cur- 
rent, are now scarcely to be found in Evangelical 
Churches, yet a long experience in practical pastoral 
life, and in a district celebrated for Christian knowl- 
edge and piety, has revealed to me the existence of 
so much confusion, and let me say superstition, in 
the minds of the people on this question — though 
springing from a deep anxiety to comply with the 
precepts of Christ— that I could not consent to fur- 
ther the views of those who would revive the disci- 
pline of private baptism for times of danger. It 
rather appears to me more and more clearly the 
duty of the minister to defend his people from super- 
stition, and even under certain circumstances to 
deny the rite which is demanded with an unworthy 
motive; at least to perform no so-called baptism of 
need without a plain protest against the notion of its 
necessity. I think we may thus better, and with more 
blessed result, uphold the true appreciation of the 
sacrament, than by furthering an improper and er- 
roneous value for it. When the ceremony is per- 
formed upon a child to all appearance dying, accord- 
ing to the same formulary, as if the child were des- 
tined to live — what is this but trifling with holy 
things? In infant baptism the germ is implanted 
for life upon earth, from which the tree should 
spring up in the present economy of things ; this is 
alone its peculiar significance and justification. But 
the little children whom the Lord calls to die, he 
calls by their death— as we are in the habit of saying 
correctly — most surely and effectually to come unto 
himself" To the above we have to offer but one 
objection: instead of saying, "In infant baptism the 
germ is implanted for life upon earth," etc., we would 
say, The significance and justification of infant bap- 
tism rests upon the child's destiny for life upon earth, 
and an infant that the Lord takes away by death be- 
fore its baptism, he calls to come unto himself with- 
out baptism. The sacraments were instituted for 
the way of salvation on earth, and not for the spirit- 
world. (Compare the remarks in the Dissertation 
on Baptism, III, p. 643.) — Shall be saved — liter- 
ally, delivered, namely, from sin and its final conse- 



quences. " This promise, open and free as long as 
there is one creature who has not heard the Gospel, 
and therefore can not have decided to reject it ; but 
the great distinction between salvation and perdition 
remains an immovable fact, and its eternal reality 
will be made manifest at the end. Luther : ' The 
whole world is thus divided into two portions, and 
they are separated from each other by a great and 
vast difference: one goes to heaven, the other to 
hell ; and no other judgment shall pass at the last 
day than that upon him who has believed, or who 
has not believed.' And what will be preached dur- 
ing the long interval? Most assuredly nothing new; 
nothing even in hades but this Gospel ! And in 
order that no man afterward may complain, the de- 
cision is given beforehand. ' Whithersoever ye go,' 
he says to his apostles, ' make this judgment known. 
Say every-where and to all, He that believeth and is 
baptized, shall be saved ; he that believeth not, shall 
be condemned.' But who shall have believed or not 
have believed, will be made known with irreversible 
decision on the last day." (Stier.) — But he that 
believeth not — literally, shall not have believed, 
that is, has to the close of probation persevered in 
refusing to believe, in rejecting the Gospel and the 
Savior, whom it offers. — Shall be damned. " A 
word not too strong to express eternal ruin or perdi- 
tion, but from its modern use or abuse, awakening 
different associations from the Greek verb, which 
means simply, shall be judged against, that is, con- 
demned, implying, although not expressing, the same 
terrible result." (Alexander.) "He that believeth 
not, shall be condemned. ' Let the world,' says 
Beck, ' think otherwise on this point, that changes 
nothing; their unbelief can not save them, their 
opinion is not the judge over heaven and earth, the 
dead and the living. If it is to thine own mind in- 
comprehensible that all should be made to depend 
upon faith, take heed to thyself; and, lest another 
should have to declare it to thee in vain, become 
thyself a faithful scholar of the Word of God, and 
the light will arise in thine own soul.' The declara- 
tion of our Savior might be Scripturally paraphrased 
as follows : He that believeth not, will be judged ac- 
cording to his works, and consequently condemned, 
because he will not have it otherwise, because he 
protests against the condition of salvation which 
Divine grace has ordained. (John v, 45.) But its 
full import (according to John viii, 24; xii, 47, 48; 
iii, 15, 18, 36) is, that unbelief is the only damning 
sin, that whoever will be condemned, receives his 
sentence only for not having believed. Taken in 
this sense, even this dreadful threatening is a Gos- 
pel, yea, the strongest and most attractive assurance 
of grace. ' For by these stern words,' as Rieger well 
observes, 'the Lord Jesus at the same time warns 
mercifully and threatens fearfully!' To the last mo- 
ment the way is left open : Only believe, believe yet, 
and thou shalt be saved! On the other hand, unbe- 
lief is in truth the worst, the most essential and the 



MARK XVI, 1-20. 



757 



most damnable sin, as the same Rieger says in one 
of his sermons : ' To him who believeth not — all that 
he does is sin ; and sin, not only against the law, 
but against the Gospel and against grace, which is 
worse than the sin of the devils.' And for this he 
adduces the too bold and doubtful words of Anselm, 
{Tract, de casu Diaboli:) 'For the devil sins against 
a God who has cast him off; man sins against a 
God who calls him back. The former is hardened 
against a God who punishes him ; the latter hardens 
himself against a God who shows him the tenderest 
love. The devil acts in opposition to a God who 
seeketh him not; the sinner insults a God who dies 
for him.' " (Stier.) It would scarcely be fair toward 
an expositor like Dr. Stier, to whom we are indebted 
for the profoundest interpretations, not to quote his 
final remark on this passage, however we may differ 
from him. "Finally," he says, "it is testified and 
sealed in this utterance, as plainly as if spoken in as 
many express words, that without the preaching of 
the Gospel going before no man will be finally con- 
demned ; that it will and that it must be preached to 
all ; and that this, if it do not take place in the 
present life, will necessarily take place after death. 
Thus, the whole doctrine concerning an intermediate 
place, and its economy of forbearance and salvation, 
down to the full ripeness of unbelief in the whole 
world, has here its plain demonstration. It is in- 
comprehensible that so many fail to perceive this, and 
therefore inveigh against it as doubtful or unscrip- 
tural." Why we fail to perceive this, has been shown 
in the remarks on the unpardonable sin in Matthew. 
— And these signs shall follow them that be- 
lieve — literally, that have believed. The first ques- 
tion that claims our attention is, How far does the 
promise of miraculous powers, given here, reach? 
The common view is, that it must be restricted to 
the apostolic age, as, according to the will of God, 
the miraculous powers were to last only till the firm 
foundation of the Church was laid. But however 
true it may be that miraculous powers became un- 
necessary as soon as the Church was formally estab- 
lished, we are not justified in positively declaring 
that God has withdrawn from his Church from that 
time, entirely and forever, all miraculous powers. 
"The promise is not limited strictly to the first ages 
of the Church. Should occasion arise for its ful- 
fillment, there can be no doubt that it will be made 
good in our own or any other time. But we must 
remember that signs are not needed where Chris- 
tianity is professed; nor by missionaries who are 
backed by the influence of powerful Christian na- 
tions. There are credible testimonies of miraculous 
powers having been exercised in the Church consid- 
erably after the apostles' time." (Alford.) "Where 
is the proof," says Stier, " that what is said in verse 
17 must be restricted to the primitive Christians? 
Faith has at all times exerted a supernatural power 
over nature, (Heb. xi, 33, 34,) and should it alto- 
gether lose its powers in the new dispensation after 



a short transition period ? The, only limitation, or 
rather condition, which the Lord attaches here to his 
general promise of miraculous powers is faith, by 
which we have, indeed, not to understand saving 
faith in general, but a specific faith on each occa- 
sion that such a miracle will be done in the power 
of God ; that is, a divinely-wrought assurance of 
being able to perform it, joined with a conviction 
that it ought to be performed according to the will 
of God and for the promotion of his kingdom." 
(Compare the notes on Matthew xvii, 20.) But if 
the promise of the miraculous powers attending the 
preaching of the Gospel is couched in the same gen- 
eral terms, as the preaching of the Gospel itself at 
all times and in all countries, how is the fact to be 
accounted for, that they have, nevertheless, been 
virtually withdrawn ? It is preposterous to say, as 
the Irvingites do, that they have been withdrawn 
from the Church on account of her lack of faith, 
that, from the third century down to the present 
day, the most gifted Fathers, the great reformers, 
and those men of God through whose labors and 
zeal thousands of precious souls have been con- 
verted in our days, and the whole Church awakened 
to a new spiritual life, performed no miracles, be- 
cause they had lost the primitive faith of Christians ! 
In order to reconcile the absence of miraculous 
powers in the Church with the general promise in 
the words of our text, two things must be taken 
into consideration; namely, 1. The promise does 
not say that all the signs enumerated will follow all 
believers of all times. The promise is fulfilled, if 
the preaching of the Gospel has been attended even 
only once by the signs in question ; one sign in the 
case of this, another in the case of that believer. 
2. While miracles, recognizable by the outward 
senses, attended the preaching of the Gospel during 
the first two centuries, when the foundation of the 
Church was laid, in order to prepare the way for the 
Gospel, they were at the same time, like the mira- 
cles performed by the Lord himself, the proper types 
and emblems of the vastly more important opera- 
tions of the Holy Spirit, which are permanent in the 
Church. It is significant that the miracles are called 
signs. They were not in themselves the ultimate 
end for which they were wrought, but the means to 
indicate, and prepare for, something more important. 
Their primary design was, indeed, to prove to Jews 
and Gentiles, that the first witnesses of Jesus were 
commissioned of God to proclaim the way of salva- 
tion, and miraculous powers shall attend the preach- 
ing of the Gospel, whenever and wherever the Lord, 
who distributes these gifts, deems it expedient and 
necessary to bestow them. (1 Cor. xii, 11, 27, 29, 30.) 
But their higher and chief object and value was to 
point as signs to those spiritual miracles which the 
preaching of the Gospel works at all times. Thus 
the promise, as recorded by Mark, contains only a 
specification of the more general one, as given by 
Matthew : " Lo! I am with you alway, even unto the 



758 



MARK XVI, 1-20. 



end of the world." As if the Lord intended to say: 
"The signs of my being with you, of iny working in 
and through you, if you preach, in my name and in 
obedience to my command, the word of faith, are 
these." The special application of the outward mir- 
acles to the corresponding spiritual miracles, which 
are permanent in the Church to the end of time, we 
shall make in the comments on the different items 
named by Mark. Dr. Whedon draws the following 
general and plain parallel: a As bodily ills are the 
shadow of the ills of the soul, so these miracles of 
external mercy are images of the spiritual and 
moral miracles that Christianity ever works. In 
all ages the regenerating spirit casts out devilish 
passions from men's souls. The young convert to 
the Gospel speaks with a new language. The pow- 
erful grace of God enables the new Christian to 
handle unharmed the evil things of this life, and 
perform its secular business, which bite other men 
and kill them. The cup of temptation and trial 
which poisons the soul of the unregenerate is 
drained by the faithful truster in Christ unhurt. 
And from all the ailments of which men sicken and 
die, the power of the resurrection shall completely 
heal them." — In my name [our Lord cast out dev- 
ils in virtue of his own Divine authority, but the 
power of the apostles to do this was derived from 
him] SHALL they cast out devils. For fulfillment 
of this promise see Acts v, 16; viii, "7 ; xvi, 18. "Of 
the miracles performed by the Lord himself the cast- 
ing out of devils was the first, the most mighty, and 
convincing sign. (Matt, xii, 25.) For this reason 
the Lord puts it here also first, and says, by his 'in 
my name,' no less than this — Ye shall perform the 
same works which I myself have performed. Satan's 
power confronts and opposes the coming kingdom 
of God; how, then, could any thing but this promise 
stand in the fore-front — the prominent sign of Him 
who is stronger than Satan? It is well known to 
the learned that from the time of Justin and Ire- 
nasus onward, and down to the fourth century, 
the Fathers, and especially the apologists, referred 
with the utmost confidence of challenge to the act- 
ual fact that the demons were constrained to retire 
before the name of Christ, but something of the 
same kind continues throughout the whole course 
of history down to the present time." (Stier.) The 
promise must be understood here in its widest and 
deepest sense, the setting free of the world from all 
evil spirits, by which it is kept in bondage. The 
power of Satan continuing to control the moral na- 
ture of man, though it has no more a control over 
the bodies of men, as it had in the days of the Savior, 
is to be broken by the power of the Holy Ghost. — 
They shall speak with new tongues. The speak- 
ing with new tongues commenced on the day of 
Pentecost, but assumed subsequently various forms. 
"It remained with the early Church," says Dr. Whe- 
don, " as a symbol of the power of Christianity to 
pervade all the tribes and languages of the babbling 



earth, and as a means of arresting the attention of 
the unchristian and unheeding world." The speak- 
ing with tongues, however, treated of by the apostle 
in the Epistle to the Corinthians, must be distin- 
guished from the miracle on the day of Pentecost — 
their supernatural origin is the only point they have 
in common. Throughout the Epistles, speaking with 
a tongue or with tongues is identical with being in the 
spirit, and this is an ecstatic state in which the indi- 
vidual's self-consciousness and his connection with 
the surrounding world are suspended, so that the 
spirit — the ■Kvtv\xa — is engaged in the contempla- 
tion of Divine things, and in uttering the praises 
of God. (See 1 Corinthians xiv.) — They shall 
take up serpents. The Greek verb dipeiv means 
to take up, and also to destroy; yet the simpler 
meaning of "taking hold, taking up," seems to be 
intended here, as setting forth the person's inviolabil- 
ity. One instance of the literal fulfillment of this 
promise is given us in Acts xxviii, 5, 6. Other in- 
stances are recorded by the Fathers. Stier remarks 
very pertinently on Luke x, 19: "Serpents are the 
main representatives of every thing noxious in the 
animal world, parallel to thistles and thorns in the 
vegetable world. The Lord means, therefore, every 
thing hostile in nature as the material emblem of all 
threatening powers, especially those of a spiritual char- 
acter, every kind of cunning and snares such as we, 
for the most part, tread upon ignorantly, and which 
are fatal to all except those who have been armed 
by the Lord and are walking by faith." — And if 
they drink [have drank] any deadly thing, it 
shall not hurt them. Poisoning was a very com- 
mon practice in ancient times, and especially in the 
East, where the art of mixing subtile and deadly 
poisons with beverage was carried on to great per- 
fection. The promise seems to be emblematical of 
that special Divine protection which shall not per- 
mit the followers of Christ to be destroyed by the 
cunning devices of their enemies. It is, however, 
self-evident that this promise, like all others of the 
kind, has reference only to those cases where the 
glory of God and the interests of his Church demand 
such a direct interposition, and it would be an un- 
pardonable presumption if a Christian, on the 
strength of this promise, would swallow a poisonous 
draught. Stier remarks: "All the hurtful elements 
of nature, as all the hurtful elements in the spiritual 
kingdom, are derived from the fall; and the power 
of Christ arms us against them all alike. He pre- 
serves our real life from the philters and poisonous 
potions of the spirit of the age and its literature, as 
certainly and as miraculously as preservation from 
bodily harm is here attributed to his power." —They 
shall lay hands on the sick. Instances we find in 
Acts iii, 6, 1 ; v, 15; Jas.,v, 14. It is not to be supposed 
that every member of the primitive Church possessed 
miraculous gifts, and much less that those who did 
were endowed with all of them. (Compare 1 Cor. xii, 
9-11.) "The series closes with healing of diseases, 



MARK XVI, 1-20. 



759 



not by medicines, but by the name of the Lord, accom- 
panied by the usual imposition of bands, which our 
Lord himself employed. This last sign was to all 
appearance the least; at the same time it was that 
one which, according to James v, 14-16, was to be 
most ordinarily realized in the Church. St. James 
associates with the mighty power of prayer the sym- 
bol of oil, which the weaker faith of the disciples 
had once employed unbidden, (Mark vi, 13;) but the 
same Mark, who recorded that circumstance, has not 
added the word here — he simply records now what 
the Lord actually said. His disciples were to lay 
on their hands as He had done. Their hands also 
should have a miraculous power of blessing; even 
as their mouth should speak a new language. . . . 
How much sickness and how many hurts of the souls 
of men are still healed by the blessed agency of the 
hand and power of Christian men ! Let us cry to the 
Lord: Strengthen and bless Thou the hands of thy 
authenticated messengers, that they may rightly lay 
them upon men ; and that, before Thy coming again, 
thy promise may be abundantly fulfilled: they shall 
be healed! it shall be w ell with them." (Stier.) — 

So THEN, AFTER THE LORD HAD SPOKEN UNTO THEM. 

The Evangelist does not mean to say, that our Lord 
ascended to heaven immediately after he had spoken 
the words recorded from verse 14; he evidently sums 
up in a brief manner the Lord's last instructions. — 
He was received up into heaven. Although 
Matthew and John give no account of our Lord's 
ascension, the fact is clearly indicated by them. 
The declaration of the Savior, recorded at the close 
of Matthew's Gospel, that all power in heaven and 
on earth is given unto him necessarily implies that 
he was going to ascend to heaven and seat himself at 
the right hand of his Heavenly Father. In John's 
Gospel we read that the Savior says to Mary of Mag- 
dala after his resurrection, that he would ascend 
unto his Father; his ascension is also foretold in 
John vi, 62, where the Savior says that the Son of 
man would go up again where he had been before. 
Th fact of the ascension is, likewise, testified by the 
apostle Peter, (1 Pet. iii, 22; Acts ii, 33; v, 31;) equally 
pointed and distinct are the words of the author of 
the Epistle to the Hebrews, (ix, 24; x, 12.) Another 
witness is the apostle Paul. His conversion was 
founded on the appearance of the glorified Christ 
from heaven. Add to this what the apostle says in 
various passages. (Eph. ii, 6; iv, 8; Phil, ii, 6-10; 
1 Tim. iii, 16.) The ascension of our Lord is, in- 
deed, necessarily involved in his resurrection ; for the 
latter was a return, not to his former state of exist- 
ence on earth, but to the glory which he had with the 
Father before his incarnation. The difference be- 
tween the resurrection and ascension is simply this, 
that by the latter the Lord's visible intercourse with 
his disciples, whose outward form was already 
greatly changed by the resurrection, was now en- 
tirely broken off and succeeded by the mission of 
the Comforter, the Holy Spirit. The fact or reality 



of the ascension is denied by Dr. Strauss, as every 
thing miraculous, on the ground of its impossibility. 
"It is inconceivable," he says, "how a human body, 
that can be handled, that has flesh and bones, and 
can take food, should be exempted from the law of 
gravitation." The objection is so silly as scarcely to 
deserve an answer; yet Dr. Lange condescends to 
remind the critic that the law of gravitation is 
conditioned and even in part suspended by the 
organization, and that the risen Savior's body must 
necessarily be viewed as an organism in which 
the body has become fully the organ of the spirit. 
The second difficulty Strauss finds in this: "That 
the abode of God and his saints, to which Jesus is 
said to have risen, is not to be sought in the higher 
regions, or in any locality." That God as a 
Spirit is not confined to any particular locality, 
the sacred writers knew fully as well as our mod- 
ern critics. But the disembodied spirits of the 
saints, not being every-where present, must be sup- 
posed to be in some particular place or spot, and 
this place may be denominated, with great propriety, 
heaven, the seat of God, that is, the place of the 
highest self-manifestation of God. And when the 
Scriptures speak of Christ as ascending, the expres- 
sion is, of course, not to be taken in a local sense. 
Even in astronomy there is no above or beloic. 
When the Scriptures say, that Jesus "was received 
up into heaven," the idea to be conveyed is, that his 
glorified humanity was withdrawn from the earth. 
Mark's narrative of the ascension is distinguished by 
that grand simplicity, which is peculiar to the Evan- 
gelist, and is quite in keeping with the whole char- 
acter of his Gospel, which has for its object to set 
Christ before us as the Omnipotent conqueror of all 
his enemies and the looser of all bonds. — And sat 
on the right hand of God. This statement rests, 
partly, on what the disciples saw with their own eyes, 
(Acts i, 9,) partly on a revelation, (Acts i, 11,) partly 
on the words of Christ (John xiv, 3) and on the 
analogy of faith, but especially on the facts con- 
nected with the Pentecost, (Acts ii, 33.) — And they 
went forth [namely, from Jerusalem, after the out- 
pouring of the Holy Spirit] and preached evert- 
where. The apostles no longer mourned and wept, 
(v. 10.) Like heroes they entered upon their mis- 
sionary fields, fearing nothing, not even death. 
How faithfully all of them executed their commis- 
sion, appears plainly from the rapid spread of Chris- 
tianity during the lifetime of the apostles, although 
we have no particular accounts of the acts and 
doings of most of the apostles after the day of Pente- 
cost. — The Lord working with them and con- 
firming the "Word with signs following ; primarily 
with the miraculous powers enumerated above, but 
then also with the miraculous moral effects of the 
Gospel, symbolized by those miraculous powers. 
Each Evangelist closes his Gospel with the glory 
and sovereign power of Jesus Christ in a way pe- 
culiar to himself; with Mark it is the power exer- 



760 



MAEK XVI, 1-20. 



cised by Christ from heaven through his messengers 
in setting the world free from the power of the devil 
and all effects of moral evil. 

In conclusion we have to consider the objections 
against the genuineness of verses 9-20. 1. Euse- 
bius (ad Marin., Quffistio I) says, that verse 8, 
speaking of the flight of the women, forms the con- 
clusion of the Gospel in nearly all the manuscripts. 
To this it is replied, that Irenasus (Adv. Heeres., Ill, 
x, 6) was acquainted with the present conclusion of 
the Gospel, and his authority is both older and 
greater than that of Eusebius. It is, therefore, 
more probable that the closing verses were originally 
in the manuscripts, but fell out afterward by some 
cause or other, than that they should originally have 
been wanting and been added subsequently; yea, the 
former is beyond doubt, since it is utterly inconceiv- 
able that the Gospel should have closed with the state- 
ment, that the women for fear said nothing to any 
body of the information given by the angels. 2. It 



is said, that in this section the peculiarities of Mark's 
style are wanting. But this objection rests more on 
imagination than on facts ; at all events the absence 
of Mark's favorite terms, ev&eug and -rrdfav, is more 
than counterbalanced by the fact, that the import of 
this section fully agrees with the spirit and character 
of his Gospel. What could have characterized Mark 
more strongly than this very trait, setting the risen 
Savior before us in the full majesty of his power, 
converting, as it were, by magic the still lingering 
unbelief of his disciples into a world-overcoming 
faith, and promising them that they would triumph 
over all the powers of death and hell! Lange ac- 
counts for the absence of the closing section in so 
many manuscripts, by supposing that an unfinished 
copy of the Gospel was, perhaps, published before 
the finished one, a supposition that is made highly 
probable by the anxious longing of the Eoman 
Christians for this Gospel, (see Introduction to Mark, 
p. 655,) and by the Neronic persecution. 



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